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

INTRODUCTION 21
of displacement, to solve the many complex and interrelated
problems of the earth that have so long resisted solution.
The simplicity of the idea may raise the suspicion that it
can hardly be so very new. How can anything so extremely
simple as the application of the formula for calculating cen-
trifugal effects, a formula which appears in every high-school
textbook of physics, to a polar icecap, have been completely
overlooked? This thought occurred to me, but I found to
my surprise that, despite the simplicity of the idea, it was
one that had never been investigated. When I first discussed
it with Professor Bridgman, at Harvard, he had the impression
that it was a good idea; he called it a real problem, but
he said he could not believe that it had never been consid-
ered by science. He suggested that I take it up with Pro-
fessor Daly. I did so, and Professor Daly agreed that it was a
real problem, but assured me that it had never, to his knowl-
edge, been investigated. And so it turned out. I have looked
pretty far through the technical literature and have found no
studies it. covering Dr. George Sarton, the historian of sci-
ence, confirmed this finding when he wrote me that "the
combination of ideas is so new that the history of science has
nothing to contribute to its understanding" (p. 391).
This book has been written with three objectives in mind.
I have sought, in the first place, to establish beyond a reason-
able doubt that numerous displacements of the earth's crust
have occurred. I think that this idea may now be accepted
without too much difficulty, especially in view of much recent
work in the field of terrestrial magnetism. Secondly, I have
tried to describe a mechanism to account for displacements
(this is essentially the work of Mr. Campbell) and to present
evidence showing that this mechanism alone can account for
the facts. My third purpose has been to show that the hypothesis
of crust displacement provides an acceptable solution
of many of the problems of the earth.
It is quite natural that at first numerous objections should
be raised to this theory. In our correspondence with specialists
the principal issues that have come up to raise doubts