Continental Drift, Plate Tectonics
and Sea-Floor Spreading:
A Critical Commentary

by
Charles William Johnson

Identifying the way the world turns, and possibly what the world may turn into, is of the greatest significance for our understanding of the past, present and future way of living. When Alfred Wegener devised his thesis about continental drift, at the time, the main scientific vision about the creation of the Earth was that of an expanding Earth. Some of the atlases contain illustrative renderings of just what an expanding Earth may have looked like. An earthly core that ripped apart into the outline of the continents as the Earth expanded.

It was pretty much thought that whatever land mass appeared in a given radius on the Earth was there and shall be there in its particular space forever. But, then Wegener proposed the idea that the continents had formed from a super-continent, something that had been proposed by many scientists before him, but with little effect. However, Wegener's idea, although thoroughly rejected at first, has now come to be the dominant paradigmatic concept about the formation and life of continents on Earth.

The idea is simple enough, and in fact represents a reductionism view of reality. Wegener reduces his interpretation of the existence of the continents to the possibility that the single movement of the continents, drifted away from their central resting place in Pangaea, to their present position today, may explain all there is to know about the continents. In fact, the so-called theory of continental drift, is actually nothing more than a specific thesis. The idea of continental drift proposes the possibility that the continents came from a single land mass on a lop-sided Earth from some 200 million years ago, and that the continents are inevitably drifting once again towards a single land mass to be accomplished in another 200 million years.

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Just as new ideas are difficult to be accepted, old ideas easily persist. Upon reading about continental drift for the first time, the thesis about Africa and South America having once been united carried no shock element. Even the idea that all of the continents may have been a single land mass at one time is really not surprising. What has thoroughly surprised this author is that anyone would propose that those same land masses are going to regroup at a similar period of time from now back into their original formation ---at least one that is a single land mass although possibly rearranged in placement to one another.

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Possibly no one is looking for such symmetries. If one works with the paradigmatic view that the continents are drifting, then one generally retains the idea that the drifting is randomly structured. The break-up of the super-continent was probably due to violent chaotic forces ripping apart the singular land mass in no particularly symmetrical way, and therefore, the products of that asymmetry are asymmetrical themselves. And, that is probably how most people (scientists and lay people alike) view the outline of the continents as the product of asymmetrical forces, with only a singular coincidence: that of the fit between the eastern coast of South America and the Western coast of Africa. For it is possible to think that a chaotic break-up of the super-continent might produce some coincidences here and there in the composition and distribution of the continents.

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The proposal is made because the study of continental drift, plate tectonics, and sea-floor spreading are consequences of the subjects numerated above. The rotation of the Earth, its orbital revolution around the Sun and its spiraling path throughout the Galaxy are determining factors of those spacetime events. All of these subjects are evidently being studied by millions of people today. But, it would seem that the various subjects cited have not been related as they are within the Earth/matriX series offered in The Continental Drift Extracts. Some of the symmetries that are illustrated in this series may serve to interest others in more profound studies with greater resources.........

We invite you to read the Earth/matriX series of

The Continental Drift Extracts.
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e-mail: Charles William Johnson
johnson@earthmatrix.com