Pellegrini, Pablo A. (2019) Styles of Thought on the Continental Drift Debate. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 50 (1). pp. 85-102. ISSN 0925-4560
Abstract
The continental drift controversy has been deeply analysed in terms of rationalist notions, which seem to find there a unique topic to describe the weight of evidence for reaching consensus. In that sense, many authors suggest that Alfred Wegener’s theory of the original supercontinent Pangea and the subsequent continental displacements finally reached a consensus when irrefutable evidence became available. Therefore, rationalist approaches suggest that evidence can be enough by itself to close scientific controversies. In this article I analyse continental drift debates from a different perspective which is based on styles of thought. I’ll argue that continental drift debate took much longer than it was usually recognized with two styles of thought coexisting for hundreds of years. These were fixism and mobilism and they were always confronting their own evidence and interpretations and functioning as general frameworks for the acceptability of a specific theory. Therefore, this text aims to bring much broader sociological elements than usually involved in the analysis of the continental drift theory.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: |
Social and human sciences > Social sciences > Historians Social and human sciences > Social sciences > Philosophers Social and human sciences > Social sciences > Sociology |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Pablo Pellegrini |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Mar 2021 15:41 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Mar 2021 15:41 |
| URI: | https://repositorio.esocite.la/id/eprint/392 |
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Filename: 10.1007/s10838-018-9439-7 - Published Version Download (313kB)