Shifting paradigms in geomorphology: the fate of research ideas
in an educational context
Antony R. Orme
Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524, USA
Received 16 December 1999; received in revised form 21 July 2000; accepted 25 October 2001
Abstract
The acceptance of new ideas into the mainstream of geomorphological education is illustrated from the development of
theories dealing with Earth history, glaciation, uniform flow, mass movement, continental mobility, cyclic erosion, and drainage
networks. The lag between the conception of new ideas and their incorporation into mainstream texts has varied from negligible
to more than 200 years. On one hand, despite its then untestable assumptions, the Davisian cycle of erosion gained rapid favor
as the dominant paradigm of the early 20th century before it was found wanting. In contrast, concepts of uniform flow and slope
stability, confirmed in the 18th century, waited almost 200 years for incorporation into geomorphology texts sensu stricto,
although they had long been available in books on hydraulics and soil mechanics. Continental mobilism had a wild ride,
culminating in the eventual acceptance of the plate-tectonics paradigm in the later 20th century. Explanations for the fate of
these and other ideas are varied. New ideas are often opposed by establishment conservatism, language barriers, the perceived
surrealism of new concepts, and simple ignorance. In contrast, new ideas may be accepted, sooner or later, by virtue of
simplicity, forceful and well-connected leadership, or the death of opponents. Although mitigated by the information revolution
of recent decades, these forces still persist and influence the extension of new ideas into a larger arena.
D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Geomorphology; History of science; Landform evolution; Classical mechanics; Education
Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri [In the
words of no master am I bound to believe]—
Horace
1. Introduction
In the introduction to his stylish book on geomorphology
in 1942, O.D. von Engeln of Cornell
University presented a portrait of W.M. Davis above a
caption entitled ‘‘The Master.’’ On the facing page
was a portrait of Walther Penck, ‘‘The Challenger.’’
This was recognition of geomorphology’s then dominant
paradigm, Davis’ cycle of erosion, and of the
controversy raging over whether Davisian peneplanation
or Penckian slope retreat was responsible for
landscape denudation. These personalities and their
ideas have long been buried beneath retrospective
critiques and it is not my intention to resurrect them.
However, the question may be asked as to how an
individual could rise to the exalted status of ‘master’
in a text that influenced so strongly a future generation
0169-555X/02/$ - see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0169-555X(02)00092-2
E-mail address: orme@geog.ucla.edu (A.R. Orme).
www.elsevier.com/locate/geomorph
Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342
of geomorphologists. It may have been justified in the
intellectual climate of the time, but the very sobriquet
and the text that followed either ignored the contributions
of others, or justified them before the Davisian
altar. This raises further questions. How many other
potential ‘masters’ have been ignored, even ridiculed,
in the past, only to have their ideas gain acceptance at a
later time? How many potential leaders and their ideas
still lie unappreciated for want of a sympathetic
audience? How and when do new ideas developed at
the research frontier become integrated into mainstream
educational texts designed to shape future
generations of scientists? Once educated, how do
scientists gain acceptance for new ideas among the
makers of public policy and the broader public?
The above questions are not unique to geomorphology
but they are particularly relevant in the context of
this paper. Geomorphology as a research field has had
a mixed record of acceptance by educational circles,
policy makers, and a wider public. Part of the problem
exists because of the seemingly separate goals of
research and education, the former concerned with
discovering new facts and testing fresh theories, the
latter with disseminating acceptable information in
digestible form. To some extent, this dichotomy
reflects the differing approaches of scientists and
educators, the former focused but often remote and
argumentative, the latter usually ensconced comfortably
in teaching institutions and traditional paradigms,
and wary of new ideas, certainly those that appear
heretical or revolutionary. Lacking educational acceptance,
new geomorphological ideas and approaches
have much less opportunity to affect public policy.
The latter in turn, subject to so many political, economic,
and legal constraints, thus function in a generation
gap deprived of fresh approaches to recurrent
problems.
Using examples selected from the history of geomorphology,
this paper examines the fate of new
research concepts in the educational arena, specifically
the time lag that may develop between the initiation of
new ideas at the research frontier and their incorporation
into influential mainstream texts. Theories of
Earth history, glaciation, uniform flow, mass movement,
and continental mobility, that are widely accepted
today, experienced long periods in the wilderness,
largely because they were revolutionary or incomprehensible,
and thus, initially at least, failed to secure a
sympathetic audience in the prevailing academic climate
of the time. Quantitative approaches to geomorphology
were likewise long shunned as irrelevant
or indigestible. Some ideas were simply ignored
because they were developed elsewhere in unfamiliar
languages, an intellectual nationalism that still lingers.
Conversely, fresh ideas were more successful when
they emerged from the establishment of the time, or
were conveyed in simple terms to an unprejudiced
audience, or simply because their opponents died. The
paper concludes with an evaluation of why new concepts
in geomorphology become acceptable, sooner or
later, and of the lessons to be learned for the future.
The fate of new ideas is of course influenced by the
nature and speed of communication, as exemplified in
the contrast between privately published books in
times past and modern electronic transmission of
research proceedings.
2. The fate of new ideas
The history of science is replete with new ideas and
observations that were ignored or rejected by the
establishment of the time, sometimes with cruel consequences
for their authors. The case of Galileo
Galilei is particularly poignant, his espousal of the
Copernican model for Earth’s place in the solar
system being condemned in 17th century Italy and
only finally given papal approval in 1984. As the
Earth Sciences began to take shape during the Renaissance
of the 16th and 17th centuries and the
Enlightenment of the 18th century, it seems that few
were truly reborn, that even fewer were truly enlightened.
Many new ideas were stifled within academia
and gained only belated acceptance beyond the academic
environment. Geomorphology, which traces its
roots to this period of the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment, suffered in much the same way.
In essence, geomorphology owes its emergence as
an intellectual discipline during the later 19th century
to twin foundations laid during the preceding 200
years (Orme, 1989). One foundation lay in the historical
approach to Earth Science that emerged during
the later 17th and 18th centuries (Davies, 1969). This
approach developed slowly during the 19th century,
initially against strong opposition from catastrophists,
but was eventually given formal expression in the
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342326
attractive Davisian cycle of erosion. To many geomorphologists
in the 20th century, especially those
concerned with landform evolution, this was the only
true foundation, perhaps because the links were so
clearly evident. Thus, where stratigraphy was lacking,
geomorphologists sought to provide denudation chronologies
for Cenozoic landscapes as logical extensions
of pre-Cenozoic stratigraphic records. In various
guises, this evolutionary aspect of geomorphology
was central to most texts of the time (e.g., von Engeln,
1942). Further, because the accompanying debates
were widely available in English, the evolutionary
approach spread readily throughout the anglophone
world, as exemplified by King (1962), based in South
Africa, and Twidale (1976) in Australia. Similar
historic/genetic approaches, variously tempered by
climatic considerations, also dominated French and
German geomorphology for much of the 20th century
(e.g., de Martonne, 1909, 1940; Birot, 1960; Bu¨del,
1963).
