A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
History
A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
American journal of science; Science -- United States -- History
The views are next applied to a system of plications. ‘It has been
indicated that plications occur where strata have rapidly accumulated
in great volume and in elongated narrow belts; that the axes of
plications are parallel to the axes of maximum deposit; and that the
movements immediately followed the deposition’—the case of the
Appalachians being an example in which the accumulations averaged
40,000 feet. He observes: ‘Wherever the load of sediments becomes
heaviest, there they sink deepest, protruding the colloid magma
beneath them to the adjoining areas, which are less heavily weighted,
forming at once both synclinals and anticlinals.’
With regard to this new theory, we might reasonably question the
existence of the colloid magma—a condition fundamental to the
theory—and his evidence that water penetrates to profound depths in
the earth’s crust sufficient to make hydrous rocks. We might ask for
evidence that the rocks beneath the Cretaceous and Tertiary, and other
underlying strata of the Uintahs, were in such a colloid state, and
this so near the surface, that the ‘beds subsided by their gross
weight as rapidly as they grew.’
Again, he says that the movements of mountain-making ‘immediately
followed the deposition.’ ‘Immediately’ sounds quick to one who
appreciates the slowness of geological changes. The Carboniferous age
was very long; and somewhere in that part of geological time, either
before the age had fully ended, or some time after its close, the
epoch of catastrophe began.”
We see foreshadowed in this paper the theory of isostasy, or condition
of vertical equilibrium in the crust which Dutton published in 1889.
This theory has borne remarkable fruit, but Dutton attempted to link to
it the horizontally compressive forces which have produced folding and
overthrusting. Willis in 1907[92] and Hayford in 1911, overlooking
Dana’s objections, have attempted to make a lateral isostatic undertow
the cause of all horizontal movements in the crust, adopting the
mechanism of Dutton. The present writer, although accepting the
principle of isostasy as an explanation of broad vertical movements, has
published papers which go to show the inadequacy of this hypothesis of
lateral pressure; inadequate in time relation, in amount, and in
expression.[93]
In 1903 it was determined by several physicists that the materials of
the earth’s crust were radioactive and must generate throughout geologic
time a quantity of heat which perhaps equalled that lost by radiation
into space. By 1907 this had become demonstrated. The remarkable
conclusion had been reached that the earth, although losing heat, is not
a cooling globe. Dutton’s contentions against mountain growth through
external cooling and contraction were thus unexpectedly, through a
wholly new branch of knowledge, demonstrated to be true.
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