"People look upon the natural world as if all motions of the past had set the stage for us and were now frozen. They look out on a scene like this and think, It was all made for us- even if the San Andreas Fault is at their feet. To imagine that turmoil is in the past and somehow we are now in a more stable time seems to be a psychological need. Leonardo Seeber, of Lamont-Doherty, referred to it as the principle of least astonishment. As we have seen this fall, the time we're in is just as active as the past. The time between events is long only with respect to a human lifetime." - Elridge Moores in John McPhee's Assembling California
"In many respects we only have a two-dimensional snapshot view of the geologic processes, Moreover, the interpretation of geologic data was probably influenced by the psychological need to view the earth as a stable environment. Manifestations of current tectonism were often perceived as the last gasps of a geologically active past. Thus, subjected to the principle of least astonishment, geological science has always tended to adopt the most static interpretation allowed by the data" -Leonardo Seeber
"In many respects we only have a two-dimensional snapshot view of the geologic processes, Moreover, the interpretation of geologic data was probably influenced by the psychological need to view the earth as a stable environment. Manifestations of current tectonism were often perceived as the last gasps of a geologically active past. Thus, subjected to the principle of least astonishment, geological science has always tended to adopt the most static interpretation allowed by the data" -Leonardo Seeber
