The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the semantic relation between continental drift and plate tectonics. The numerous attempts to account for this case in either Kuhnian or Lakatosian terms have been convincingly dismissed by Rachel Laudan (1978), who nevertheless acknowledged that there was not yet a plausible alternative to explain the so called “geological revolution”. In studying this case under a new light, the notion of embedding, as distinguished from other sorts of inter-theoretical relations (Moulines 1996, 2010, 2011), will have a particular significance.
