You write:
Now I would like
>to see what people were saying in the 1950s. Was the argument that if the
>moon had been around for 2 billion years it must have thick dust on it
>mainstream scientific thought or was it a minority idea among scientists
>but a common idea among popularizers of science. I do think that Jonathan
>has a point that although the thread is about moon dust I find that ICR
>people have polarized the issue by emphasizing the dust as necessarily
>being the result of uniformitarian assumptions when there were other
>concerns and possible causes of moon dust that would not fit within a
>uniformitarian construct. Let's look back in time and see exactly who and
>how the original argument that dust on the moon might be a significant
>concern. Again, this has been a most interesting thread. I thought the
>moon dust argument was old stuff but there are some interesting nuances to
>all of this.
I was not a part of the scientific establishment in the 50's so can only
speak to what I "knew". It had nothing to do with creation or evolution.
It was just the prevaling perception on the street (and obvoiously in
National Geographic also) that there would be a lot of dust onthe moon.
This must have been rooted in some dictum of science, since I cannot
imabgine someone just inventing the story (except maybe housewives who saw
how often they had to dust - in which case, maybe it is an old wives
tale!). I also would like someone to unravel the science of it. I am
getting interested in this story too. If ICR or anybody else is still
using this story, you would think (maybe this is optimistic) that thye
would have gone to the trouble to document the roots of the argument. If
so, someone out there must know about it.
Art
http://biology.swau.edu