Thread: Hello. I'm an aspiring writer, modern mythologist, or...

mystic I believe they were once called, although I mean this most humbly as possible. I love learning, and when I'm not discussing philosophy, religion, mysticism, phycology, mythology, or science, I most likely have my nose in a book related to these topics. Currently I finishing up Manly P. Hall's book, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, which to me is an incredibily fasinating book on what seems to me the origin and evolution of ideas.

What I would really like to know though is much more about science. I have a lot of crazy theoretical ideas that might make excellent metaphores, and good stories, but I would like to know more about how things work first. How might a living rock be created? Are there animals that grow rocks and dirt? What would need to happen to transmute one object into another? Why do we need to eat living things as opposed to non living things, and how is living accomplished by this process?

Wow, you know if every living thing stopped eating living things, but was able to eat non living things, would living things decay? If living things did not decay, then would we even need to eat if all we wanted to do is live on our couch and watch football forever? I suppose your body still has some functions it needs to take care of, but you might be able to really cut down on food costs with this kind of life...

It seems odd to me that we have computers that we turn on and off, and as long as no one takes a baseball bat to their comp or throws it out the window in frustration that you can always reboot it after turning it off, but what about people? What prevents a person to get rebooted?

Life is a mystery.

Welcome.
Keep in mind that science is a methodology with quite strict rules as to what it may investigate, and how it may investigate it. Good science is the application of constrained creativity.

I thought it might be a good idea to, every once in a while, give an update of what I am currently studying so that my fellow science forum members might have an idea of what direction I am comming from when I post. I thought my introduction page might be the best way to represent this information.

The last book I talked about was Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages, which was a very good book on a wide variety of topics I never had gotten much exposure to. It dealt with the esoteric meanings of symbols on many levels, and although Manly started off preaching about the importance of esoteric understanding in most of the book, which I myself have come to agree with almost the same fever, I do believe that towards the end of the book Manly became victim to the same powers of exoteric belief that he himself dispised. I could not finish the book because I couldn't get myself to finish his section on alchemy. Ideas such as transmutation through the balance of the self in four worlds is just too difficult for me to swallow. Nevertheless, the information in the book was invaluble.

Another reason why it was difficult for me to finish Manly's book was because I began to be increasingly interested in science. After joining this forum I picked up a physics book named Physics Demystified, which I have finished and learned a very nice summary of physics from. Being that this was a summary, this book did not require knowledge of calculus.

After finishing Demystified, my science craving had only increased. I wanted to know more of the answers that I felt Demystified let fall through the cracks, so I borrowed a real physics text book. After ten pages or so though, I realized that I would have to review the calculus knowledge that I left behind me in highschool. Now this greatly anticipated physics book, Physics: For Scientists and Engineers, sits on my shelf collecting dust.

Next up was calculus, and I liked the Demystified physics book so much that I decided to pick up the calculus version. Unfortuneately Calculus Demystified does not work so well for me since it seems to introduce concepts without much explaination. Using the forum has helped though. I am amazed at the amount of effort that Guitarist and Serpicojr have put into helping me, and I greatly appreciate it.

To alleviate my bad book problem though, I have borrowed more of a "real" calculus textbook, Caluculs Early Transcendentals 5/E Volume 1, from a coworker and I'm sure it will be a great help. This is what I am currently working on.

Scientists tend not to like people with 'ideas', especially new ones.

But welcome

You're quite wrong. I recently presented the idea that milk is bad for us. It hasn't been moved to pseudoscience yet.

The difference is, I tried to make mine informed (and mentioned it was made on-the-fly). Good science is an attempt at a solution. Bad science is claiming a solution.

At least when you claim something is true then prove it isn't you don't have to go down that path again for a while, rather thatn thinking which path may be right or wrong and never actually going down one. Remember the age old saying in science? Assumption? Or rather, postulates?