Geomorphology’s other foundation lay in the emergence
and application of classical mechanics among
hydraulic engineers in continental Europe, also during
the later 17th and 18th centuries These roots, however,
were long ignored by most Earth scientists, in part
because their links were so scattered and disjoint, in
part because of the prolonged dominance of evolutionary
paradigms (Orme, 1989). Furthermore, a certain
cultural myopia among anglophone scientists, a
preference for Earth Science in a familiar language,
blinded many to achievements in other languages and
other emerging disciplines. Even non-anglophone
scholars were drawn to evolutionary concepts, especially
the Davisian model. Thus, the approach from
classical mechanics, long ignored by all but a few
within geomorphology, did not find its way into the
mainstream texts and educational curricula of the field
until the later 20th century. Among the scholars who
did espouse this approach earlier, neither Grove Karl
Gilbert nor Albrecht Penck was initially successful in
gathering converts.
2.1. Theories of the Earth
Theories about Earth’s origins and development
abounded during the 17th and 18th centuries, as
reflected in the many books and pamphlets of the
period. Their various fates have been much discussed
(e.g., Chorley et al., 1964; Davies, 1969; Tinkler,
1985) and are summarized here only to support the
present argument. In general, these theories are often
grouped under the rubrics of catastrophism and uniformitarianism,
although these terms were not formally
coined until later (Whewell, 1832).
Other aspects apart, catastrophism is a belief that
ascribes the origin of Earth’s landforms to one or more
themes: more or less instantaneous formation during
Creation; formation after Noah’s Flood; and earthquake
and volcanic activity (Davies, 1969). These
ideas were reflected in influential educational texts of
the time. In his Geography Delineated Forth in Two
Bookes (Carpenter, 1625), for example, Nathanael
Carpenter (1589–1628) wrote that ‘‘mountains, valleyes,
and plaines were created in the Earth from the
beginning, and few made by the violence of the
Deluge.’’ Such views were echoed by Bernhard Varenius
(1622–1650) in his Geographia Generalis (Varenius,
1650) and given further support in the 1650s by
the eminent biblical scholar James Ussher (1581–
1665), Archbishop of Armagh. Ussher concluded that
the Creation of Heaven and Earth had occurred ‘‘upon
the entrance of the night preceding’’ Sunday, October
23, in the year 4004 BC, with ‘man’ and other
creatures appearing on the following Friday. He also
calculated that the Flood, that other catastrophic event
described early in the Old Testament, had occurred
between December 7, 2349 BC and May 6, 2348 BC
(Ussher, 1650, 1654, 1658). Although religious dogma
had long constrained scientific enquiry, when these
dates were inserted into the margin of the new Authorized
Version of King James’ Bible in 1701, they came
to possess an authority similar to the scriptures themselves.
Thus, Thomas Burnet (1635–1715) in his
Telluris Theoria Sacra of 1681 and 1689 (Burnet,
1681, 1689), could reasonably ascribe the Flood to
the bursting of a fluid-filled globe which ‘‘at one stroke
dissolved the frame of the Old World and made us a
new one out of its ruins which we now inhabit since
the Deluge.’’ Supported by religious beliefs and political
establishments, many such ideas dominated the
18th century (Fig. 1).
Uniformitarianism, the simple notion that the
present is the key to the past, is commonly linked to
the writings of James Hutton (1726–1797), but in
many respects his work reflected the emerging concern
in the Age of Enlightenment for a more rational
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342 327
explanation of Earth history. For example, the primacy
of rivers in shaping relief had been recognized earlier
by Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), Jean-Etienne
Guettard (1715–1786), and Nicholas Desmarest
(1725–1815), but their ideas were often clouded by
cumbrous prose and suffered, among English speakers,
from language barriers. Hutton’s writings were
cumbrous but the essence of his message, notably his
theory of Earth history that found ‘‘no vestige of a
beginning—no prospect of an end’’ (Hutton, 1788),
Fig. 1. The rise and fall of selected concepts in geomorphology and related fields.
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342328
was rescued and clarified by his friend, John Playfair
(1748–1819), an eminent professor of mathematics in
the University of Edinburgh. In the same year, 1802,
that Playfair presented his Illustrations of the Huttonian
Theory of the Earth (Playfair, 1802), Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck (1744–1829) was publishing, privately,
seemingly quite independently, and in French, similar
ideas in his Hydroge´ologie, ou Recherches sur l’Influence
Qu’ont les Eaux sur la Surface du Globe Terrestre
(Lamarck, 1802) (Fig. 1).
Acceptance of uniformitarian principles by the
educational establishment of the time was a slow,
tortuous process, in part because it represented a
radical departure from conventional wisdom. Whereas
the intellectual climate might favor new ideas, the
social and political climate, traumatized by the American
and French revolutions and the Napoleonic wars,
urged caution. As Lyell later observed, at another time
the force and elegance of Playfair’s style should have
insured acceptance for Huttonian doctrines but catastrophism
in its various guises implied religious and
social orthodoxy whereas Hutton’s ‘‘no vestige of a
beginning–no prospect of an end’’ was dangerous
heresy. Lamarck’s Hydroge´ologie was conceived as a
comprehensive terrestrial physics with a vision of an
Earth system in which natural processes produced
gradual changes over long periods of time. Falling
short of these lofty goals, the book was published
privately and its limited circulation destined it for
temporary obscurity (Orme, 1989). Thus, eminent
catastrophists in powerful positions, such as Jean
Andre´ de Luc (1727–1817), science advisor to Britain’s
Queen Charlotte, and Richard Kirwan (1733–
1812), President of the Royal Irish Academy, were
able to lead spirited attacks on nascent uniformitarianism.
For many years after its inception in 1818, the
American Journal of Science actively fostered catastrophist
beliefs. For example, J.W. Wilson wrote in
1821, ‘‘Is it not the best theory of the Earth, that the
Creator, in the beginning, at least at the general deluge,
formed it with all its present grand characteristic
features?’’ (Wilson, 1821). By 1830, however, de
Luc and Kirwan were dead, and Georges Cuvier
(1769–1832), the eminent Swiss paleontologist, had
invoked an extended timescale to accommodate the
many faunal ‘catastrophes’ in the stratigraphic record.
The intellectual climate, like the social milieu, had
become sufficiently agreeable for Charles Lyell
(1797–1875) to present compelling, if rather extreme,
support for uniformitarianism in his Principles of
Geology, volumes that were to have a profound impact
within and beyond the Earth Sciences (Lyell, 1830–
1833). The subtitle of Lyell’s Principles—Being an
Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth’s
Surface by Reference to Causes Now in Operation—is
particularly meaningful. However, almost half a century
had passed since Hutton first presented his ideas
before an academic audience in Edinburgh (Fig. 1).
