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The evolution of tectonophysics is closely linked to the history of the continental drift and plate tectonics hypotheses. The continental drift/ Airy-Heiskanen isostasy hypothesis had many flaws and scarce data. The fixist/ Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the contracting Earth and the expanding Earth concepts had many flaws as well.
The idea of continents with a permanent location, the geosyncline theory, the Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the extrapolation of the age of the Earth by Lord Kelvin as a black body cooling down, the contracting Earth, the Earth as a solid and crystalline body, is one school of thought. A lithosphere creeping over the asthenosphere is a logical consequence of an Earth with internal heat by radioactivity decay, the Airy-Heiskanen isostasy, thrust faults and Niskanen's mantle viscosity determinations.
Christian creationism (Martin Luther) was popular until the 19th century, and the age of the Earth was thought to have been created circa 4,000 BC. There were stacks of calcareous rocks of maritime origin above sea level, and up and down motions were allowed (geosyncline hypothesis, James Hall and James D. Dana). Later on, the thrust fault concept appeared, and a contracting Earth (Eduard Suess, James D. Dana, Albert Heim) was its driving force. In 1862, the physicist William Thomson (who later became Lord Kelvin) calculated the age of Earth (as a cooling black body) at between 20 million and 400 million years. In 1895, John Perry produced an age of Earth estimate of 2 to 3 billion years old using a model of a convective mantle and thin crust. [1] Finally, Arthur Holmes published The Age of the Earth, an Introduction to Geological Ideas in 1927, in which he presented a range of 1.6 to 3.0 billion years.
Wegener had data for assuming that the relative positions of the continents change over time. It was a mistake to state the continents "plowed" through the sea, although it isn't sure that this fixist quote is true in the original in German. He was an outsider with a doctorate in astronomy attacking an established theory between 'geophysicists'. The geophysicists were right to state that the Earth is solid, and the mantle is elastic (for seismic waves) and inhomogeneous, and the ocean floor would not allow the movement of the continents. But excluding one alternative, substantiates the opposite alternative: passive continents and an active seafloor spreading and subduction, with accretion belts on the edges of the continents. The velocity of the sliding continents, was allowed in the uncertainty of the fixed continent model and seafloor subduction and upwelling with phase change allows for inhomogeneity.
The problem too, was the specialisation. Arthur Holmes and Alfred Rittmann saw it right ( Rittmann 1939 ). Only an outsider can have the overview, only an outsider sees the forest, not only the trees ( Hellman 1998b , p. 145). But A. Wegener did not have the specialisation to correctly weight the quality of the geophysical data and the paleontologic data, and its conclusions. Wegener's main interest was meteorology, and he wanted to join the Denmark-Greenland expedition scheduled for mid 1912. So he hurried up to present his Continental Drift hypothesis. [2]
Mainly Charles Lyell, Harold Jeffreys, James D. Dana, Charles Schuchert, Chester Longwell, and the conflict with the Axis powers slowed down the acceptance of continental drifting. [3]
There has been exerted an extreme degree of heat below the strata formed at the bottom of the sea.
the evidences of movement noted in rock structures are so numerous and on so large scale that it is clear that dynamic conditions exist from time to time.( Holmes 1929a ). But Willis was a fixist, as he supported the permanent position of the oceans, although he didn't believe in land-bridges ( Krill 2011 ).
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)marked regression away from continental drift
4) Première phase tectogène, approximativement durant le crétacé: Premières contractions tangentielles et déversements du géanticlinal briançonnais dans la dépression Mt. Rose, par subduction (ce mot n'est-il préférable à celui de sous-charriage ?) de masses Mt. Rose sous de masses St.Bernard; et peut-être simultanément déversements dans la dépression valaisanne-dauphinoise. (pp. 325–326)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)We cannot disregard entirely the suggestion that continental masses have suffered some horizontal movement, because evidence for such movement is becoming ever more apparent in the structure of the Alps and of the Asiatic mountain systems.
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus... suggested that the Americas were 'torn away from Europe and Africa... by earthquakes and floods... The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents].'
This is also likely owing to the fact that the coasts of certain lands, situated opposite each other though separated by sea, have a corresponding shape, so that they would be congruent with one another were they to stand side by side; for example, the southern part of America and Africa. For this reason one supposes that perhaps both of these continents were previously attached to each other, either directly, or through the sunken island of Atlantis;...
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: CS1 maint: postscript (link)The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents (Europe, Africa and Americas)]
A mass movement, more or less horizontal and progressive, should be the cause underlying the formation of our mountain systems.
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: CS1 maint: postscript (link)the Mid-Atlantic Ridge ... zone in which the floor of the Atlantic, as it keeps spreading, is continuously tearing open and making space for fresh, relatively fluid and hot sima [rising] from depth.
Diese (gemeint sind "relative geringfuegige Niveaudifferenzen der grossen ozeanischen Becken untereinander") scheinen es auch nahezulegen, die mittelatlantische Bodenschwelle als diejenige Zone zu betrachten, in welche bei der noch immer fortschreitenden Erweiterung des atlantischen Ozeans der Boden desselben fortwaehrend aufreisst und frischem, relativ fluessigen und hochtemperiertem Sima aus der Tiefe Platz macht [This (meaning the "relatively minor differences in level of the large oceanic basin with each other") seem to suggest also to consider the Mid-Atlantic Rift as the zone in which the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean is still ongoing, and its seafloor tears open constantly to make space to fresh, relatively fluid and tempered Sima]Presented at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society, Frankfurt am Main (6 January 1912).