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COMMENTARY
Reginald Aldworth Daly on

‘much data, but little thinking’

A.M.C. Şengör, İTÜ Maden Fakültesi, Jeoloji Bölümü ve In a paper published in 2014 in Geodinamica Acta titled “Outcrops,
Avrasya Yerbilimleri Enstitüsü, Ayazağa 34469 Istanbul, Turkey Isotopic Ages, Terranes and the Undesirable Fate of Tectonic
Interpretations” (https://doi.org/10.1080/09853111.2013.858953), I had
In the 13 Sept. 2021 issue of Nature (v. 597, p. 305), Paul Nurse complained about the same problem of “much data, little thought.”
published a very timely warning for biologists titled “Biology must The superman Daly was hoping for in geology did come from among
generate ideas as well as data” with the subtitle “Data should be a his countrymen, when J. Tuzo Wilson (1908–1993) invented the the-
means to knowledge, not an end in themselves.” When I read it, it ory of plate tectonics in 1965. It was followed by three decades of
reminded me of a piece published more than a century ago by the superb research in geology, but then geology sank back into its paro-
great Canadian geologist Reginald Aldworth Daly (1871–1957) in the chial nature, dominated by a craze of data collecting mostly without
introduction to his Igneous Rocks and Their Origin (1914, p. xxii): good theories; that activity added much to our knowledge, but not
much to our understanding of the structure and the history of our
What geology, like every other science, needs to-day is a frank recogni- planet. This reminds me of the episode in the twentieth century,
tion that imaginative thought is not dangerous to science but is the life which I called elsewhere “the Dark Intermezzo” between 1924,
blood of science. Even the universities do not fully recognize this fact
and are notoriously failing to develop the stimuli which are necessary for when the great genius Émile Argand (1880–1940), the only true heir
the controlled, scientific imagination. Not only is geology now charac- to Suess, withdrew from geology and 1965 when Wilson put forward
terized by rigorous thought; by its nature as a science involving long the theory of plate tectonics.
excursions into space—inaccessible places—and time—epochs long I think all geologists should read Daly’s wise words from more
passed—geology is peculiarly fitted to stimulate the regulated imagina- than a century ago and contemplate what went wrong. I think we
tion, a process at the core of the highest education. Science is built on a
long succession of mistakes. Their recognition has meant progress. should ponder whether our education system in geology needs a
Progress, indefinitely more rapid, will be possible when men of science reform. Let me end with a quotation from Charles Darwin:
have more generally lost the fear of making mistakes in using to the “I am a firm believer, that without speculation there is no good
uttermost their powers of correlation and deduction. Science is drowning & original observation” (Darwin to Wallace, 22nd Dec. 1857;
in facts. It can only be rescued by the growth of systems of thought. see Burkhardt and Smith, editors, 1990, The Correspondence of
Better than none are “little systems” that “have their day and cease to
be.” We can hope that geology, like every other science, will find its Charles Darwin. Volume 6: 1856–1857: Cambridge, Cambridge
superman who shall show us the building hidden behind the scaffolding University Press, 1990, p. 35).
of myriad isolated facts of nature. Meantime, it is the duty of every
worker in science to strive for a complete mental system in his field of FURTHER READING
research and, however mistaken he may be, he should have the special Şengör, A.M.C., 2019, Observations: what for?: Canadian Journal of Earth
sympathy of fellows. The best sympathy is expressed in constructive Sciences, v. 56, p. xi–xiv.
criticism. The “facts” of to-day are the hypotheses of yesterday.

24 GSA Today | December 2021