Were the Continents Drifting before Continental Drift? Domenico Lovisato and the Role of Wegener’s Precursors in the Theory of Continental Drift (2020)
Stefano Furlani (Author)
Daniele Musumeci (Author)
Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza
Volume: 55
Pages: 11-32
For scientists, the continents have been drifting for over a hundred years, since Alfred Wegener presented his mobilist model of the Earth’s crust known as the ‘Theory of Continental Drift’ (TCD). This theory represents a key moment in the history of geological research because the horizontal movements of the Earth’s crust he proposed captured the geological debate of the period. This said, there were several previous studies which supported hypotheses of possible horizontal movements of the Earth’s crust in past eras. These arose from the complementarity of the shape of the continents, some aspects of their physiography, and the distribution of many species of plant and animal fossils. These scholars included the Italian geologist Domenico Lovisato, who outlined the role of horizontal movements in the distancing of the continents from an ancient supercontinent in a vanished manuscript presented forty years before that of Wegener, in 1874, even providing a geological explanation for these extensional movements. Our paper analyses his biography, the panorama of geological research of the time, a historical analysis of the transition from the fixist theories to the TCD, and discusses the role of Lovisato as a precursor of Wegener’s famous theory.
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Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Llull: Revista de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas
Historical Records of Australian Science
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
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