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

INTRODUCTION: A New Theory
i. Some Unsolved Problems
A few years ago a great scientist, Daly of Harvard, remarked
that geologists seem to know less about the earth than they
thought they knew when he was a young man (100). This was
an extraordinary statement, considering the very detailed
studies that have been carried out in innumerable geological
fields during his lifetime. Thousands of scientists, in all the
countries of the earth, have studied the stratified rocks and
the records of life contained in them; they
have studied the
structures of mountains and reconstructed their histories;
they have studied the dynamic forces at work in the earth,
and have extended our insights to an understanding of the
features of the ocean bottoms and the deeper structures
within the earth's crust.
Yet, despite this vast expansion of our detailed knowledge,
many of the essential facts of the earth's development have
escaped us. The late Hans Cloos, in his Conversation with
the Earth y said, ". . . we know only the unimportant things
and the details. Of the great slow strides of the earth's gigantic
history we comprehend hardly anything at all" (85:84).
To begin with, the origin of the earth is itself still a matter
of dispute. Until about thirty years ago it was a generally
accepted theory that it originally condensed out of a hot gas,
and that it has been cooling and contracting ever since. This
was the "nebular theory/' In recent decades difficulties have
piled up in connection with this assumption, and at the present
time an entirely opposite view is held by many geophysi-
NOTE: Figures referring to specific sources listed in the Bibliography (p.
396) are inserted in parentheses throughout the text. The first number indicates
the correspondingly numbered work in the Bibliography, and the num-
ber following a colon indicates the page.