The long development times of oceanic technologies and internal time scales relative to human planning and reward horizons tends to make progress look incremental. In this talk I will try to assess the shift in understanding of the ocean circulation and its climate consequences over the past 50 years. History teaches us that attempts to forecast the future directions of scientific fields are usually completely futile. Nonetheless, physical oceanography at least, is a branch of fluid dynamics, and this field is one that has evolved greatly in the past 50 years.
Some fields of science do mature, and become wholly incremental.