Greinar (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.01.1977, Side 9

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY
This paper may be considered as an attempt of coordination
in geoscience, and was originally inspired by the result of our
study: Problems in Geology and Geophysics I (15).
Coordination is then used in two senses: 1) coordination of
conclusions of different branches of geology and./or geophysics,
and 2) coordination of experimental and/or observational re-
sults with known laws or principles, or provisorily with work-
ing hypotheses. In both senses, coordination is a no less im-
portant aim in geoscience than it has proved to be in physics,
for instance.
Known laws or principles, or working hypotheses, give valu-
able guidance to observations or measurements, and aims for
experimental research. Conversely, such guided collection of
facts provides tests of working hypotheses and eventually im-
proves them, verifies or refutes them, as the case may be. But
in any case, coordination is an unavoidable task if geoscience
is to be an ordered science and not just an encyclopedia of
data, nor of such conclusions within one branch of geoscience
which violate facts of another.
Already the writing of these chapters has proved to be most
fruitful for the author. He has been able to infer and verify
by partial testing the local character of the glaciation of Ice-
land during the Older Dryas Stage, has thus seen that the main
shieldvolcanoes are situated in unglaciated places of that stage,
and he has been able to verify in a number of cases that these
volcanoes were actually formed at that time. The asymmetry
of the local glaciers of that time proves strong easterly winds.
In postglacial time, the dated eruptions crowd in the two Moor