Lyell’s uniformitarianism was in turn to prove too
rigid, and a qualified form of catastrophism, divorced
from its biblical links, re-emerged in the 20th century
to explain some of the sudden changes that have
punctuated landform evolution. Bretz (1923) invoked
‘catastrophic’ superfloods released onto the Columbia
Plateau by collapsing Pleistocene ice dams to explain
the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington, a
concept that was also long viewed with skepticism.
2.2. Diluvial and glacial theories
A further aspect of the catastrophist–uniformitarian
conflict was the quest for explanation of the surficial
deposits that so often draped over bedrock across
much of Europe and elsewhere. To many, certainly
to those who had never seen a glacier at work, these
deposits were clear vindication of the biblical Flood.
Again, persons of established credentials or religious
conviction favored catastrophic explanations and
delayed acceptance of new ideas. Thus, Horace-Be´ne´dict
de Saussure (1740–1799), the eminent French
naturalist; William Buckland (1784–1856), professor
of mineralogy at Oxford University, Dean of Westminster,
and author of Reliquiae Diluvianae (Buckland,
1823); and Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873),
professor of geology at Cambridge, each supported
variants on the diluvial theory. Alpine peasants and
mountain guides, who had seen glaciers retreat from
Little Ice Age maxima, knew better (Chorley et al.,
1964). So too did thoughtful observers like Bernard
Kuhn, Ignace Venetz, and Jean de Charpentier in the
Alps, Jens Esmark in Norway, and Reinhard Bernhardi
in northern Germany, each of whom presented papers
in the 1820s and 1830s on the likely role of former
glaciers in erosion and sediment transport, and Karl
Schimper, the German botanist, who in 1837 coined
the term Eiszeit (ice age).
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342 329
Despite accumulating evidence and Playfair’s early
support, glacial explanations for far-traveled erratics
and tills made slow progress against entrenched
diluvialism and were confounded by the alternative
iceberg theory espoused by Lyell. It fell to Louis
Agassiz (1807–1873), a young and exuberant fish
paleontologist with impeccable credentials (he had
studied with Cuvier and in most respects was a
catastrophist), to establish the case for glacial theory
(Fig. 1). His address to the Swiss Society of Natural
Sciences in Neuchaˆtel in 1837 and his book Etudes
sur les Glaciers (Agassiz, 1840), published privately
a year ahead of Charpentier’s Essai sur les Glaciers
(Charpentier, 1841), firmly established his leadership
in the field, although some of his notions, such as the
advance of polar glaciers into the Mediterranean and
Amazonia, were soon rejected. But he lost friends
such as Charpentier and Schimper in the process, and
was notably discouraged by Alexander von Humboldt,
while converting Buckland to the cause and
causing Lyell to waiver (Imbrie and Imbrie, 1979).
Furthermore, his arrival at Harvard University in
1846, and the patronage of wealthy New England
industrialist, John Lowell, ensured a wider audience
for his views. The case for glacial theory was made
not so much on evidence accumulated by careful
observers over several decades, but on the credentials
of a vigorous young scholar, whom Hallam (1983)
has called ‘‘the glacial evangelist,’’ whose catastrophism
was acceptable to the establishment but who
was perhaps less than circumspect in his treatment of
erstwhile colleagues and field companions.
Despite Agassiz’ advocacy, however, glacial theory
made slow progress against entrenched beliefs over
the next two decades, and some opposition persisted to
the close of the century. The theory was exposed to a
broader audience by James Geikie’s The Great Ice Age
and its Relationship to the Antiquity of Man, first
published in 1874 (Giekie, 1874), and later by G.F.
Wright’s The Ice Age in North America and its Bearing
on the Antiquity of Man in 1889 (Wright, 1889).
Both of these popular books, whose titles also reflect
the continuing Darwinian controversy over human
origins, were to see several editions as evidence for
multiple glaciations accumulated. James Geikie’s
book was especially important because he moved
among influential scientists, including T.C. Chamberlin
in North America and Otto Torrel in Sweden, who
early recognized the evidence for multiple glaciations,
effectively retiring Agassiz’ monoglacial concepts and
Lyell’s iceberg origin for drift. Indeed, the first formal
publication of North American glacial stages using
geographic names was a contribution by Chamberlin
to the 3rd edition of Geikie’s The Great Ice Age in
1894 (White, 1973). By then, broader questions
regarding climate change, initiated by John Herschel
in 1830 and Joseph Adhe´mar in 1842, had been given
wider currency by James Croll (1821–1890) in his
Climate and Time (Croll, 1875).
2.3. Uniform flow and related theories
No hiatus in the history of geomorphology has
been as long as that which intervened between the
confirmation of uniform flow theory during the mid-
18th century and its incorporation into mainstream
educational texts in geomorphology some 200 years
later. The reasons are complex but probably resolve
into four main causes—language barriers, the reluctance
of theorists to recognize practice, compartmentalization
of science, and lack of an evangelist with a
receptive audience. The lag is all the more surprising
because of the assumptions concerning fluvial processes
made, more on faith than evidence, during the
Davisian interlude of the earlier twentieth century.
Uniform flow occurs within stream channels when
frictional resisting forces are equal and opposite to the
gravitational force impelling water downslope. The
concept was first seriously discussed in a major geomorphology
text by Leopold et al. (1964), in their now
classic Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology. By then,
the concept was more than 200 years old (Fig. 1).
The history of human relations with water is replete
with an awareness of fluid dynamics. Irrigation ditches
were being constructed in Mesopotamia long before
the date proposed by Ussher for the Creation. The
subsequent success of Egyptian irrigation works, Persian
qanats, Chinese flood-control projects, and Indian
water-supply systems all indicate an empirical appreciation
of hydraulics extending back several thousand
years. Greek scientists and Roman engineers revealed
similar understanding, even if the corpus of their
scientific theory remains elusive. Much later, during
the Renaissance, the formulation of mechanics as a
physical science reflected the contributions of Leonardo
da Vinci (1452–1519) on hydrodynamics, BerA.R.
Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342330
nard Palissy (1510–1589) on the hydrologic cycle,
Simon Stevin (1548–1620) on hydrostatics, and Benedetto
Castelli (1577–1644) and Blaise Pascal (1623–
1662) on fluid dynamics.
Nevertheless, many of these contributions were
scattered and misleading. Leonardo was a prolific
writer but rarely published, such that his ideas mostly
emerged later through edited and variable translations.
Palissy’s (1580) Discours, published in French rather
than Latin, then still the medium of scientific communication,
was only rescued from obscurity nearly a
century later by Pierre Perrault (1611–1680), one of
the founders of modern hydrology (e.g., Biswas,
1970). And Castelli (1628), often termed the founder
of the Italian school of hydraulics by virtue of his 1628
treatise Della Misura dell’Acque Correnti, believed
that stream velocity was directly proportional to water
depth.
