Wegener's drift - Letter to the Editor - Brief Article

My compliments to Ralph Estling for a very good article ("The Logic That Dare Not Speak His Name," May/June 2002). His paragraph regarding Albert Wegener and continental drift reminded me of an amusing quotation that I have heard cited.

Supposedly, a reporter was interviewing John Maynard Keynes and challenged Professor Keynes to explain why he had changed his opinion on a particular economic issue. Keynes replied: "The facts changed. Since the facts changed, I changed my position. What do you do, sir?"

Steve Chaffin schaffin@softivity.com

I object to two of the ideas propounded in the article by Estling.

1. Wegener's Continental Drift proposal of 1912 should not have been dismissed out of hand in the period 1912-1950, as the author asserts was proper. It was a plausible explanation of the jigsaw puzzle Africa/ South America fit, and was certainly more likely than the alternative, coincidence. Of course, it should nor have been accepted either, with no mechanism postulated. But there is room in science for temporary speculation.

2. Theories don't require "proof" for tentative acceptance, just high plausibility and agreement with what is known. The Big Bang, for instance, has not been proven, and may even be found wrong. But it is currently accepted.

Stefan Silverston Chandler, Arizona

Ralph Estling takes in his column as an example Wegener's hypothesis continental drift, which according to him was "dismissed by almost all geologists of the day." This statement is biased. Only almost all American geologists rejected it. Wegener presented many good arguments for his hypothesis, and many geologists in Europe, Africa and the East Indies accepted the idea. See Edelman 1988 and Oreskes 1999!

References

Edelman, Nils. 1988. Wegener and Pseudoscience: Some Misconceptions. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 12(4), Summer 1988, pp. 398-402.

Oreskes, Naomi. 1999. The Rejection of Continental Drift. Oxford Univ. Press, p. 420.

Nils Edelman Professor emeritus of geology Abo, Finland

Proposition: There is a misogynist in the Forum section of this publication wearing green rights who believes the year is 1901, women's brains are smaller than men's, and servants not only are still on the social landscape, but, like those aforementioned women, also have diminished mental capacities.

Proof? What else can I possibly make of the following statement, excerpted from Ralph Estling's article: "..... but it cannot be printed in a publication that may fall into the hands of women, children, servants, and persons of high moral certitude and rather lower mental prowess."

I was absolutely shocked when I came across this outrageously irresponsible and callous piece of writing. Should I expect more of this from your magazine? Is this perhaps why out of twenty-four letters to the editor, only one is identifiably from a woman--not because of the size of her brain, but because of hostile attitudes hidden in SKEPTICAL INQUIRER? With such a display of retarded social awareness you'll have a hard time wooing me back to your readership.

Naomi Nissen

New York, New York

Ralph Estling responds:

I note that Ms. Nissen says not a word in defense of children, not to mention persons of high moral certitude and rather lower mental prowess. I would like to know therefore why she hates and despises these unfortunates so vehemently. What has a child or person of high moral certitude etc. ever done to her to deserve such outrageously irresponsible and callous treatment? We can only wonder. Indeed, there is a great deal to wonder about in her letter.

Mr. Silverston's objections are largely answered by Mr. Chaffin. Scientists make a sharp distinction between theory and hypothesis, the latter being a plausible guess, the former, as in the Theory of Evolution or the Theory of Relativity, an established scientific explanation for which substantial evidence exists. The Big Bang falls somewhere between; some evidence exists but it is not yet fully proven. The fact that it "may even be found wrong" is enough to show it is not (yet?) a theory in the scientific sense of the word.

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