The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences / Кембриджская энциклопедия наук о Земле

Today the term plate tectonics is not only familiar to scientists, it is entering everyday language and finding its way into dictionaries. The resulting transformation of the way in which we regard the Earth has brought about a reappraisal of the vast accumulation of information about the surface of the Earth collected by geographers, geologists, oceanographers and others over the centuries, reviewing and reinterpreting that information in the comprehensive new framework provided by the new plate tectonic concept. But more than that, this revolution has brought about a change of approach in the scientific study of the Earth. No longer is geology a secondrate descriptive science-it has joined forces with the physical sciences in a new and more cohesive whole to which the term Earth sciences is now so much more appropriate. <...>