A View of Continental Drift Decades Ahead of Its Time
Our Wandering Continents: An Hypothesis of Continental Drifting
Notes: An early work in English supporting Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, which was given very short shrift when it was published.
"Du Toit marshaled all the impressive geologic evidence for drift, yet again geologists paid no attention. The review in the American Journal of Science was barely a paragraph long and devoid of analysis or opinion... Some say that the worst insult one scientist can hurl at another is to belittle a work as 'not even wrong.' By stimulating research, even a wrong idea can advance science. One that is 'not even wrong' is a dead end, a waste of time. To the magisters of American geology, the work of Du Toit, whom Reginald Daly had called 'the world's greatest field geologist', was not even wrong."—Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences by James Lawrence Powell (Columbia University Press, 2014).
Perhaps its initial unpopularity offers an explanation of why the book is so scarce today.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A very good copy in a very good dust jacket. Some spotting to endpapers; the jacket is creased at the spine and has light chipping to the edges. From the library of the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, with a bookplate denoting the provenance.
Publication: Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1937.
Item No: #307252
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