Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern Theory of the Earth by Naomi Oreskes (Editor), Homer Le Grand (Editor), Homer Le Grand (Editor), Homer Le Grand (With)

From Barnes & Noble

The idea that Earth's crust is made of moving pieces is barely 35 years old. This breakthrough stands as the seminal idea in the earth sciences, akin to the double helix or relativity. Most think of great scientific advances in terms of a single genius -- an Einstein or a Darwin -- but in reality science usually advances through many individuals working cooperatively. This historic collection of new essays is the work of men and women who in the 1960s shook the science of geology to its foundations.

From the Publisher

Can anyone today imagine the earth without its puzzle-piece construction of plate tectonics? The very term, "plate tectonics," coined only thirty-five years ago, is now part of the vernacular, part of everyone's understanding of the way the earth works.The theory, research, data collection, and analysis that came together in 1967 to constitute plate tectonics is one of the great scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. Scholarly books have been written about tectonics, but none by the key scientists-players themselves. In Plate Tectonics, editor Naomi Oreskes has assembled those scientists who played key roles in developing the theory to tell - for the first time, and in their own words - the stories of their involvement in the extraordinary evolution of the theory.The book opens with an overview of the history of plate tectonics, including in-context definitions of the key terms that are discussed throughout the book. Oreskes explains how the forerunners of the theory, Wegener and du Toit, inspired how scientists working at the key academic institutions - Cambridge and Princeton Universities, Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory, and the University of California-San Diego's Scripps Institute of Oceanography – competed and collaborated until the theory coalesced in 1967.

Publishers Weekly

Readers who went to school before the late 1960s will probably remember that their science teachers couldn't explain why South America and Africa seemed to fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. It was not until 1968 that the theory of plate tectonics was formulated and quickly accepted by scientists around the world. This collection of 18 essays is written by the researchers (such as Frederick J. Vine and Lawrence Morley) who made the discoveries that established the phenomenon of plate tectonics. While the idea of "continental drift" had been proposed as early as 1596 and reappeared at various times throughout history, scientists had always rejected it. Then in the late 1950s and '60s, geologists discovered great rifts in the undersea mountain ranges that girdle the ocean, as well as regular patterns of alternating magnetic polarities in the ocean floor. These and other findings confirmed continental drift and explained the existence of volcanic islands and even earthquakes en masse. Readers with little or no background in geology will be able to follow these well-written and generally jargon-free personal accounts, but the book will appeal most to hard-core science buffs and budding geophysicists. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

When the fundamentals of plate tectonics are explained in any basic geology textbook, it is easy to forget that in the 1960s it was a revolutionary idea that completely transformed earth science. "As the far-reaching success of these ideas became clear, we all rapidly became famous," writes Dan McKenzie, then a geophysics graduate student at Cambridge who launched his academic career on the new discoveries. McKenzie is one of 17 scientists invited to contribute personal memories of those early days to this collection of essays, edited by Oreskes (history, Univ. of California, San Diego). This is an important historical record, and it is fascinating to read how, once the data became available, the details of sea-floor spreading, mid-oceanic ridges, and subduction zones began to form a complete and convincing model. Nonetheless, this is largely an academic history of research and conferences, computer models, and the race to publish. For an overview of how plate tectonics works, academic libraries should buy a textbook such as Kent C. Condie's Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997. 4th ed.), and school libraries should consider Helen Roney Sattler and Giulio Maestro's Our Patchwork Planet (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1995). Amy Brunvand, Univ. of Utah Lib., Salt Lake City Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booklist

Fortunate to have begun their careers when the new paradigm was shaping up, these authors impart the excitement, contention, and competition of overturning accepted but erroneous science.

Kirkus Reviews

Firsthand reports of the birth of modern plate tectonics, the once heretical, now governing theory of how the earth works.

