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www.geotechnicalnews.com Geotechnical News • June 2014 35
GEOSYNTHETICS
Welcome by Jonathan Fannin, Editor
In gathering my thoughts for the
return of this column on geosynthet-
ics, I am reminded that all endeavours
to disseminate knowledge, be they
in the form of a conference gather-
ing, a workshop meeting or a webinar
broadcast should adhere to the basic
principle of a timely contribution that
is informative – and, most importantly,
should provide at least some lasting
influence. In other words, endeavours
to disseminate knowledge should
be thought-provoking. Now, on the
subject of webinars and geosynthetics,
I have more to share later in this col-
umn. But first, on the matter of being
thought-provoking, let us go back in
time and give brief consideration to
the organization of the 1st International
Conference on Soil Mechanics and
Foundation Engineering that was held
at Harvard University in June 1936. In
a Foreword to the conference proceed-
ings, Arthur Casagrande wrote “The
unexpectedly large number of contri-
butions to the Conference and the fact
that the majority of the authors, par-
ticularly of some of the most valuable
papers, have partially disregarded
one or other of the conditions for
contributions to the Conference, have
made the work of the Editorial Board
very difficult.” Notwithstanding these
‘local’ difficulties, the conference
gathering proved to be a tremendous
success, attracting so many contribu-
tions that the papers, discussions and
additional contribution of special
merit filled three volumes: Casagrande
went on to declare that “in view of
the fact that the printing costs for the
entire three volumes will be more than
double those estimated, the Commit-
tee on Organization has decided that
the registration fee for the Confer-
ence members applying after May 15,
1936 shall be ten dollars.” I hope the
return of this column on geosynthetics
proves equally attractive as a means
for knowledge dissemination, albeit
in a different format, and provides an
equally good return on the investment
of time and effort by you, the reader,
to peruse its contents.
Karl Terzaghi (Fig. 1) was elected,
at the 1936 conference, to the office
of President of the newly-formed
International Society for Soil Mechan-
ics and Foundation Engineering. In
his opening presidential address to the
delegates, he spoke to a number of
issues including The Conflict between
Theory and Reality, and The Truth
and Fiction in Textbook Engineering.
Some may consider these two issues
to be as relevant today, more than 75
years later, as they were at the time
of his original address. On the latter,
Terzaghi observed “In pure science a
very sharp distinction is made between
hypotheses, theories, and laws. The
difference between these three catego-
ries resides exclusively in the weight
of sustaining evidence. On the other
hand, in foundation and earthwork
engineering, everything is called a
theory after it appears in print, and if
the theory finds its way into a text-
book, many readers are inclined to
call it a law.” He proceeded to observe
that “Whatever evidence is available
can be classed into one of the follow-
ing five categories:
a. No evidence whatsoever;
b. Evidence obtained by distorting the
facts;
c. Unbalanced evidence; that is,
evidence obtained by eliminating
all those facts which do not sustain
the claim;
d. Inadequate evidence, covering the
entire range of present knowledge,
yet insufficient to exclude the pos-
sibility of a subsequent discovery
of contradictory facts; and,
e. Adequate evidence.”
All of which led him to believe that
“successful work in soil mechanics
and foundation engineering requires
not only a thorough grounding in
theory combined with an open eye for
possible sources of error, but also an
amount of observation and of mea-
surement in the field far in excess of
anything attempted by the preceding
generations of engineers.” Optimisti-
cally, he was of the opinion that “By
patient observation we have learned to
discriminate between what we really
know and what we merely believed”.
He was, by all accounts, an exacting
individual, an insight that became very
apparent to me when reading through
a significant portion of his professional
correspondence held in the collections
of the Terzaghi Library at the Nor-
wegian Geotechnical Institute (Fig.
2), while preparing a manuscript on
Figure 1. Karl Terzaghi, project spe-
cialist for the selection and installa-
tion of the PVC geomembrane at
the Mission (now Terzaghi) Dam,
Canada.