[Originaly posted 6/10/2013 (June 10, 2013), returned to draft 20160916, resurrected 20210407]
Basically the primal scream thing, I guess, .. and therefore an
infantile narcissistic indulgence, because if I were to say I did it for
any other reason I'd be making excuses. So, .. here they are:-
1. Because the internet makes their effective dissemination possible.
And therein ('effective') is a facility the world hasn't seen
before. With the press of a button information can detonate the
world. Bottom-up people-power democratises the world, .. and for
better and worse, removes it from institutional control
(Wikileaks). In the academic world it provides a ring-road around
the exorbitant paygates that assure a consensus of convenience headed up
by the literati. For all the hype that represents science
as a field of discussion and debate the reality is quite otherwise,
scientists do not regard controversial views that go to the heart of the
matter very favourably.. They may allow, and indeed thrive on,
differences that relate to the flounces and feathers of the Eamperor's
wardrobe, but anyone drawing attention to nudity gets very short shrift
indeed. Dissenting views on what constitutes fashion are not
tolerated. Therefore the next 'why' is :-
2. 'Jihad':
Protesting a number of things, the first of which is ostensibly the
ill-founded consensus view that Plate Tectonics presents a credible
model for Earth science when it patently doesn't. Anyone
reasonably cognisant of the basic premises of Plate Tectonics can pick any number of holes in it.
The reason they don't is because to do so simply states what everybody
else already knows - that they are pejoratives that could potentially
throw the field into chaos (and reputations with it) - and because to
detract from the consensus view invites opprobrium. Better to go
with the flow and remain within the stated consensus by deliberately
ignoring the inconsistencies, or if they must be mentioned then to
disingenuously represent them as positively as possible, as
"opportunities for more research", thereby elevating what is really
crass nonsense to some sort of respectability. And if you don't
self-censor, then others will do it for you.
But just to digress
here from the 'whys' of these posts for a moment it seems to me that
these inconsistencies can actually be turned to serve a double
purpose. On the one hand ignoring (/omitting) them helps to cement
a consensus, which is the vehicle that scientists must ride if they
wish to secure funding and career advancement. And on the other
hand (since they *are* obvious contradictions and so hardly require
mention at all) to actually draw attention to them as positives
ancillary to consensus is a kind of silent code that says, "We
recognise these disconnects would up-end the apple cart if we focussed on
them and so we won't, we'll leave them aside for now and trot them out
later when a significant alternative is identified that consensus can
recognise as *useful to purpose* - purpose being funding and career
advancement. [Not useful to science, because if so then they would
be voraciously examined as soon as identified.] Obviously
contradictions of consensus are not by themselves opportunities for
research, they must be framed in a positive context, not one that
highlights deficiency.
But science is our truth-teller, and its
enterprise should be to establish truth. The holes and obvious
contradictions should be the devices by which the field is questioned at
every turn, but even a cursory review of the literature will show a
complete absence of anything that interrogates Plate Tectonics in a
subtractive way in order to better appraise it. So in a way these
errors are potential trump cards that carry with them the
communicability of memes that everyone knows but holds close to the
chest to be played at a convenient time in the future. They are
not things to be *discovered* in the future, .. they are already known
and, though unstated, well known, .. they are at once the
'don't-go-there' means that could undermine and destroy, and at the same
time be the gems of memes by which future change will be clinched.
Thus
they carry more weight, more real currency, than the eventual, pivotal
*element* of change, and will overwhelm it. Moreover the
drowning of that element will be silent, unstated, self-evident, and
belong to everyone. Thus the element by the same token is
relatively insignificant, and (in geology) is itself already branded an
'everybody-knows' thing. No-one will, or can (!) claim any pivotal
role because everybody knows them already. It's already in first-year
textbooks.
In the context of Earth expansion the element of
change identified here is boudinage, or large-scale boudinage, or
regional boudinage, or (one step further) boudinage of the
lithosphere. The term was coined at the outcrop scale, but it
occurs on all scales, and was identified as such in the beginning;
Lohest who coined the term (in 1908) identified the uplift of the entire
Bastogne region of Belgium as a result of boudinage. That this
scale factor has been ignored for nearly a century is irrelevant because
it is validated in the principle of scale-invariance that has similarly
existed, and thus belongs to everyone. There are no marks for
pointing out the significance of scale, because all that's doing is
potentially drawing attention to others' deficit in not having done so
themselves, but who would insist is not a deficit at all, .. they just "never bothered" (because it is self-evident, .. in first-year text-books
and everybody knows it already so why should they?). To do so
just invites a defensive "Yeah-yeah, so what, .. everybody knows
that", but at the same time elicits an unstated but epiphanous,
"..Actually, we never saw it quite like that.." But there are no
marks for drawing attention to the whole, the pattern, "the whole being
more than the sum of the parts", when the parts are already well
known. And no marks either for highlighting the unstated
contradictions of Plate Tectonics that undermine that paradigm, and that
will eventually lead to change.
