William Erickson
William Erickson | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Hendersonville, NC, United States |
| Known for | Geology, earth expansion, gravity, paleontology |
William C. Erickson is an American independent researcher based in Hendersonville, North Carolina, who is known for his writings on geology and the earth expansion (Growing Earth) hypothesis. His work also addresses questions of gravity and paleontology as they relate to the proposed expansion of the Earth over geological time.
Biography
Erickson lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in the United States. Working independently of mainstream institutional geology, he became a contributor to the international community of researchers who advocate the hypothesis that the Earth has increased in size throughout its history. He is one of a number of authors associated with the modern revival of Earth expansion ideas that trace back to the work of Alfred Wegener and later proponents such as S. Warren Carey, Hugh G. Owen, and Lester C. King.
Work
Erickson is the author of Ever Since Wegener: A Brief History of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis, a survey of the development of the Growing Earth and Earth expansion concepts up to roughly the late 1980s. The work traces the history of the idea from Wegener's continental drift onward and discusses several expanded-Earth models, including those of S. Warren Carey, Hugh G. Owen, and Lester C. King, along with the revival of expansion ideas during the mid-twentieth-century growth of marine geology.
He also contributed the chapter "A Personal History of Earth Expansion" to The Hidden History of Earth Expansion: Told by Researchers Creating a Modern Theory of the Earth (2020), edited by Stephen W. Hurrell. The volume collects first-person accounts by researchers who support the expansion hypothesis, and Erickson appears alongside contributors such as Hugh G. Owen, Cliff Ollier, James Maxlow, Jan Koziar, and others.
Within the expansion literature, Erickson's writing emphasizes the historical continuity of the idea and its relationship to observations in geology and paleontology. The Earth expansion hypothesis itself remains a minority position not accepted by mainstream geology, which explains the same observations through plate tectonics.
Books
- Ever Since Wegener: A Brief History of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis
- "A Personal History of Earth Expansion", chapter in The Hidden History of Earth Expansion, ed. Stephen W. Hurrell (Oneoff Publishing, 2020)