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This book documents the growing paleomagnetic case for continental drift in the 1950s, based on extensive interviews and archival material.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Geomagnetism and paleomagnetism: 1946-52; 2. British paleomagnetists begin shifting their research toward testing mobilism: summer 1951 to fall 1953; 3. Launching the global paleomagnetic test of continental drift: 1954-6; 4. Runcorn shifts to mobilism: 1955-6; 5. Enlargement and refinement of the paleomagnetic support for mobilism: 1956 through 1960; 6. Earth expansion enters the mobilist controversy; 7. Development and criticism of the paleomagnetic case for mobilism: late 1950s and early 1960s; 8. Major reaction against the paleomagnetic case for mobilism and early work on the radiometric reversal time scale: 1958-62; References; Index.
About the author
Henry Frankel was awarded a PhD from Ohio State University in 1974 and then took a position at the University of Missouri, Kansas City where he became Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department (1999–2004). His interest in the continental drift controversy and the plate tectonics revolution began while teaching a course on conceptual issues in science during the late 1970s. The controversy provided him with an example of a recent and major scientific revolution to test philosophical accounts of scientific growth and change. Over the next thirty years, and with the support of the United States National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society, Professor Frankel's research went on to yield new and fascinating insights into the evolution of the most important theory in the Earth sciences.
Summary
This second volume of The Continental Drift Controversy describes the growing paleomagnetic case for continental drift in the 1950s and the development of apparent polar wander paths that showed how the continents had changed their positions relative to one another, just as Wegener had proposed.