The above works did however mark a transition
from vaguely theoretical to observational methods of
research. Knowledge was further advanced by Edme´
Mariotte (1620–1684), who used interconnected
weighted floats to demonstrate the vertical velocity profile
in streams, and by Domenico Guglielmini (1655–
1710) whose keen field observations, as reflected in
his Aquarum Fluentium Mensura Nova Methoda
Inquisita (Guglielmini, 1690) and Della Natura dei
Fiumi (Guglielmini, 1697), must place him among the
direct lineal precursors of modern fluvial geomorphology
(Orme, 1989). Guglielmini understood the variation
of stream velocity with depth and slope, the nature
of streamflow acceleration and opposing bed resistance,
the relationship between channel geometry and
sediment scour and fill, and particle-size reduction in a
downstream direction. These ideas were further
refined as the 18th century progressed, notably by
Bernoulli (1738) and Brahms (1753).
Confirmation of uniform flow theory is generally
credited to Antoine de Che´zy (1718–1798) and Pierre
DuBuat (1738–1809) (Fig. 1). Che´zy spent most of
his working life as an engineer with the Ecole des
Ponts et Chausse´es in France and in 1768 was entrusted
with the design of a canal to bring water from
the River Yvette to Paris. Lacking proven methodology
to ensure optimal flow conditions, he developed
his own flow formula and tested it with experiments in
the Courpalet Canal and River Seine. The result has
come down to us as the well-known formula V ¼ Cffiffiffiffiffiffi
RS
p
(Fig. 2). This formula was well established by
1775, but its analysis was omitted from Director PerFig.
2. The development of uniform flow formulae for open channels.
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342 331
ronet’s report on the Canal de l’Yvette. It was not until
the American engineer Clemens Herschel found it
more than a century later among the files of the Ecole
des Ponts et Chausse´es that Che´zy’s contribution
became more widely recognized (Herschel, 1897).
Meanwhile, apparently unaware of Che´zy’s work,
DuBuat (1779) presented his own experimental work
on uniform flow in his influential Principes d’Hydraulique
in 1779 (Graf, 1971). But his formula was
cumbersome and was much modified by later workers,
notably the German engineers Reinhard Woltman
(1754–1837) and Johann Eytelwein (1764–1848),
and ultimately by Robert Manning (1816–1897) in
Ireland (Woltman, 1790; Eytelwein, 1801; Manning,
1891) (Fig. 2). Although Manning viewed it as oversimplified,
it is his formula that was widely adopted in
engineering practice and with which most modern
geomorphologists are familiar.
Some 200 years elapsed between confirmation of
the uniform flow theory and its admission into geomorphology
texts, although it had long been available
in engineering hydrology works (e.g., Beardmore,
1862) and was reflected in comprehensive studies of
the Mississippi River published in 1861 (Humphreys
and Abbott, 1861). Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) had
incorporated the Che´zy equation, together with a
critical shear–stress formula for the transport of
fluvial gravels, into his Morphologie der Erdoberfla¨che
in 1894 (Penck, 1894), but according to Anhert
(1998), this work went largely unnoticed and unused
for the next half century. Uniform flow and equilibrium
concepts were also fundamental to the work of
Grove Karl Gilbert (1843–1918) on the entrainment
and transport of debris by rivers, but again their entry
into the educational mainstream was long delayed
(Gilbert, 1914, 1917).
Why did these concepts make such a belated entry
into geomorphology texts? For the most part, scholars
concerned with such weighty matters as the origin of
Earth’s landforms could hardly worry about the
behavior of water in French canals. In addition, as
science matured during the 19th century, a rift developed
between theory and practice that was to affect
the subsequent dissemination of ideas. Classical
mechanics based on inviscid fluids appealed to theorists
but was not readily usable by practicing engineers
who needed designs for viscous fluids.
Mathematicians and physicists developed theoretical
relationships that often could not be used by engineers,
while engineers developed empirical solutions
that could rarely be applied beyond the limited range
of problems for which they were devised (Biswas,
1970; Orme, 1989).
G.K. Gilbert was an exception. Fully aware of the
work of the mathematicians and physicists of his time,
he sought to weld the physical sciences with geology
in his field observations and experimental studies
(Baker and Pyne, 1978; Chorley and Beckinsale,
1980). As his biographer, Stephen Pyne, has so aptly
stated:
‘‘. . .as he [Gilbert] argued by his own example,
no topic was so trivial or refractory that it could
not be expressed according to the laws and logic
of physics, and no physical law was so inviolate
that it could exist meaningfully outside of a
specific context in the facts of physical geology’’
(Pyne, 1980, p.134).
Gilbert read deeply into the scientific literature of his
age, including foreign sources. His experimental work
was accorded mathematical precision, and his quest
for fundamental physical laws and rational explanations
of observed relationships unending. But,
excepting his junior colleagues in the United States
Geological Survey by whom he was much loved,
Gilbert had no students, no educational platform from
which to galvanize a fresh generation of geomorphologists
(Pyne, 1980). He did write a successful highschool
text, An Introduction to Physical Geography
with Albert Perry Brigham in 1902 (Gilbert and
Brigham, 1902) but, though drawing heavily on the
federal western surveys and offering a rich bibliography,
including works by W.M. Davis, the book did
not truly reflect the research frontier with which he
was so involved. His quiet unassuming personality
also mitigated against evangelism. As Pyne has
observed, Gilbert’s scientific temperament was classical
and conservative, rather than romantic or
revolutionary. His achievements were lauded in his
own lifetime and were incorporated after his death
into mainstream texts in engineering hydraulics (e.g.,
Rouse, 1938).
Thus, while the scientific lineage of Guglielmini,
Che´zy, and Gilbert was being advanced by a few, such
as geographer Leighly (1934) and geologist Rubey
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342332
(1938) in North America, and Hjulstrom (1935) and
Bagnold (1941) elsewhere, most geomorphologists of
the earlier 20th century were oblivious to, or at least
ignored, the fundamental mechanics of their science
developed so long ago. Widely used geomorphology
texts of the period, such as von Engeln’s Geomorphology
(1942), while rich in genetic inferences for
landform evolution, were largely silent on the
mechanics of geomorphic process.
2.4. Mass movement theories
In similar vein, the inclusion in geomorphology
texts of process-oriented approaches to mass movement
was also delayed, although such information had
long been available in engineering texts concerned
with soil mechanics (Fig. 1). Eventually, Johnson
recognized the need for ‘‘applying mechanics to the
solution of geological problems’’ in his eclectic book
on Physical Processes in Geology (Johnson, 1970),
but texts such as those by Carson and Kirkby (1972)
and Young (1972), important milestones in modern
hillslope geomorphology, continued to initiate their
discussion with reference to qualitative Davisian and
Penckian concepts.
