Alfred Wegener

Rita: You think Einstein walked around thinkin’ everyone was a bunch of dumb shits?

Pvt. Joe Bowers: Yeah. Hadn’t thought of that.

Rita: Now you know why he built that bomb.

(From the film Idiocracy)

We have all heard often about how Darwin was right and not many understood what he was saying whilst others wished to attack him for religious or political motives. It must have been truly difficult for him and it is a sad story but at least in his lifetime he managed to see that the majority were beginning to accept his ideas.

One poor soul who never got to have that final pleasure was Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) and his story is in some ways, but not all, similar to that of Darwin. Wegener was the man who proposed the theory of plate tectonics and was ridiculed for it.

One of the similarities with Darwin are that “Wegener was not the first to suggest that the continents had once been connected, but he was the first to present extensive evidence from several fields”. Darwin wasn’t the first to suggest that some from of evolution was taking place but he provided mountains of evidence for it.

Another of the similarities is that although both of them had the right idea, they were missing or wrong about part of the mechanism. In Darwin’s case his method of natural selection is true but missed the role of genes, which he had no way of knowing about. In Wegener’s case he believed the continents “plow through the ocean floor”. He may have believed that  as studies of the earth’s crust under the ocean had not been done at the time.

A third similarity is that while they were being attacked for their theories, they also had some supporters who tried to explain their theories.

The major difference, and why I am writing this, is that  I’ve always found it a sad thought that someone who understood first (though not completely) one of the major things about how the planet works, never lived to see the world catch up with him and Wegener didn’t live to see himself vindicated .

I’ll let him finish…

“Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combing all this evidence. . . It is only by combing the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine ‘truth’ here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability. Further, we have to be prepared always for the possibility that each new discovery, no matter what science furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw.”

Alfred Wegener. The Origins of Continents and Oceans (4th edition)