GEOG 1280 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Continental Drift, Plate Tectonics, Basalt
17 May 2017
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Document Summary
Hypothesis of continental drift proposed by alfred wegener in his 1915 book the origin of continents and oceans. The present continents once formed a single land mass that drifted apart, the continents described as icebergs of low density granite floating on a sea of denser basalt. The development of plate tectonic theory illustrates how scientific thinking evolves. Scientific understanding is organized around theories and models that are used to interpret observations allowing the developing of hypotheses that tell us how we view the world and to test that view. Paradigm shifts occur when problems with the old world view (conventional thinking) and enough data pointing towards new ideas that lead to discarding the old ideas (theories and models). The new ideas (theories and models) better explain the available data, and offers different insights that lets us see the world in new ways.