The foundations of modern studies of slope stability
were laid down in Coulomb’s Statics Memoir in 1773
(Coulomb, 1776). Charles Augustin Coulomb (1736–
1806) was a military engineer, with a better grasp of
mathematics than most, who achieved distinction from
his studies of electricity, magnetism, and torsion (Gillmor,
1971). With the French predilection for war
during the preceding century, there had been many
distinguished military engineers, such as Sebastian
Vauban (1633–1707) and Bernard Bellidor (1671–
1761), but also several notable engineering failures
based on the faulty designs of earthworks. Slope
stability problems were treated empirically in terms
of idealized geometries, with a belief that failures
invariably occurred at the angle of repose, and with
little concern for soil properties.
In contrast, Coulomb recognized that the angle of
repose of a free-standing bank of homogenous earth
was not the same as the angle of the rupture plane and
that, assuming retarding forces attributable to cohesion
and friction, failure could occur along any one of
several planes. The modern expression of Coulomb’s
equation is generally given as S = c + r tan/ where S
is shearing resistance, c is non-directional cohesion
per unit area, r is effective normal stress on the slide
plane, and / is the angle of internal friction. He also
showed how infiltrating water could reduce the angle
of internal friction and under more buoyant conditions
lead to failure at lower values of /.
Coulomb’s contribution to soil mechanics was not
immediately acknowledged (Fig. 1). The cumbrous
algebraic expression that he initially proposed and his
reasoning that slip planes are commonly steeper than
containing natural slopes discouraged easy acceptance
of his work. However, as the 19th century progressed,
support from the Director of the Ecole des Ponts et
Chausse´es, and widespread observations and experimental
testing, especially by canal and railway engineers,
verified and refined Coulomb’s conclusions
(e.g., Collin, 1846; Mohr, 1871, 1872). Early in the
20th century, the science of soil mechanics was given
formal status by the writings of Terzaghi, Fellenius,
and Krey (e.g., Terzaghi, 1925; Skempton, 1979). But
not until the 1960s did these explanations for mass
movement enter a major text in geomorphology
(Leopold et al., 1964), and a further decade elapsed
before such information became common fodder for
geomorphology students (Fig. 1). Instead, in the
continuing debate over landscape denudation, most
texts continued to contrast Davisian downwearing and
Penckian backwearing of slopes, with nary a slope
measurement and only lip service given to the internal
mechanics of landslides and debris flows.
2.5. Tectonic theories—stabilism versus mobilism
Few theories in the Earth Sciences have attracted
such excitement as the attempts to explain Earth’s
primary and secondary relief features with reference
to a mobile crust. Today, we may reflect on the
inescapable logic of plate tectonics, on the wisdom
of our immediate predecessors in accepting the theory
and suggesting what appear to be rational explanations.
But it has not always been so. Alfred Wegener
(1880–1930), the German scientist most commonly
linked with plate tectonics through its lineal predecessor,
continental drift, was ridiculed during his own
lifetime and did not live long enough to see his ideas
vindicated.
In mobilist theory, Wegener had several antecedents.
In his book La Cre´ation et ses Myste`res
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342 333
De´voile´s (Snider, 1858) for example, catastrophist
Antonio Snider invoked the fissuring of the Atlantic
on the sixth day of Creation to explain the similarity
in fossil plants within the Carboniferous coal deposits
of Europe and North America. His ideas were soon
viewed as too outrageous to merit serious attention
(Holmes, 1944). Later, Taylor (1910) invoked the
concept of crustal creep from high to low latitudes
to explain the distribution of mountain ranges, but his
ideas were rejected largely because his mechanism,
tidal forcing related to Earth’s capture of the Moon in
the Cretaceous, was untenable. In any case, these and
other ideas, plausible or otherwise, were accorded
short shrift in the prevailing stabilist paradigm of the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. After all, were not
Earth’s continents, ocean basins, and their major relief
features admirably explained by the model of a cooling
and contracting Earth so convincingly advocated
by J.D. Dana (1813–1895) in North America and
Edward Suess (1831–1914) in Europe, and elucidated
in Lowthian Green’s tetrahedral hypothesis (Green,
1875)?
Thus, when astronomist and meteorologist Wegener
published brief papers on continental drift in 1912
and a subsequent book on Die Entstehung der Kontinente
und Ozeane in 1915 (Wegener, 1915), the
intellectual climate in general was unlikely to be
favorable. In Germany, however, mobilist concepts
were somewhat more familiar from the works of
Wettstein, Colberg, and Kreichgauer (Hallam, 1983).
Furthermore, Wegener was well connected, having
married the daughter of the distinguished meteorologist,
Wladimir Ko¨ppen, whom he later succeeded as
Director of the Hamburg Marine Observatory, and
was thus assured of some sympathy for his views
(Jacobshagen, 1980). This he received from such
notables as the Swiss structural geologist Emile
Argand (1879–1940), a founder of the nappe theory
of the Alps, and later from Arthur Holmes, then of
Durham University, whose convection-current model
offered a mechanism for continental drift, and from
Alex. du Toit, the South African geologist, who was
well placed to provide supporting evidence from
Gondwana. In other respects, however, Wegener’s
ideas were openly ridiculed, notably at a New York
symposium in 1926 (van Waterschoot van der Gracht,
1928), and rejected by such luminaries as the British
geophysicist Harold Jeffreys and the Americans,
structural geologist Bailey Willis and paleontologist
George Gaylord Simpson.
In 1937, du Toit dedicated his book, Our Wandering
Continents: An Hypothesis of Continental Drifting,
to the memory of Alfred Wegener ‘‘for his
distinguished services in connection with the geological
interpretation of our Earth.’’ In his preface,
du Toit emphasized that, whether or not his explanations
for continental drift were valid, he felt that ‘‘a
great and fundamental truth is embodied in this
revolutionary hypothesis’’ (du Toit, 1937, p. vii). A
few years later, in 1944, Arthur Holmes offered a
concluding chapter on continental drift in his Principles
of Physical Geology, a text that served British
geomorphology exceedingly well for many years.
That chapter’s final section, on the search for a
mechanism, reviewed the problem that had long confounded
those who wished to believe in continental
drift and, while presenting his own convection current
hypothesis, he admitted ‘‘that purely speculative ideas
of this kind, specially invented to match the requirements,
can have no scientific value until they acquire
support from independent evidence’’ (Holmes, 1944,
p. 508).
However, most other geomorphology texts of the
period either summarily dismissed or ignored the
continental drift hypothesis in their explanations of
first-order relief features. In 1939, one sentence in
A.K. Lobeck’s text Geomorphology (Lobeck, 1939)
was sufficient to present and dismiss Wegener’s concept
as unsubstantiated. In the same year, Philip
Worcester’s Textbook of Geomorphology offered three
brief paragraphs on continental drift as one of several
hypotheses that had been invoked to explain the origin
of first-order relief. He concluded that ‘‘There are
perplexing problems of geology, paleontology and
climatology that yield rather readily to the hypothesis
of continental drift. However, the hypothesis violates
many geologic principles that have been established
during the last century’’ (Worcester, 1939, p. 22). In
1942, O.D. von Engeln’s Geomorphology offered a
single paragraph on continental drift, augmented by
two illustrations from du Toit’s book. While recognizing
the need for an acceptable mechanism, he did
suggest that if present lateral displacement of continents
could be demonstrated then ‘‘drifting in the
past could be reasonably inferred’’ (von Engeln, 1942,
p. 31). Despite some ambivalence, he concluded that
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342334
‘‘Relief features of the first order appear to have a
high degree of permanence and to be the product of
forces acting unremittingly in the same direction over
extremely long periods of time’’ (von Engeln, 1942, p.
