The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When it comes time to write an acknowledgment of the assistance
received from others in the preparation of a book, this
job is sometimes accomplished in a perfunctory way; it is a
job to be got over with but, at the same time, turned to ad-
vantage. I do not think that this is fair to the essentially social
nature of science. The implication is usually obvious that the
book is, in fact, the work of one or two perspiring and in-
spired persons, who, by themselves alone, have persevered
against odds to complete an imperishable product. This dis-
torts the process by which scientific and, indeed, all original
work is done. Scientific research is essentially and profoundly
social. Discoveries are not the product of single great minds
illuminating the darkness where ordinary people dwell;
rather, the eminent individuals of science have had many
predecessors; they themselves have been merely the final or-
ganizers of materials prepared by others. The raw materials,
the component elements that have made these great achievements
possible, have been contributed by hundreds or thou-
sands of people. Every step in the making of this book has
been the result of contact with other minds. The work done
by hundreds of writers over a number of centuries has been
exploited, and the contributions of contemporary writers
have been carefully examined. The product represents, I
should like to think, a synthesis of thought; at the same time
I hope its original elements will prove valid additions to the
common stock of knowledge in the field.
Credit for the initiation of the research that led to this
book belongs, in the first instance, to students in my classes
at Springfield College, in Springfield, Massachusetts. A ques-
tion asked me by Henry Warrington, a freshman, in 1949,
stimulated me to challenge the accepted view that the earth's
surface has always been subject only to very gradual change,