Geodynamic models-an evaluation and a synthesis. : Van Bemmelen, RW Textbook. Volume 2 of the series Developments in geotectonics. 55F. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1972, 267P

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Geodynamics, the study of global movements and of the forces driving them, is a relatively fresh offshoot from the vigorously branching tree of the earth sciences. Before the advent of Alfred Wegener on this scene in the early nineteen-hundreds, the idea of permanency in the distribution of continents and oceans was almost sacrosanct. Wegeners concept of continental drift, visionary and immature and controversial as it was at the time, opened an era of critical examination in geodynamics. With men like Vening Meinesz, Umbgrove and Van Bemmelen, Dutch geoscience was in the vanguard of these researches. It was no coincidence, I think, that all three of them have, at some significant stage in their lives, been concerned with one of the most mobile tracts of the earth: the Indonesian archipelago. Van Bemmelens association with Indonesia was particularly close, long and fruitful. It resulted in numerous fundamental publications among which his Geology of Indonesia, recently reprinted, stands out monumentally. It was there too that his undation hypothesis originated, starting off as a purely fixistic concept on all but the smallest scales, later revised and adapted to allow for large-scale mobilistic ideas. In recent years, during the term of the Upper Mantle Project, the concepts of sea-floor spreading and global plate tectonics have presented themselves rather forcefully and have succeeded in adding a new perspective to geodynamics as well as in giving much impetus to geologists and geophysicists jointly studying the dynamic features of our globe. Undoubtedly the application of these concepts has engendered much progress in understanding global movements in the not too-distant past and the present and it is hoped that the fortheoming Geodynamics Project will enable its extension in space and time. We should al ways bear in mind, however, that exciting discoveries and revealing hypotheses are of necessity rather gross simplifications of the complex patterns of reality.