What People Are Saying

Robert D. Ballard
Reading Plate Tectonics brings back fond memories of being a graduate student during one of the most exciting periods of time in the history of the Earth Sciences. A must for anyone wanting to know how a revolution in science really takes place.--Robert D. Ballard Ph.D., President, Institute for Exploration, Mystic, CT

Victoria Bruce
Plate Tectonics is a fascinating tale – told in the very voices of the relentless scientists who joined forces to uncover the Earth's greatest geological puzzle. Naomi Oreskes has done us a magnificent favor by gathering the history and the humanity behind one of the grandest scientific achievements of our time.--Victoria Bruce author of No Apparent Danger: The True Story of Volcanic Disaster at Galeras and Nevado Del Ruiz

Frank Press
Plate tectonics along with relativity, quantum mechanics, the chemical bond, DNA recall some of the milestones that mark the extraordinary advances of 20th century science. The story of plate tectonics deserves the engrossing and authoritative treatment organized by Naomi Oreskes. This unique approach combines her insights as a professional historian of science with the personally authored "who-what-why-when-where" recollections of many of the principal scientists who made it all happen. Highly recommended for the general public, for scientists in all fields, for students and teachers.--Frank Press, President Emeritus, United States National Academy of Sciences

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Interviews & Essays

Table of Contents

Interviews & Essays

Plate tectonics is a good place to show this, because so many of the people involved are still alive to tell their tales, and because the story isn't associated in the public's mind with one person. If you tried to write a book about all the people who contributed to our current understanding of evolution, it would be very hard. Most of the key players are dead, and evolution is linked in people's minds almost exclusively with Charles Darwin. Many (if not most) people think that Darwin invented the theory of evolution, which he didn't -- not by a longshot. Even if they read a book that showed otherwise, they'd close the covers, say, "Interesting book, but, you know, it was really Charles Darwin who invented evolution." I don't want to say it's a lost cause to get people to reevaluate Darwin or any other famous figure in the history of science, but it's certainly very hard. Since plate tectonics is still young, historically, there's a chance to open people's minds about the process of scientific discovery.

The glorification of individuals at least serves a good cause -- great people certainly deserve recognition. The stereotype about science that upsets me more is that which insists that science advances through bruising intellectual battles. While there have been conspicuous and even brutal battles in the history of science, their role has been greatly exaggerated. Not to sound sexist, but I think this is kind of a "guy-thing" -- you know, scientist as courageous hero, fighting the powers of darkness and ignorance. That sort of thing sells in novels and movies, so why not in the history of science? The reality is that many scientific advances have not been the result of polarized battles, and not all battles in science have been productive of new knowledge. Plate tectonics provides a good corrective, because it is a complicated story in which many people put together different strands of evidence to weave a theoretical fabric that held together. There was conflict, but there was also a lot of cooperation. There was stress, but there was also joy and satisfaction. Perhaps the best metaphor is plate tectonics itself: Like the continents the theory describes, the pieces of plate tectonics were a jigsaw puzzle that was finally put together. So this is a story of an intellectual jigsaw puzzle.

The other thing that fascinates me about science is its fundamentally paradoxical quality. On the one hand, science is a body of knowledge, the information we present in authoritative texts about the world around us. On the other hand, science is an activity dedicated to discovery. Sometimes scientific discoveries enlarge what we already know without challenging other areas of knowledge, but the discoveries that we perceive as the biggest -- the revolutions in science -- are the ones that overturn existing beliefs. They show us that what we thought were facts aren't. So science as a process of discovery is in tension with science as a body of factual knowledge. The net result is that scientists live with an underlying anxiety, which they rarely acknowledge openly, but which I think is very widely felt -- at least among thoughtful scientists.

A revolution like plate tectonics brings these anxieties to the surface. In the essays in the book, you see these anxieties brought to the fore, as smart and honest people tried to figure out what to do with data and ideas that did not fit what they had been taught to believe by their smart and honest teachers. And since we all have times in our lives when we need to give up on things we previously cherished, the lessons we can learn from a revolution like plate tectonics are not just about science, but about life. (Naomi Oreskes)