An Open Mind, 071

Geology studies how and when rocks got to the places we now find them. In petroleum exploration, we have become very adept at specifying what age and type of rocks expected to be drill into based on reflection and refraction seismic surveys, gravity and magnetic measurements, electrical conductivity measurements, and especially from correlating between wells the geologic samples and well log measurements which have been collected from the borehole.

Geology is adept at looking at the past, and not very useful in predicting the future. Seismologists do monitor earthquakes, and given a build up of earthquakes in an area have had some success in predicting major earthquakes. Along this line there are very interesting studies being done on the San Andreas Fault in California to see if ways to predict future movements of this fault can be predicted.^2.42 However, in general geologists look at the past (see Figure 22 and 23). And this past is so distant in comparison to mankind’s existence on the earth it has been referred to as “deep time” by John McPhee.^2.43 After mentioning deep time, Stephen Jay Gould goes on to quote Mark Twain words describing how long the times are geology looks at:

“Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the World’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of the age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I donno.” We can pick up rocks. We can study the fossils in the rocks. We can study how rocks are laid down on other rocks. We can become very adapt at predicting basin floor fans, submarine channels, deltas, barrier beach bars, atolls, reefs, channel cuts, braided stream deposits, swamp deposits which become coal, and all of the other things geoscientists do. However, how do we relate all of this work to how to live our life each day, and how to treat our neighbor? How does science help one become a better person.

Just as astrophysics provides a time and space framework for geology, geology provides a time and space framework for biology. All three of these radically different scales for time and space provide the framework within which we exisit. Of course, this framework also bounds where mankind’s spiritual interactions occur. These spiritual interactions can be labeled as mythology, as religion, and as theology. Jumping to much smaller scales for time and space frameworks, there are the concepts we know as quantum physics, which, although scientific, in many ways are faith-based frameworks. Quantum physics time and space frameworks are extremely small, and yet they can become gigantic, a source for the creation of the universe as we know it.

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