2012 Earth History/Climate Change Lecture 2




HHMI's Holiday Lectures on Science show

Summary: Accepting a scientific theory as scientific knowledge requires broad consensus among scientists. The theory of continental drift, which eventually became known as the theory of plate tectonics, was a remarkable synthesis of different lines of evidence. Yet, when first proposed in the 1920s by Alfred Wegener, the theory was rejected by many scientists. The story of how the theory eventually became accepted, many decades later, provides a fascinating glimpse into the process of building new scientific consensus.