David Bennett Laing's Blog
July 18, 2017
Blog Post the First
People told me that having a weblog is a good idea, so I thought I'd better try it. No guarantees, but here goes.
Life is good! It sure beats the alternative, but I really haven't got time for that, considering all the writing I have to do in addition to enjoying life.
This is an incredible opportunity, folks. I mean this Earth of ours, this planet. Many people keep looking elsewhere in the Universe for something, anything, that confirms our ardent belief that what we have down here is really humdrum and same-old, but guess what: they keep coming up empty-handed! It's really beginning to look as if we are actually "It," that there just isn't any other life out there, at least anything resembling what Neil Armstrong and crew saw when they looked back from outer space at this spinning jewel of a home, our sacred Earth. That's essentially what my book "Sacred Earth, An Exquisite Self-Creation" is all about: appreciating this extraordinary marvel that we're so privileged to be parts of.
I go into greater depth on this in "The Real World, A Synthesis," for those who seek a more comprehensive picture of our planet from a geologist's perspective. My methodology is simple: become aware of everything that pertains to the phenomena I'm studying, and select the explanation that makes the best sense in the light of it all. That's the essence of synthetic science, that is, "putting things together" as opposed to analytic science (which most of the scientific world unfortunately does), that is, "taking things apart" to see what makes them tick.
I like synthetic science a lot better because the real world is an organic whole, like a frog, whereas most scientists treat it like a clock, which, unlike a frog, is designed for a single, specific purpose, and is composed of easily identifiable and exchangeable parts, around each of which you can easily draw a little "black box," describe the thing to death, and be quite confident that you know everything there is to know about it. It's not like that with frogs. They have a long and complex history, and all their parts have evolved in intimate relation with all its other parts. The only way you can really understand a part, or the whole, of the frog is to examine it in its context. That's what I do when I study Earth and its various subsystems, and I feel that this approach gives much more satisfactory results than mainstream analytic science.
Granted, my results often differ substantially with those of the mainstream, but I console myself with two important realizations: first is the approach I described above, relating everything to everything else, giving one's conclusions the credibility of the real world, rather than the credibility of human opinions, which are all too often fallible, and second is the simple fact that consensus has no place in science, where something is either right or it's wrong, end of discussion, and no amount of consensus can ever change that.
Okay, that's about enough spouting off for the first post on my new blog, but that should give people a fair idea of where I'm coming from (aren't you glad you asked?) Questions, comments, welcome, of course. I'll do my best to try to answer them.
Cheers!
Life is good! It sure beats the alternative, but I really haven't got time for that, considering all the writing I have to do in addition to enjoying life.
This is an incredible opportunity, folks. I mean this Earth of ours, this planet. Many people keep looking elsewhere in the Universe for something, anything, that confirms our ardent belief that what we have down here is really humdrum and same-old, but guess what: they keep coming up empty-handed! It's really beginning to look as if we are actually "It," that there just isn't any other life out there, at least anything resembling what Neil Armstrong and crew saw when they looked back from outer space at this spinning jewel of a home, our sacred Earth. That's essentially what my book "Sacred Earth, An Exquisite Self-Creation" is all about: appreciating this extraordinary marvel that we're so privileged to be parts of.
I go into greater depth on this in "The Real World, A Synthesis," for those who seek a more comprehensive picture of our planet from a geologist's perspective. My methodology is simple: become aware of everything that pertains to the phenomena I'm studying, and select the explanation that makes the best sense in the light of it all. That's the essence of synthetic science, that is, "putting things together" as opposed to analytic science (which most of the scientific world unfortunately does), that is, "taking things apart" to see what makes them tick.
I like synthetic science a lot better because the real world is an organic whole, like a frog, whereas most scientists treat it like a clock, which, unlike a frog, is designed for a single, specific purpose, and is composed of easily identifiable and exchangeable parts, around each of which you can easily draw a little "black box," describe the thing to death, and be quite confident that you know everything there is to know about it. It's not like that with frogs. They have a long and complex history, and all their parts have evolved in intimate relation with all its other parts. The only way you can really understand a part, or the whole, of the frog is to examine it in its context. That's what I do when I study Earth and its various subsystems, and I feel that this approach gives much more satisfactory results than mainstream analytic science.
Granted, my results often differ substantially with those of the mainstream, but I console myself with two important realizations: first is the approach I described above, relating everything to everything else, giving one's conclusions the credibility of the real world, rather than the credibility of human opinions, which are all too often fallible, and second is the simple fact that consensus has no place in science, where something is either right or it's wrong, end of discussion, and no amount of consensus can ever change that.
Okay, that's about enough spouting off for the first post on my new blog, but that should give people a fair idea of where I'm coming from (aren't you glad you asked?) Questions, comments, welcome, of course. I'll do my best to try to answer them.
Cheers!