36). Even as late as 1969, when the 9th edition of Fritz
Machatschek’s Geomorphology, a standard text in
Germany for more than a generation (Machatschek,
1969), was translated posthumously into English,
Wegener’s hypothesis was noted respectfully but
arguments for and against it were not discussed.
Some 40 years after Wegener conceived of continental
drift, the concept was revived and extended
during two remarkable decades of geophysical, oceanographic,
and paleomagnetic research between
1950 and 1970 (Fig. 1). The tale has been much told
and will not be repeated here (e.g., Hallam, 1973). In
short, the intellectual climate, exhausted, rearranged,
and stimulated by World War II, now found evidence
to vindicate the essence of Wegener’s mobilist theory,
and subsequent decades have seen a massive expansion
of research in global tectonics and its inclusion,
to a greater or lesser extent, in modern geomorphology
texts. In the English language, although absent
from the 2nd edition of William D. Thornbury’s
Principles of Geomorphology (1969) and from Robert
V. Ruhe’s Geomorphology (Ruhe, 1975), plate-tectonic
concepts were incorporated by H.F. Garner into
The Origin of Landscapes (Garner, 1974), and,
depending on a book’s emphasis, are treated in most
contemporary texts (e.g., Ritter et al., 2002; Bloom,
1998; Summerfield, 1999).
2.6. Davisian theory
Whereas many bold theories have struggled for
acceptance by a skeptical Earth Science community,
the concept produced by William Morris Davis regarding
the cyclic response of landforms achieved rapid
and widespread, if not universal, acclamation (Fig. 1).
In essence, the Davisian model, presented in many
papers beginning in 1884 (Davis, 1884, 1899),
explained landforms in terms of structure, process,
and stage. It assumed rapid uplift followed by prolonged
structural quiescence during which geomorphic
processes, assumed rather than measured, denuded the
landscape over a time interval that was equated with
life in terms of youth, maturity, and old age. This was
an evolutionary model that placed emphasis on inevitable,
continuous, and irreversible processes of change
through time although, over time, a new cycle could be
initiated by renewed structural uplift or climate
change. If one accepted the basic premise, the Davisian
model was alarmingly simple, couched in terms which
most students could readily understand. Furthermore,
his professorial appointment at Harvard University, his
founding role in the Association of American Geographers,
and his visiting appointments and travels
overseas, provided Davis with platforms from which
to proselytize, to project his boundless enthusiasm and
strong will (Chorley et al., 1973).
As a consequence, the Davisian model became
exceedingly popular and generated three generations
of disciples whose influence pervaded geomorphology
and its texts during the first half of the twentieth
century, and often beyond. The works by Worcester
(1939), Lobeck (1939), and Von Engeln (1942), noted
above, were a triad of influential texts by true
believers. Furthermore, whereas the cyclic model
focused initially on so-called ‘normal’ or fluvial landscapes,
it was sooner or later extended into such
disparate landscapes as coasts (Johnson, 1919), karst
(Sanders, 1921, after Cvijic), and periglacial environments
(Peltier, 1950).
The anglophone world beyond North America was
similarly enamored with the Davisian model, notably
in Britain where a generation of students labored on
denudation chronologies under the influence of Wooldridge
and Linton (1939, 1955), and in New Zealand
where Charles Cotton (1885–1970) applied the system,
surprisingly, to an area of tectonic instability
(Cotton, 1922).
Beyond anglophone audiences, Davisian ideas
received less adulation, even hostility in Germany
from such worthies as Passarge, Hettner, and Davis’
erstwhile friend Albrecht Penck and his son Walther
(1888–1923), but variations on the theme long dominated
and constrained the practice of geomorphology
in Europe. In France, for example, such variations
were reflected in works ranging from those of de
Martonne (1909) to those of Birot (1960).
Apart from German opposition, much of which
came to focus on Penckian alternatives, major cracks
in the Davisian paradigm began to appear among
anglophone followers towards the middle of the
20th century. Some, such as Kirk Bryan (1940),
who wrote critically of the mild intoxication of Davis’
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342 335
limpid prose, may never have been convinced, while
the resurrection of mechanics and equilibrium concepts
in the process studies of Leopold and others
(e.g., Leopold and Maddock, 1953) and the landscape
interpretations of Hack (1960), the introduction of
more quantitative approaches to geomorphology by
Horton (1945) and Strahler (1952, 1954), and
improved understanding of Earth time, all sounded
the death knell of the Davisian model that was so
firmly rung by Chorley et al. (1964, 1973). Leighly
had earlier emphasized a critical weakness in the
Davisian method by stating that ‘‘Davis’s great mistake
was the assumption that we knew the processes
involved in the development of land forms, We don’t;
and until we do we shall be ignorant of the general
course of their development’’ (Leighly, 1940, p. 225).
Much the same could be said about Davis’ understanding
of tectonics. Even so, works in the Davisian
mold continued to appear, for example Small’s Study
of Landforms (1972), but most modern texts, reflecting
current understanding of tectonics and process,
now place the cycle of erosion in its historical context
or at most as an end member in a spectrum of possible
landforming scenarios (Ritter et al., 2002; Bloom,
1998; Summerfield, 1999).
2.7. Recent theory and practice: the case of drainagenetwork
analysis
Recent events are always more difficult to place in
an historical context, essentially because they are
relatively new and cannot be viewed with the objective
retrospection that comes with time. Nor is it the
purpose of this paper to provide such an assessment.
However, the conditions that affected the fate of earlier
theories have continued to flourish over the recent
past. Modern students might reasonably ask why, with
many statistical procedures already provided before
1900 by Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and others, the
introduction of quantitative methods to geomorphology
was so long delayed (Fig. 1). The explanation for
this lag can only be partly attributed to the Davisian
school because there were other conservative forces at
work. Morisawa (1988), discussing the role of the
Geological Society of America Bulletin in fostering
quantitative geomorphology, could have added that
Robert Horton’s innovative approach to drainagebasin
analysis languished for a decade or more in
search of a wider audience before its eventual publication
in 1945.
