Extremely scarce, 1st Edition of this very interesting book.
It was a work which was neglected or ridiculed at the time of its appearence. The few criticism that emerged in scientific journals were unfavorable and almost contemptuous.
William Lowthian Green (1819-1890), "an extraordinarily erudite Scot" (S. Warren Carey), developed here a highly peculiar theory about the Earth's structure: The Tetrahedral Theory.
The ideas contained in this theory are beautiful, holistic and visionary.
William Green was many times minister of the Kingdom of Hawaii. He had a key role in the 'Bayonet Constitution' that granted Pearl Harbor to U.S. government. Finally, U.S. annexed the Hawaii Islands.
''Part l of the Vestiges of the Molten Globe was published by Stanford in London in 1875. It didn’t fare well. The publisher wrote to him 'that he wants to get the remaining copies of the Vestiges of the Molten Globe out of his way'. They will not realize much as waste paper...
Part II of the Vestiges of the Molten Globe was printed and published in Honolulu in 1887 under Mr. Green’s own superintendence... Only a few copies of the work reached England, and these were sent by him personally to leading scientific men.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 21, 1900, p. 7)
''Another remarkable man, William Lowthian Green, working alone in Hawaii, remote from the conceptual constraints of the orthodox establishment, conceived not only Earth expansion but also interhemisphere torsion.''
S. Warren Carey: Theories of the Earth and Universe. A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences, 1988, p. 138
''He [W. L. Green] pointed out that a sphere has the minimum surface for a given volume, but of all regular figures, the tetrahedron has the maximum surface for a given volume. Hence if the crust of the earth solidified and thereby froze its surface area, further shrinkage of the interior could be accommodated with least work if the shell collapsed towards a tetrahedral form...
Briefly the evidence for a tetrahedral earth is:
(1) The face of the earth presents a north polar ocean surrounded by a continuous belt of northern lands from which protrude three meridional land rays which taper southward.
(2) A south polar continent is surrounded by a continuous belt of southern ocean from which protrude three meridional ocean rays which taper northward. The belts of land are like a pair of cog-wheels with interlocking teeth.
(3) The equator is not a plane of symmetry but of antithesis.
(4) Lands and seas are more or less antipodal: Antarctica is antipodal to the Arctic Ocean; the rather small continent of Australia is antipodal to the rather small North Atlantic Ocean; North America is antipodal to the Indian Ocean. Europe and Africa are more or less antipodal to the Pacific, and with a little fudging, the South Atlantic would be antipodal to East Asia.. The antipodal antithesis relates to the centre of the earth, not its axes…
The tetrahedral theory may not give a true model of the earth, but it does vividly express a truth about the earth, which is absent from most contemporary earth-models, mathematical or mental: the earth is not symmetrical; it is axially hemi-morphic, and radially tends to be tri-lobar.’'
Samuel Warren Carey: The Expanding Earth, 1976, pp. 228-231
''William Lowthian Green (1875, 1887) pioneered the idea that an equatorial torsional displacement had occurred between the northern and southern hemispheres, in order to explain the observation that the southern continents (Africa, South America, India and Australia) were consistently separated from the northern continents by zones of profound crustal disturbance and vulcanism. He argued that the shrinkage from the spherical to the tetrahedral form involved more increase in angular velocity for the three depressed faces of the tetrahedron on the southern hemisphere than for the three tetrahedral quoins of the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere therefore tended to drag further east than the northern - hence the zone of torsion.''
Samuel Warren Carey: Expanding Earth, p. 250
1st Edition, very rare, Honolulu, Hawaiian Gazette Publishing Co., 1887
8vo; pp. v, 337, 2 plts (plate 2 is a folded map: 'The Hawaiian Islands and Craters'), [1] folded tab., errata : figs.
Signed by author on endpaper in pencil W[illiam] G[reen]. The signature is like a dextral rotated sphenochasm!
Original brown cloth wrappers; a little chipped area at the front of middle spine, but professionally repaired; foxing on front end page and bit on title page; o/w very clean text. Book in good condition.
Price: USD 2,000,000.00
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