Review by Choice Review
Editor Oreskes (history, Univ. of California at San Diego) has assembled essays written by 17 prominent scientists involved in the plate tectonics revolution. Each reflects on the significance of their contribution to what is generally considered the greatest paradigm shift in earth science history. Their responses are grouped sequentially under paleomagnetism and sea floor spreading, crustal heat flow and seismicity, plates and plate motions, and the application of plate tectonic concepts to understanding continental geologic history. The resulting book is far more than a reader-friendly overview of the fundamental tenets of the plate tectonics theory; it is likely to endure as a valuable historical document. Each author's frank observations provide insight not only to their individual roles and that of their colleagues, but also on what makes a creative scientist, the nature of scientific discovery, and the particular method by which earth science advances. The story of this scientific revolution has been well documented elsewhere, but no account is more valuable than this. It should be in every college library. ^BSumming Up: Essential. Earth scientists and science historians at all levels; lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. E. R. Swanson University of Texas at San Antonio
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Most scientific revolutions bring the scientists fame; however, that axiom did not hold for the geophysicists who posited that the earth's entire surface moves in a system of fractured plates. These dozen and a half personal essays, written by the young Turks of earth science in the 1960s, recall the authors' roles in the revolution. The theme common to all the essayists is that plate tectonics may seem to be an obvious theory in retrospect, but it was difficult to discern at the outset. For instance, "noise" infects every data set, and sets collected from magnetometers, temperature probes, gravimeters, sonars, and seismometers inevitably contained anomalies--ammo for the orthodox critics of continental drift. But striking patterns, like the discovery of zebralike stripes of magnetized seafloor, could not be explained away as erratic data points. 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. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Firsthand reports of the birth of modern plate tectonics, the once heretical, now governing theory of how the earth works. Since at least the 16th century, writes historian of science and geologist Oreskes (History/Univ. of California, San Diego), earth scientists have observed "the jigsaw-puzzle fit of the continental edges," whereby Africa nestles neatly into South America, western North America into eastern Asia. Theories of continental drift and crustal contraction accounted for some geomorphological phenomena, but only in the 1960s did scientists begin to accrue solid evidence for how such things actually worked-with most of such evidence gathered on the hitherto inaccessible floors of the deep oceans. Strikingly, the majority of those scientists, Oreskes observes, were attached to only four institutions worldwide-Cambridge University, the Columbia University Lamont Geological Observatory, Princeton University, and the University of California Scripps Institution of Oceanography. (Soviet scientists, hampered by an officially endorsed theory emphasizing "vertical tectonics," would join the revolution only much later.) Though many of the principal theoreticians have since died, Oreskes gathers testimony from some important participants, among them Ron Mason (who analyzed the geomagnetic patterns on the ocean floor that provided "the first step in what eventually became a new global theory of the earth"), Frederick Vine (whose research provided proof of geologist Tuzo Wilson's theory of the existence of the Juan de Fuca plate), Neil Opdyke (who studied reversals of the earth's geomagnetic field), and David Sandwell (whose work in radio altimetry helped map the planet's crustal structure). Most of their reminiscences, along with those of 14 other contributors, are written at a level accessible to nonspecialist readers, and the authors' enthusiasm for the study of the earth and its ways overcomes the occasional thickets of geological terminology. A useful addition to the history-of-science literature, emphasizing the importance of scholarly communication and verification.
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Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
