Sea-Floor Spreading Quotes (2 quotes)
It appears that the extremely important papers that trigger a revolution may not receive a proportionately large number of citations. The normal procedures of referencing are not used for folklore. A real scientific revolution, like any other revolution, is news. The Origin of Species sold out as fast as it could be printed and was denounced from the pulpit almost immediately. Sea-floor spreading has been explained, perhaps not well, in leading newspapers, magazines, books, and most recently in a color motion picture. When your elementary school children talk about something at dinner, you rarely continue to cite it.
'Citations in a Scientific Revolution', in R. Shagam et al., Studies in Earth and Space Sciences: A Memoir in Honor of Harry Hammond Hess (1972), 4.
The transition from sea-floor spreading to plate tectonics is largely a change of emphasis. Sea-floor spreading is a view about the method of production of new oceans floor on the ridge axis. The magnetic lineations give the history of this production back into the late Mesozoic and illuminate the history of the new aseismic parts of the ocean floor. This naturally directed attention to the relation of the sea-floor to the continents. There are two approaches: in the first, one looks back in time to earlier arrangements of the continents; in the second, one considers the current problem of the disposal of the rapidly growing sea floor.
'The Emergence of Plate Tectonics: A Personal View', Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 1975, 3, 20.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
