INTRODUCTION:

What is 'A COMPLETE SUITE'?

Described as a musical allegory of the application of continuum mechanics to structural geology and tectonics, the one act play called 'A Complete Suite' was presented at the GSA Hot Topics Session on November 12, 2000 in Reno, Nevada. This session, sponsored by the Structural Geology and Tectonics Division of the GSA, addressed the question "Kinematics vs. Mechanics: Are only one or both useful rationales for understanding rock deformation?"

Bill Dunne organized the session as a debate and the moderator was Jim Evans. As part of their contribution professors David Pollard and Ray Fletcher offered the play, which has now been edited into a twenty-minute video suitable for classroom viewing and designed to stimulate discussion of the debate topic and other questions related to the practice and scientific methodology of structural geology.

'A Complete Suite' features former Stanford students in the starring roles. Professors Pollard and Fletcher perform the parts of two Muses who provide a Prologue and Epilogue in the Shakespearean tradition.

The drama is set in 1717, a year when both Handel and Newton lived in London and is based on the premise that Handel has lost his compositional ability by neglecting note duration (kinematics), note intensity (dynamics), and tonal relations (constitutive laws). A mysterious storm blows Hopkins from the future and Hooke from the past to join Newton in Handel's studio. Using the analogy between music and mechanics, they help Handel regain his muse, and conclude that only by virtue of a complete suite of relationships will either discipline produce pleasing results. For more complete historical notes on the characters, see HISTORICAL NOTES.

Inspired by the night's events (a dream?), William Hopkins returns to the 19th century and writes his famous monograph of 1835 'Researches in Physical Geology' in which he lays down the foundations of quantitative structural geology. Hopkins' methodology begins with a geometric and kinematic description of the geological structure; then postulates a general force to drive the deformation; and finally derives the motions of the evolving structure according to the constitutive laws and the equations of motion - i.e. a complete mechanics.

The video of the play, taped before a live audience at the Hot Topics Session of the GSA Meeting in Reno and edited at Stanford University Media Solutions, is available from this website.