The growth of a more quantitative geomorphology
in the 1950s was due in part to Arthur Strahler’s
refinement of Horton’s approach to drainage networks
and the former’s encouragement of rigorous statistical
testing among his students at Columbia University,
students who in turn carried the message far and wide
(Strahler, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1980). But, again, the
study of network-ordering systems was by no means
new. For example, Woldenberg (1997) has shown how
James Keill, M.D. (1673–1719) introduced geometric
progression scaling laws into his work on the anatomy
and physiology of arterial trees as early as 1708. Keill’s
specific contributions to arterial networks were known
to James Hutton, who had also studied medicine at
Leiden, and who compared river networks to venous
trees, which return blood to the heart. There had been
other stream-ordering systems, notably those of Jackson
(1834) and Gravelius (1914), but not until the
publication of Horton’s paper in 1945 and its subsequent
refinement by Strahler were such ideas incorporated
into modern geomorphology (Goudie, 1978;
Jarvis and Woldenberg, 1984; Woldenberg, 1997).
Later, however, enthusiasm for analyzing drainage
networks waned, at least temporarily, after Shreve
(1966, 1967) pointed out that the so-called ‘laws’
developed by Horton, Strahler, and others were only
to be expected from topologically random distributions.
Shreve’s random topology model was in turn
challenged, for example by Abrahams and Mark
(1986), and the field of network analysis experienced
a resurgence. In recent years, analytical concepts
pioneered by geomorphologists have been espoused
by anatomists, physicists, engineers, and others concerned
with fractal trees and other organizational
attributes of natural and artificial systems, both deterministic
and random, and stream ordering systems
continue to be used for ranking purposes by watershed
specialists (e.g., Rodriguez-Iturbe and Rinaldo, 1997).
The fluctuating fortunes of drainage network analysis
are reflected in geomorphology texts published in
English subsequent to the initial work of Horton and
the Strahler school. The path-breaking book by Leopold
et al. (1964) devoted an entire chapter to drainage
basin morphometry, but later editions of existing texts
ignored the concept. Thus, Thornbury’s 2nd edition of
Principles of Geomorphology (Thornbury, 1969),
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342336
while discussing Horton’s overland flow model and
stream texture and Strahler’s earlier work, makes no
reference to network analysis. The English translation
of Machatschek’s (1969) Geomorphology also remained
silent on the issue, although this was no
reflection on the original author who had died in
1957. In contrast, in new texts published within the
next few years, Small (1972) recognized the utility of
morphometric techniques, Garner integrated Hortonian
concepts into his text (1974), and Ruhe (1975)
devoted an entire chapter to drainage nets and basins,
including the so-called ‘laws’, but did not mention
Shreve’s work. The first editions of most contemporary
texts also provided measured evaluations of the analytical
techniques introduced by Horton, Strahler, and
Shreve (e.g., Ritter, 1978; Bloom, 1978; Summerfield,
1991), and these have continued in recent editions
(Ritter et al., 2002; Bloom, 1998; Summerfield, 1999).
3. Lessons learned
In the several examples presented above, the fate of
new ideas and fresh research in a broader educational
milieu appears to reflect a number of constraints and
opportunities indicative of the intellectual climate of
the time. The lag time between new concepts and their
incorporation into the mainstream educational process
is conditioned by such variables as establishment
response, simplicity and testability of ideas, language
barriers, personalities, and survivability. From this
record, a number of lessons may be learned that
may prepare present and future generations of scholars
in their quest for the acceptance of new ideas.
3.1. Beware the establishment!
The history of the Earth Sciences shows how many
innovative ideas have been rejected by the academic
environment of the time, itself commonly a reflection
of the contemporary religious, political, and social
milieu. Uniformitarianism had a prolonged struggle
against the entrenched catastrophism of the late 18th
and early 19th centuries. Continental drift was eventually
rejected by the geological establishment of the
earlier 20th century. Conversely, despite inherent
weaknesses, Davis’ cyclic erosion scheme had prolonged
success in anglophone circles of the early 20th
century, just as the climatic geomorphologies of Julius
Bu¨del and Jean Tricart had a lengthy run in mid-20th
century Europe, essentially because they became the
establishment. Likewise, the glacial theory gained
credibility because Agassiz had excellent links to the
establishment in Europe and later patronage in North
America. For similar reasons, Wegener’s ideas on
continental drift were given a fair hearing in central
Europe, though often ridiculed in North America.
Such examples raise the issue of the establishment’s
responsibility to foster alternative dialogues, rather
than to retreat into the security of accepted doctrine.
In a modern context, the establishment can be interpreted
to include not only senior academicians but also
journal editors, funding agencies, principal investigators,
and faculty review committees. It is incumbent
upon learned societies and scientific journals to foster
dialogue between opposing views (e.g., Birkeland,
1998, on Schaffer) and to maintain an open mind at
the research frontier (unlike the American Journal of
Science in its early years). For example, the symposia
staged by the American Association of Petroleum
Geologists in 1926 (van Waterschoot van der Gracht,
1928) and the Royal Society in 1964 (Blackett et al.,
1965) represent opposite ends of the spectrum in the
debate on continental drift, but these occurred 38 years
apart. And funding agencies must of course sponsor
alternative approaches to perplexing problems and
searching tests of conflicting hypotheses.
A feature of modern geomorphology, with its
penchant for research teams funded by the establishment,
is the tendency for most students to replicate the
work of their magistri, in part because they are
beholding to advisors and their funding agencies for
support. This may create a comfortable milieu for the
student but it presents the danger of stifling originality,
of assigning a student to a single piece in a jigsaw
puzzle of broader knowledge. Advisors and principal
investigators have a responsibility to ensure an independent
spirit of enquiry among their students.
Despite the increasing trend towards team research
in geomorphology, there must always be opportunities
for individual thinkers freely to express their ideas.
3.2. Keep it simple but test it!
The success of the Davisian model was due in part
to its compelling simplicity, in part to its evolutionary
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342 337
implications that fit well into contemporary Darwinian
notions of organization in nature and progressive
change through time (Stoddart, 1966). Such was not
the case with 18th century concepts of uniform flow
and slope stability which were given cumbrous mathematical
expressions unlikely to be used by any but
the practicing engineer. Nor was it true of the quantitative
revolution that invaded geomorphology in the
1950s, into a community unprepared for the language
of statistics. As late as 1969, William Thornbury in
the 2nd edition of his Principles of Geomorphology, a
firm favorite with instructors over two decades, admitted
that:
‘‘Some readers may be disappointed that there is
no treatment of Quantitative Geomorphology.
The main reason for this omission is that I did not
feel competent to do justice to it’’ (Thornbury,
1969, p. vii).
This was a disarmingly honest admission but, perhaps
needless to say, the book soon faded from the
educational scene.
While simplicity is to be commended, new ideas
must be testable. The Davisian model may have been
intuitively compelling but it was untestable in the
prevailing scientific climate of the earlier 20th century,
essentially because there were no precise techniques
available to gauge the absolute timing and frequency
of tectonic uplift and denudational processes. Peneplain
seekers and denudation chronologists of the time
thus were free to speculate on the model’s application
to their regions. However, as radiometric techniques
matured after mid-century, so the limitations of the
model were soon revealed. Likewise, lacking accurate
chronologies and a full understanding of weathering
rates and climate change, climatic geomorphologists
could readily speculate on long-term relationships
between climate and landforms.
