Proceedings - Pacific Science Congress (Volume 2)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE TECTONIC ASPECT OF VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN HAWAII By H. O. Wood (Preliminary statement expanded by the author from the stenographic recoid of the Proceedings.) We all know that progress in science is made largely through the repeated examination of a body of facts, old and new, in new ways or from new points of view: or sometimes in the consideration of newly assembled facts from older points of view which may have been discarded, or in abeyance for a time. The information and trial of hypotheses is the way to clearer understandings of the complex fabric of nature. This is the sole justification, at the present time, for the discussion which follows, and for the brief and informal treatment adopted here. The subject is one which merits a much more thorough discussion than can be undertaken here. What is said here of the volcanic process in Hawaii must be considered as hypothesis simply at the present time. More and more crucial work is required to demonstrate the success or failure of the hypothesis advanced. This must be emphasized, notwithstanding the fact that the view is one already received (and one applied far more widely than to the region here under discussion), among a circle of geologists much larger than the writer had suspected until recently. But it must be emphasized, too, that it is a view in accord with a large and growing group of facts, formerly not known to volcanol-. ogy when the prevalent, or recently prevalent, views regarding volcanic action were formulated. It may be stated, too, that a strong argument in support of the view here advanced could be prepared. That, however, is not the present purpose. This is, to lay before you for consideration, without prejudice, a conception of the mechanism of volcanic action in Hawaii dependent chiefly on...