Upheaval from the Abyss: Ocean Floor Mapping and the Earth Science Revolution (review)

This is a story of very strong upward movements: genesis, struggle, progress, upheaval, revolution, and triumph. David Lawrence describes how the mapping of the ocean floor from the 1850s onward revealed that the earth's features had not been permanent throughout history. In the mid-1960s scientists confirmed the phenomenon of "seafloor spreading," the upheaval of the earth's crust from the rifts in the midocean ridges and the cause of continental movement. Upheaval from the Abyss supports the classic premise that the modern theory of plate tectonics equaled a "revolution" in the earth sciences; overthrowing long-held theories of a contracting, a fixed, or an expanding earth, it formed "a new, unifying paradigm in earth science" (p. 238).

Lawrence's outspoken but not novel message is that those willing to listen and think could have foreseen this "revelation" ever since Alfred Wegener introduced his theory of continental drift around 1910. In the first five chapters Lawrence unfolds the genesis of Wegener's conviction, his futile efforts to fight his critics' hostile reactions, and his premature death in 1930 (utterly unrelated to the issue). This opening formulates a moral narrative to frame and structure a teleological plot: Science should prove Wegener right and—with slight changes in the theory—resurrect his reputation within sixty years.

To argue Wegener's case, Lawrence, with the guidance of "truth" (p. 29) held by today's physics and geophysics, leads the reader through the familiar stages of deep-sea research: Matthew Fontaine Maury's ocean-charting projects and the Atlantic telegraph cable enterprise in the 1850s and 1860s, the Challenger expedition in the 1870s, and the development of acoustic sounding technology in the thick ofWorld War I. Lawrence recounts how the gathering of deep-sea sediments and the charting of soundings resulted in a first understanding of bottom characteristics and currents and in the exposition of previously unknown undersea ridges and trenches.

To the oceanographic assemblage of the ocean depths' big picture—best represented by Marie Tharp's and Bruce C. Heezen's 1970s series of maps of the world's ocean floor—Lawrence adds highlights from marine geology and geophysics: submarine gravity observations in the 1920s and 1930s, deep-sea seismic refraction studies, and magnetic surveying and reversal geochronometry after World War II, carried out at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. In the 1950s, the disclosure of the midocean ridge earthquake activities resulted in tentative acceptance of continental movement. At this point, the narrative picks up speed as well. The story closes by weaving the different threads of earth science into a coherent fabric, which confirmed the hypothesis of spreading seafloors in the mid-1960s. Plate kinematics provided Wegener's theory with a solid mathematical foundation and Wegener with the posthumous triumph of "victory" (p. 237).

Lawrence brings some interesting new material—personal recollections, letters, diaries, and memoirs of his protagonists and their relatives—to the field of earth sciences studies that has only in recent years become the object of scholarly work in the history of science and technology. Moreover, his well-written prose will fascinate not only historians of science and technology. As a trained and active journalist with a background in physics and geology, he knows how to intrigue a wider audience in the grand theorizing as well as the tinkering within the scientific enterprise. Many readers will appreciate his skillful explanations of the most difficult physical principles and effects and his decision to leave out footnotes and the usual bulk of references to primary and secondary sources.

However, his success in "rescuing this tale from the orderly, sterile environment of academic history" (p. 5) will disturb scholars seriously interested in (historical) science and technology studies. Centered on the biographies...