Geo-politics and the sinking of the geosynclinal theory

The geosynclinal theory, which signalled the coming of age of American geology, survived well into the Twentieth Century. During its long history, against a background of increasing tension between descriptive and explanatory geology, efforts were made to formulate it as a causal theory of mountain building. James Hall, an American palaeontologist, first proposed a link between the accumulation of sediment in synclines and orogeny in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. James Dana then developed Hall's ideas but also sought a causal explanation for the elevation of mountains. His ideas were taken up enthusiastically by Europeans such as Marcel Bertrand, Emile Haug and Hans Stille who attempted to extrapolate a global theory of geosynclines from their regional studies in Europe. At the same time the contraction theory, favoured by most geologists, was challenged by the theory of isostasy initiated by John Herschel and developed by geophysicists such as Clarence Dutton and Osmond Fisher. This movement signalled both the growing need for specialized knowledge in the Earth sciences and a push by geophysicists for hegemony. In the early Twentieth Century, further development of the geosynclinal theory occurred in America where a number of geologists attempted to accommodate European and American ideas into one global theory of mountain building. Charles Schuchert, a prime mover in this project, was followed by Marshall Kay who took up Stille's and Schuchert's ideas to construct a complex taxonomy of geosynclines, using their nomenclature and adding some of his own. Kay's classification, however, which was largely descriptive, did little to provide a causal link between geosynclines and orogeny and, because of its complex nomenclature, was largely disregarded by the geological community of practising geologists. New information coming from the oceans, seafloor spreading and plate tectonics theory challenged the geosynclinal theory which was rejected in the late 1960s by most geologists, despite vigorous efforts by some to retain the concept and marry it to plate tectonics. The history of the geosynclinal theory has been viewed in the light of a number of models of scientific change, none of which have proved fully satisfactory as an explanation or as a description. Instead, I contend that specialised knowledge of the sort that accompanied the increasing complexity of geosynclinal theory is different from other types of everyday knowledge and depends for authority on the relationship between power, i.e., "the transformative capacity of human agency", and knowledge. Specialised knowledge became increasingly esoteric and access to it became limited to those within a speciality. Those without the necessary training and education were increasingly incapable of understanding and, consequently, of judging the legitimacy of such knowledge. Valuable insights into the nature of the production of certified knowledge have been gained from the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault, Joseph Rouse and others but none of these authors have presented an entirely satisfactory account of power or its relationship to knowledge at least in the Earth Sciences. It has been concluded that theory change in science is the outcome of a two-sided struggle for scientific authority in which epistemological determinations are inseparably linked to social practices within the field