3.3. Read widely and think originally!
At the present time, when there are so many
practicing geomorphologists, it is instructive to note
that in the past many new ideas emerged from
individuals who were reading widely and thinking
deeply at the margins of conventional wisdom. At
best, uniformitarianism and glacial theory were marginal
to mainstream scientific thought of their time
(Imbrie and Imbrie, 1979; Orme, 1989). Though long
ignored, Gilbert’s ideas were firmly based on his wide
reading of contemporary advances in classical
mechanics, especially thermodynamics (Chorley and
Beckinsale, 1980). More recently, in the 1950s and
1960s, systems theory produced a flurry of intellectual
activity not because the concept was new—it was
firmly based in the thermodynamics of the previous
century—but because astute thinkers, such as Arthur
Strahler and Richard Chorley, recognized its relevance
to geomorphology (Strahler, 1950, 1980; Chorley,
1962; Chorley and Kennedy, 1971).
Until quite recently, the emergence of national
schools of geomorphological thought was linked to
limitations imposed by language and communication
barriers. Such schools developed not so much because
of intrinsic merit or overt nationalism, but because
scientists in a particular country were more comfortable
with their own language and environment, and
less familiar with work in other countries and other
languages. That so much seminal work germane to
fluvial geomorphology was published in Italian, German,
and French during the 18th century goes far
towards explaining its tardy acceptance in the Englishspeaking
arena. In the Europe of the earlier 20th
century, distinctive British, French, German, Polish,
and Russian schools of geomorphology functioned
more or less in isolation, dominated by strong personalities
whose ideas were not well understood beyond
national borders. Even within the established anglophone
world of Australia, Britain, New Zealand, North
America, and South Africa, where language was not a
barrier, distinctive schools of geomorphology
emerged, in part because of different environmental
challenges, in part because ideas developed in relative
isolation. This is not to say that there were no
exchanges across language barriers or between continents—Davis’
ideas were known in Europe from his
own efforts and those of translators (e.g., Davis, 1912),
just as Penck’s views became better known to anglophone
audiences long after his death in 1923 (e.g.,
Penck, 1953). But imperfect translations and rare
appearances mitigate against ready acceptance of
ideas, especially where intellectual environments are
innately skeptical of foreign notions.
The situation has of course changed rapidly over
recent decades, as travel has become easier, electronic
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342338
communication has exploded, and English has
become the lingua franca of so much scientific discourse.
Nevertheless, for geomorphology to prosper in
the future, an understanding of ideas published in
other languages and other places remains an essential
ingredient of the field. It is salutary to note that
Gilbert’s non-linear view of geomorphology, long
ignored at home, appealed to some of his contemporaries
overseas, notably Philippson in Germany, and
de la Noe¨ and de Margerie in France (Chorley and
Beckinsale, 1980).
3.4. Live long and prosper!
Max Planck’s much-quoted aphorism may be
applied to geomorphology, namely that ‘‘A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
opponents and making them see the light, but rather
because its opponents eventually die, and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it’’ (Planck,
1949). Uniformitarianism and glacial theory eventually
succeeded because their most strident opponents
passed from the scene and young scientists were more
receptive, although the lag time was often considerable—Charles
Lyell, the high priest of uniformitarianism,
was born in 1797, the year in which James
Hutton died. Longevity and the strength to last the
course are among the important attributes of the
sponsors of new ideas. Walther Penck, who died at
the early age of 35 in 1923, and Wegener who died on
his third Greenland expedition in 1930, were not so
blessed.
Another feature of human nature is that youthful
innovators often become conservative dogmatists
with age. For example, despite his early espousal
of Huttonian concepts, Lyell’s inflexibility on uniformitarian
issues caused him to carry wavering
support for the iceberg origin of glacial deposits to
his death in 1875. Harold Jeffreys, a youthful pioneer
of geophysics, remained strongly opposed to
Wegener’s mobilist notions. And opposition to a
more quantitative geomorphology in the mid-20th
century was led by aging establishment figures who
didn’t understand and didn’t want to know. Eventually,
however, resistance fades from the scene, new
personalities emerge, and new ideas take root among
students who are often unaware of previous strug-
gles.
4. Conclusion
Returning to the premise of geomorphology’s twin
foundations, it is evident that the historical approach
eventually prospered in the educational arena because
it was a logical extension of the evolutionary thinking
that had dominated science and intrigued the general
public for more than a century. Hutton and Playfair
influenced Lyell, Lyell influenced Darwin, and Darwin
influenced Davis who in turn spawned three
generations of disciples. Paraphrasing Greene (1982),
each of these individuals served as a torchbearer in an
historical relay race. Inevitably perhaps, the geomorphology
it fostered, essentially a study of the history of
landforms based on a preconceived notion, became
sterile. However, with the advent of improved dating
techniques and a better appreciation of geomorphic
processes, the historical approach was refashioned
during the later 20th century into comprehensive
models of landscape change which incorporate both
tectonic and climatic forcing (e.g., Bloom, 1998;
Orme, 2002).
In contrast, during the prolonged ascendancy of the
historical method, the mechanistic approach seemed
to have no relevance to the discipline. Scientists,
fervently pursuing the details of Earth history, mostly
failed to apply concepts of mechanics to the interpretation
of surface processes and landforms. This was
due in large measure to the origin of such concepts
among practical engineers and, in the anglophone
world, by their primary availability mainly in foreign
languages (Orme, 1989). That such concepts reemerged
during the later 20th century, and have since
been integrated into mainstream geomorphology,
reflected the links that were eventually forged with
the hydraulics texts and practices of earlier times. At
the same time, as Ritter (1988) has emphasized, a
reawakening of interest in Gilbert’s concepts of
dynamic equilibrium, borrowed from classical thermodynamics,
was reflected in Hack’s non-cyclic
interpretation of Appalachian landscapes (Hack,
1960) and in re-evaluation of the time factor in geomorphology
(e.g., Schumm and Lichty, 1965).
The foregoing paper has sought to address, by
example, some of the questions raised in the opening
paragraphs concerning the fate of geomorphological
ideas in an educational context. The path to leadership
in the field is indeed a rocky one. Many eventual
A.R. Orme / Geomorphology 47 (2002) 325–342 339
masters were ignored, and some ridiculed, during their
lifetime; many did not live to see their ideas vindicated
or incorporated into mainstream education; and there
are presumably future leaders (‘master’ is anachronistic)
who are currently striving for recognition of
ideas for which the establishment is unprepared. Furthermore,
while scientists argue at length about theory,
engineers have been applying basic principles to
practical problems. Therein lies the particular challenge
for present and future generations of geomorphologists,
namely, to combine modern theory with
useful practice in the real world of environmental
management and public policy.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Michael Woldenberg and
anonymous referees for their constructive comments
in the preparation of this paper.
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