The march of progress

I've taken a sideways step away from WWI (see my last few book posts) and taken up something completely different: "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded". This is another one of the fascinating books in my ever growing backlog.

I've only read the first third or so - but in the process of setting the background for the catastrophic eruption, the author delved into a discussion on plate tectonics. That was interesting stuff - apparently, a German scientist named Wegener had the idea as far back as the turn of the twentieth century but the scientific world scoffed - it was too wild an idea, and besides - he was a meteorologist, not an earth scientist.

His ideas were borne out over the next 60 years through various bits of research (interrupted by WWI and WWII) carried on by other people. Makes me wonder which well accepted pieces of scientific dogma will be discredited in the future, and reminds me that it's always a good idea to keep an open mind.