vi PREFACE 



began to ask when they first looked upward at the stars and 

 inward toward themselves. We have good reason to believe that 

 the earth is nearly as old as the Milky Way galaxy, and the records 

 of the past preserved on earth, if we could only learn to read them, 

 are the best archive available to us of the history of the galaxy. 

 Most of these records are locked in the sediments and rocks 

 beneath the sea, in the sea water itself, and in the atmosphere 

 above the waters. Even more significant are the problems of the 

 origin and history of living things, and here again we must turn 

 to the oceans for many of our answers. 



During World War II one of my friends in Washington had a 

 cardboard sign crudely lettered in red over his desk. It said, "Fan 

 the flames of controversy." No motto could be more appropriate 

 for a scientist, for science progresses not only through the thinking 

 of individuals but also through individuals talking and thinking 

 together, through the mutual thinking and free interplay of 

 several minds stimulated by a common problem and quickened by 

 each other. This is especially true of oceanography, in which the 

 answers to many questions require the application of more kinds 

 of knowledge than can be held in the mind of one man. The best 

 mutual thinking is done not when our minds are cooled by plati- 

 tudinous politeness, but when they are warmed by a hot discussion. 



One of the lasting values of the International Oceanographic 

 Congress was that a number of bonfires of controversy were lighted 

 and some of them were fanned to a bright flame. 



Roger Revelle 



Scripps Institution of Oceanography 

 La Jolla, California 

 January 1961 



