万物简史 第253期:大地在移动(7)（在线收听）

 　　Elsewhere, however, the new theory drew steady if cautious support. In 1950, a vote at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science showed that about half of those present now embraced the idea of continental drift. (Hapgood soon after cited this figure as proof of how tragically misled British geologists had become.) Curiously, Holmes himself sometimes wavered in his conviction. In 1953 he confessed: "I have never succeeded in freeing myself from a nagging prejudice against continental drift; in my geological bones, so to speak, I feel the hypothesis is a fantastic one."

　　然而，在别处，新理论受到了坚决的同时又是谨慎的支持。1950年，英国科学促进协会在年会上进行了一次表决，表明大约半数代表现在已经欣然接受了大陆漂移的观点。（过不多久，哈普古德引用了这个数字作为一个证据，证明英国地质学家已经多么可悲地误入歧途。）有意思的是，霍姆斯本人有时候对自己的看法也有点动摇。1953年，他承认：“对于大陆漂移学说，我从来没有摆脱过一种令人不安的反感；在作为地质学家的骨子里，恕我直言，我觉得这个假设是个荒唐的假设。”
　　大陆漂移
　　Continental drift was not entirely without support in the United States. Reginald Daly of Harvard spoke for it, but he, you may recall, was the man who suggested that the Moon had been formed by a cosmic impact, and his ideas tended to be considered interesting, even worthy, but a touch too exuberant for serious consideration. And so most American academics stuck to the belief that the continents had occupied their present positions forever and that their surface features could be attributed to something other than lateral motions.
　　大陆漂移学说在美国不是完全无人支持。哈佛大学的雷金纳德·戴利就为它辩护。但是，也许你还记得，他就是提出月球是由一次宇宙撞击形成的那位先生。人们往往认为他的看法很有意义，甚至很有价值，但有点儿华而不实，因此不值得认真考虑。因此，大多数美国学者坚持认为，大陆向来就在现在的位置，它们的表面特征可以归因于侧向移动之外的原因。
　　Interestingly, oil company geologists had known for years that if you wanted to find oil you had to allow for precisely the sort of surface movements that were implied by plate tectonics. But oil geologists didn't write academic papers; they just found oil.
　　有意思的是，石油公司的地质工作者多年来已经知道，要想找到石油，你不得不考虑的正是板块构造所必然包含的这种表面移动。但是，石油地质工作者不写学术论文。他们只找石油。
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