ABSTRACT
An accurate portrayal of the events of the 1960s that led to the establishment of the plate tectonic paradigm is a hit and miss affair based upon imperfect personal memories and recollections. Equally, the progressive development of the geological corollaries of plate tectonics has been complicated. Geology is a difficult, field-based science that takes immense amounts of time, patience, and care. The way to promote the best basic science is to have the funding agencies simply judge submitted proposals for their scientific excellence irrespective of their field or topic. The trust seems to have gone out of modern science; the basic trust that most scientists will work diligently and intelligently to solve what they perceive to be the important and interesting problems in science seems to have vanished. Plate tectonics came along, as a result of oceanographic research and seismic studies, mainly by geophysicists, and provided a wonderful new paradigm that geologists have explored for 30 years.
