To Interpret the Earth: Ten Ways to Be Wrong

The Scientist Likes Contemplation: Do Senior Scientists Contemplate Everything Methodically? Thus runs one mnemonic suggested by Stanley Schumm to epitomize the central thesis of the slim but provocative book, To Interpret the Earth: Ten Ways to Be Wrong. No, the author warns us, neither is this a discourse on some presumed “scientific method” nor is it a treatise on either the philosophy of science in general or its application to the Earth sciences. Extensive references are given to those literatures. “For example, Schumm gives an insightful account of the method of multiple working hypotheses (or, as one wag termed it, “the method of multiple prejudices”) which has numbered among its proponents several influential Earth scientists.”