Wegener embraces mystery of mechanism for continent movement?

And I think it does help using a more neutral phrase, rather than "continental drift." And the evidence Alfred Wegener presented was considerable, such as fossils of a freshwater reptile found in both South Africa and South America.

But Wegener seemed to believe that the lighter continents slowly drifted through the denser oceanic crust, much like icebergs might drift through heavier sea water. And that's just not the way it works. And perhaps inevitably, the criticism focused on this, rather than the considerable evidence that something or the other had caused the continents to move a very large amount over time.

Now, it may not have made a difference since geologists objected to Wegener because his training and experience was in other fields (astronomy and meteorology) and because he was a science popularizer, much like there was professional jealousy to Carl Sagan several generations later.

But I can't help wondering, what if Alfred Wegener focused on the evidences, and just briefly went over a variety of possible mechanisms acknowledging there were problems with each?
 
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It would just have been a less crack pot theory that could explain some interesting anomalies in the geological record. It would still take the late 50s and 60s and the magnetic mapping of the sea floor and finding spreading ridges and subduction zones for it to become mainstream. There would just have been less resistanec to the idea.Not that there was very much, by 78 when I did my degree, sea floor spreading had become the new orthodoxy.
EDIT Thank you for posting a geology WI
 
Yeah, I'm not seeing it making an enormous difference. Him not being a geologist didn't help his case. Admitting up front, "I don't know how" wouldn't help acceptance, but it would probably have avoided some of the criticism.
 
And he could have talked about how areas of India had glacial striations. And it was somewhere, maybe also India(?), which had coal with plant fossils which should not have been there.

So, some real mysteries to explain. Now, to some extent, Alfred Wegener did and would be further going over the head of geologists to members of the general public, but at least it gets the conversation going. And if he's a little more guarded in his conclusions, it keeps the conversation going longer.
 
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