_NA_T_UR_E_Y_OL_. _316_2_5J_UL_Y_J9_85 _______ BOOK REVIEWS------------3=-03 after the Second World War (projects in The rise of 'Mobilism' which Hess. Ewing and Bullard were all Roy Porter prominent); and then, at a later stage. without the United States pouring money into seismology to monitor nuclear tests. The Dark Side of the Earth. The Battle for the Earth Sciences: 1800-1980. Thus strategic needs produced new fields By Robert Muir Wood of expertise; these led to the discovery of George Allen & Unwin: 1985. Pp.246. £11.95, $19.95. the magnetic field anomalies of seatloor rocks. which in turn proved the surprising "GEOLOGY is dead; long live the Earth stable. if shrinking, Earth. and then min­ youth of the ocean tloor. and gave rise to sciences". This in a nutshell is the message utely studied their deformations through the key idea of seatloor spreading. that of Robert Muir Wood's analysis of co'i1- tireless fieldwork and mapping. since qua non of the vision of continents tinental drift from Wegener's chequered The plate tectonics revolution has left borne on mobile plates. career up to the sudden and stunning suc­ this either wrong or stranded high and dry Of course, Dr Wood is not arguing that cess of "mobilism" in the plate tectonics as an irrelevance. The "mobilist" vision conventional geology contributed nothing revolution of the 1960s. swung attention away from the establish­ at all to this. But the fact that even so At one level. this bold survey can be ment's preoccupation with hammering catholic and prescient a geologist as read with equal pleasure and profit as one out ever more data about the strata. In­ Arthur Holmes got so far yet no further in of the best interpretations of that astonish­ stead '"drifters" turned the whole Earth convincing himself and others of drift. ing scientific upheaval. Unlike Anthony into their parish and their problem. Un­ perfectly shows its limitations even at its Hallam's A Revolution in the Earth Sci­ like conventional geologists, they fol best. And, at its worst. orthodox geology ences (Oxford University Press, 1973) it lowed Lyell's advice (think like intelligent proved to be an ostrich. does not primarily aim to evaluate the amphibians) and gave the ocean beds at So plate tectonics should not be seen as inner logic of successive geological theor­ least as much attention as the land masses. a revolution in geology, but as marking ies; nor does it rival the dramatic blow-by­ They insisted on tackling questions. such geology's eclipse, a refocusing of scientific blow commentary on tectonic break­ as the global distribution of the conti­ attention away from the rocks towards the throughs offered by William Glen's The nents, from which orthodox geology shied whole Earth. a re-think of planet Earth for Road to Jaramillo (Stamford University away; they deployed specialist skills in the space age. Science thus advances, Dr Press, 1982). But Dr Wood's reading has fields such as seismology and geomagne­ Wood argues, not by accumulating data, special virtues of its own. He offers the tics not routinely possessed by pukka nor even by internal theory switches, but best account yet of the nineteenth century geologists; and they ended up proposing a by massive re-groupings of disciplines. heritage of speculations about oceans and theory which could not be judged-for or The old gods are devoured not by their continents which formed the matrix of against - at the bar of conventional own children but by their neighbours' drift theory. And he is adroit in bringing geology. (except perhaps in the Soviet Union his protagonists to life and illuminating In other words, the revolution in plate where geological gerontocrats have had their particular parts in the story. Harry tectonics was the overtaking of geology by more success in keeping the new "drifters" Hess is identified as the senior figure who an alliance of disciplines which we may at bay). Late Victorian geology had consistently championed younger re­ call geophysics. Or, put another way. en­ resented being put in its place by the searchers such as Fred Vine in their heter­ ter the Earth sciences, marching under the physico-mathematical imperialism of odox investigations; John Tuzo Wilson is banner of a global theory, which rendered Lord Kelvin, and had unilaterally de­ shown to have been the right man in the old geology obsolescent in much the same clared its independence of physics. Now, a right place at the right time for propound­ way as Darwin's evolutionism left behind century later, geophysics has had its ing the wider "mobilis!" synthesis. And classificatory natural history as a key to revenge. due weight is given to the crucial role the economy of life. Occasionally, the contrast Dr Wood played by Teddy Bullard as a catalyst, This was a revolution made by aliens. draws between senile geology and virile above all in making Anglo-American co­ Some were geographical outsiders, such Earth science is overstated for polemical operation in this enterprise so fruitful. Not as the South African, Alexander Du Toit, effect (his own evidence sometimes gives least, Dr Wood commands a good turn of or Warren Carey from Australia. Others it the lie); and it is a pity that, drawing too phrase, and patiently weaves together were disciplinary marginal men, classical­ freely upon hindsight, he oversimplifies with enviable skill all the strands of a ly of course Wegener himself (first and certain complex figures, such as T.C. highly complex narrative. foremost a meteorologist, as Dr Wood Chamberlin and Maurice Ewing, and So here is a sure-footed and wide­ rightly insists, while perhaps unduly play­ turns them into whipping boys. Although ranging account of the triumph of con­ ing down his geological credentials). Prac­ providing attractive line drawings of the tinental drift, with much to offer to spe­ tically all the pioneers of "mobilism" had main protagonists. the book would have cialists and non-specialists alike. But Dr training or research experience in some benefitted. I think, from some explanat­ Wood bas bigger fish to fry. His case is branch of geophysics- often in seismolo­ ory diagrams. Yet all praise to him for that the plate tectonics revolution was not gy or geomagnetism - which set them recognizing that in understanding the his­ just a great transformation in geology - apart from true-blue geologists. Not least, tory of science no less than in understand­ indeed, it is wrongly interpreted if we see ··mobilism" was typically the brainchild of ing the history of the Earth, "fixism '' will it as a revolution in geology. For it was the "mobile". the young and ambitious, not do. No more than the continents, are rather a revolution against geology. and was perceived by the old guard to be the sciences themselves fixtures; they too From its early nineteenth century giants unsettling (in America it was dubbed "lef­ are subject to drift, expansion and subduc­ up towards the present, geology's great tist", in Russia, "bourgeois"). tion. This is an important re-interpreta­ triumph lay in the stratigraphical and Thus the plate tectonics revolution did tion, whose "mobilist" vision should send palaeontological vision, in generating the not emerge out of the geological main some shock waves through the geological science of the rocks, indeed, a love of the stream. Above alL its inspiration came establishment. 0 rocks. Geology studied the land masses, from that late arrival, deep-sea geology. especially their mountains. As synthe­ And this in itself would have been un­ Rov Porter is Senior Lecturer at the Wei/come sized in classics such as Eduard Suess's thinkable without the gigantic sea-bed Institute for the History of Medicine, Euston Road, London NWJ 2BP, UK and author of Das Antlitz der Erde (1885-1909), it theo­ surveying operations funded at huge ex­ The Making of Geology (Cambridge University rized the continents in the context of a pense by allied governments during and Press 1977). © 1985 Nature Publishing Group.