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• Today: Drifting Continents

• Friday: Plate Tectonics

• Last week: Mountain Building, Earth

Resources, Global Warming
– Course Evaluation - Last day; don’t
forget!!
 Drifting Plates (Wegener) to
Plate Tectonics
Some scholars of science have used the
story of the origin of plate tectonic
theory as an example of a “Kuhnian
revolution”

Was it?
 Kuhnian Revolutions
• Science is not a steady, cumulative
acquisition of knowledge.
• Science is "a series of peaceful
interludes punctuated by intellectually
violent revolutions,“
• After such revolutions, "one conceptual
world view is replaced by another."
Thomas S. Kuhn, “The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions”, 1962
 Kuhn: A Scientific Paradigm
• a collection of beliefs shared by
scientists, a set of agreements about
how problems are to be understood.
• essential to scientific inquiry
• a paradigm guides the research efforts
of scientific communities, and it is this
criterion that most clearly identifies a
field as a science.
 Kuhn: Paradigm Shift
• When a paradigm shift takes place, "a
scientist's world is qualitatively
transformed [and] quantitatively
enriched by fundamental novelties of
either fact or theory."
 From Drifting Continents…
• Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1782:

• “The crust of the Earth must be a shell

floating on a fluid interior. Thus, the
surface of the globe would be capable
of being broken and disordered by the
violent movements of the fluids on
which it rested.”
 From Drifting Continents…
1. first conception of the revolutionary
theory of plate tectonics supported by
evidence was proposed by the German
geophysicist-meteorologist Alfred
Wegener (1880-1930)
 From Drifting Continents…
• CD/PT Video
• Groups of three:
A. What are three lines of evidence
Wegener used for Continental Drift?
B. What is seafloor spreading? How do
transform faults behave oddly at the Mid-
Ocean Ridge?
C. What was the key development that led to
our current theory of Plate Tectonics?
To the video
 ...to Plate Tectonics
A. What are the lines of evidence
Wegener used to support Continental
Drift?
B. What is seafloor spreading? How do
transform faults behave oddly at the
Mid-Ocean Ridge?
C. What was the key development that
led to our current theory of Plate
Tectonics?
 Your Answers to the
Drift Rejection Question
• It shows that science is based
much off logic and reason, and
if a "proof" can not be
logically proved, then it can
be rejected regardless if it is
true or false.
 Your Answers to the
Drift Rejection Question
• It shows that without enough
evidence, only guesses can be
made about why things occur.
The scientists just didn't have
enough evidence that could
explain why things were the way
they were. Now days we have
satellites, and submersibles
and other types of data
collecting devices which helps
us see the bigger picture.
 Your Answers to the
Drift Rejection Question
• It shows that through proving
things wrong, scientists are
getting closer to the truth.
Wegener had hypotheses that
were eventually proved wrong,
but knowing that those
hypotheses are wrong narrows
down the answers to the correct
answer.
 Your Answers to the
Drift Rejection Question
• The story indicates that science is
a complex subject in itself and when
one hypothesizes about something
they must have evidence to support
what their findings and results
show. There has to be plausible
explanation as to why the hypothesis
makes sense ... however, that's only
a start and a lot more has to be
proven before the hypothesis is
accepted as a theory.
 In a nutshell...

•“Extraordinary claims require

extraordinary evidence” - Carl
Sagan
 Review of Plate Tectonics
• What drives Earth processes?
– gravity and density differences
– external (e.g. hydrologic cycle, erosion)
– internal (e.g. mantle convection)
 Review
• Plate Boundaries
– divergent (AKA constructive)
– transform
– convergent (AKA destructive)
• ocean-ocean (e.g. Mariana Islands)
• ocean-continent (e.g. Pacific-North America)
• continent-continent (e.g. India-Asia)
 Plate Boundaries
• divergent (e.g. mid-Atlantic ridge)
• transform (e.g. San Andreas fault zone)
• convergent
• ocean-ocean (e.g. Pacific-Pacific near Marianas
Islands)
• ocean-continent (e.g. Pacific-North America)
• continent-continent (e.g. India-Asia)