20th-century Geologist Quotes

Harry Hammond Hess
John Tuzo Wilson
Samuel Warren Carey
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
Ivan Kostov Nikolov
Laurence McKinley Gould
Orrin H. Pilkey

I shall consider this paper an essay in geopoetry. In order not to travel any further into the realm of fantasy than is absolutely necessary I shall hold as closely as possibly to a uniformitarian approach; even so, at least one great catastrophe will be required early in the Earth's history.

Harry Hammond Hess
Harry Hammond Hess
There were many examples in the history of life so show that precisely the most perfectly adapted, the physically biggest and strongest, the most numerous creatures, the lords of whole periods of life, died out in the end with monotonous regularity leaving the torch of life to be carried forward by smaller, more modest and often previously almost unnoticed forms of life, until they too fell into the trap of all too perfect adaptation.

For unless human nature has changed considerable through the ages, what is considered news, and therefore may be remembered when the normal events of daily life are long forgotten, is the unusual, particularly the violently unusual. And what is more violently unusual than a natural catastrophe?

Science is not a form of black magic. A thousand blind alleys must often be explored before a right road is found; a thousand amateurs must have their fling before a Darwin or an Einstein comes along.

Laurence McKinley Gould
Laurence McKinley Gould
I would always like to be near craters, drunk with fire, gas, my face burned by the heat.... It's not that I flirt with my death, but at this point I don't care about it, because there is the pleasure of approaching the beast and not knowing if he is going to catch you.

Evidence is hard to come by, it is largely circumstantial, and there is never enough of it.

However important the quantitative treatment of a problem may be, the quality of the initial data remains solely decisive for the validity of the results, and these data must never be at variance with the facts observed in Nature.

The results of experimental petrology... help to distinguish between possible and impossible processes.

The sureness of the geologist's judgment depends not only on the validity of his theoretical concepts and the soundness of his reasoning , but largely on how much of the earth he has seen and understood.

In all ages volcanoes have frightened, fascinated and attracted man, because what they hold is at once terrifying, splendid, and mysterious.

I have always compared nations with heterogeneous conglomerates made up of individuals or social groups, all strongly cemented by homogeneous ethical feelings. Such indeed should also be our unique charming blue planet, and I nurse the hope that during what is left of time I shall witness the end product of such a process of international diagenesis. The reappearance of the Halley's Comet is perhaps an omen in this respect...

Ivan Kostov Nikolov
Ivan Kostov Nikolov
The climate stubbornly refuses to co-operate with computer models and the writers of alarmist popular articles and books.

Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them...

Dinosaurs are a touchstone that separates the mentality of children from that of adults.

In a sense, the fossil fuels are a onetime gift that lifted us up from subsistence agriculture and eventually should lead us to a future based on renewable resources.

If the continents have moved, then they have drifted like rafts and formed the ocean floors in their wake. It is to this wake that we should look first.

John Tuzo Wilson
John Tuzo Wilson
The objectivity of the IPCC documents is laudable. But the fact that the group recognizes its model weaknesses and is trying to improve them doesn't make its conclusions stronger or more believable. (page 83).

Orrin H. Pilkey
Orrin H. Pilkey
The straightness, symmetry, extent and ubiquity of these patterns is without parallel in geology and their discovery was completely unexpected.

For geologists...the word 'plate' is in somewhat the same position as 'skyscraper' It is a dead (or almost dead) metaphor. Geologists know (or they think they know) what plates are, almost as well as the commuter knows what a skyscraper is.

The most likely site for error is in the most fundamental of our beliefs.

Samuel Warren Carey
Samuel Warren Carey
We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of this live.

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
Experimental geology has this in common with all other branches of our science, petrology and palaeontology included, that in the long run it withers indoors.