![]() Based on his polar experiences, Wegener suggested that the continents were like icebreaking ships plowing through ice sheets. What do you think the problem was? To his colleagues, his greatest problem was that he had no plausible mechanism for how the continents could move through the oceans. Wegener’s idea seemed so outlandish at the time that he was ridiculed by other scientists. He called his hypothesis continental drift. The supercontinent later broke apart and the continents having been moving into their current positions ever since. In his book he said that around 300 million years ago the continents had all been joined into a single landmass he called Pangaea, meaning “all earth” in ancient Greek. New editions with additional evidence were published later in the decade. Wegener put his idea and his evidence together in his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans, first published in 1915. Alfred Wegener suggested that continental drift occurred as continents cut through the ocean floor, in the same way as this icebreaker plows through sea ice. Wegener’s Continental Drift Hypothesisįigure 1. He advocated using scientific evidence to find the “truth.” As his colleague, are you convinced? Let’s explore. ![]() ![]() Wegener put together a tremendous amount of evidence that the continents had been joined. ![]() Wegener, The Origins of Continents and Oceans, first published in 1915. 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. It is only by combining 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. 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 combining all this evidence. ![]()
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