3. Belling the cat.
So, no marks for pointing out what everybody "already knows" - that the
change to Earth expansion is inevitable, that it is already in motion
under the aegis of lithospheric boudinage, that it belongs to everyone
through the simple geological principle of scale-invariance, and
therefore that it very much *does*present a challenge to physics.
Physics already knows it has more problems than you can poke a stick at ("boson-like particles discovered on the stroke of a funding midnight" notwithstanding). But who will bell *that* cat? The
excitement attached to the scale-invariance principle in that field that
has led to the creamery of Big Bing theory could just as well be read
as an applecart in disarray. The increase in the Earth's curved
surface area with time is not in geological question, but the implications for a
mantle volume /mass increase very much is, and must be found in physical
theory. So again theory will be pitched against fact, so we
shouldn't expect resolution any time soon.
4. Advertsing serendipity as a means to discovery before 'science' encountered 'The Method'.
(Boudinage as an organising principle for the location and formation of
ore deposits => boudinage as a key to Earth expansion.)
Serendipity of discovery is all about pattern and the larger-scale
context. The scientific method is the antithesis, .. all about
elements and reductivism, and claiming relevance when some inevitable
correlation is 'discovered' (/noticed) - as it invariably must, since
elements are part of pattern. But without context the
correlation is disembodied (the pale cadaverous body-parts of Plate
Tectonics, levitated by faith and belief in the pot of gold at the end
of the rainbow, versus the in-your-face Beauty
of Mother Earth, turning, .. ever turning.
5. Putting money where the mouth is.
And the name as well. If Institutions of learning can make a fool
of themselves by promoting Plate Tectonics, then I don't see why I
can't by promoting Earth expansion. Why not (?). Though
paying for a service provider just to get spammed, stiff knees and
constipation is not going to happen for very much longer, even if it is
for Sophie More's edification. (The 'Teams of Researchers' intent
on putting "Jesus Christ on a stick" can look after themselves and will
get there anyway, eventually - once most of them die off). Well,
.. maybe it won't work. I just fancied the idea of Sophie taking a
shortcut and splitting her jeans on a pesky maneuver - like
connecting the dots between gravity, mantle growth and magnetic field
('mechanism'). Though I don't know about a Big Bang. (That's a
memory Lane thing.)
6. Subtexts - of which there are many.
How science is done. The role of institutions of learning in
these days of the internet ('Grooming' for institutionalisation).
Public funding of exorbitant paygates available to the 'groomed'..
Science as a career rather than a calling, and the opportunistic
'paedophiles' it attracts to itself (grooming again). "Scientists
Believe" rather than scientists think. "The Church of Plate
Tectonics." Degredation rituals as an analogue for
excommunication. 'Plank-by-plank' pussyfooting, instead of
getting to the point. 'Game-playing' :: the bearpits of academia
masquerading as parlours of respectable discourse. And heaps more.
I'll add them if you suggest any.
7. What does it matter?
To think it might is a conceit of the first order. If we had to
rootle around in the bottom of the bag we might come up with the one
about focussing where ore deposits are most likely to occur, .. which I
guess is useful to the economic affairs of man, but that's old hat
now. And anyway with the amount of red and green tape obstructing
whichever way we turn that might no longer be so now. Use has been
usurped by expediency. It's all got too hard. The fun's
gone out of it. In some strange way we seem to be living in an
increasingly dystopian and despotic world sold to us, as marketeers
will, as 'democratically improved', but isn't. Or maybe it is, and
that's just the price that has to be paid when a boundary is crossed
and things no longer work the way they should according to the rules..
As
far as Earth expansion is concerned the Earth is not going to blow up
any time soon, .. so what does it matter? Geology has little to
say about the quantum world ever since physics demonstrated its
p-p-pyrotechnic p-p-pomposity'.
========================
So,
.. drawing a line. That concludes about ten years of posting on
the net (1. sci.geo.geology (don's blog), 2. website, 3. Rationalskepticism, 4.
Blogger). There are a few loose ends that remain to be tidied up,
but the gist of it is all there ("I-Ching"). The Earth is getting
bigger, .. "expanding". For sure.
Which returns me to
the question why did I bother (stating the obvious that has been stated
before)? To which the best answer I can give is "Just
because". Self-assertion is like that. I'm a bully at heart when I
can hide behind the internet with an identity that nobody would bother
to steal, but like others I would be a coward when confronted with
the discipline and retribution that the institutionalised power of the
academic world can muster, if I was part of that. Which I'm
not. Which is why I can do it. And those who are, can't.
Now
I have to go and put the rubbish out - which has accummulated
(somewhat; ten years, after all), then go out to play. Get a life.
A
big thanks to all readers for indulging me this. The thought of
that, and the needle instigating Jihad in the first place has largely
been the motivation for writing it.
Ciao.
[20210407. Well that was nearly (/ effectively was) a decade ago. Memory Lane. You do get strangely afflicted sometimes. It's a kind of madness, I guess, but out of that deeper exploration does arise a sense of connectedness and meaning (maybe) that eludes younger years. (But to what end?)]
[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/
