From the Ground

I've tried working the history and going backward, and I've found time and again that it doesn't much motivate me. So, I started over (again), in noting a few topics that were interesting to me, and noting ideas. By classing like ideas together, and rewriting the list, I have once more something of a narrative that I can expand, with repeated passes, until it contains more of the subjects of my greatest interest, which tend to lie at the frontiers of what I know.

I find myself needing to go back to physics for some of the fundamentals. I'm building up chemistry by starting with the most common elements (astronomically speaking), their compounds, and mixtures of them. The number of possibilities of things to consider grows explosively, and trying to keep track of them is something of a challenge. I find myself also needing to consider elements of astronomy, as I deal with theories of the formation of the earth, and I've been speculating on the course of its development. I'm also very much interested in the presumed origin of life, starting with inorganic chemistry. Moving into the human realm, I find that I need to take nature as an essential background, and then add interactions among people and the foundations of culture and the institutions, communities, and history of societies on top of those. In all these areas, there are things I have to skip over because they aren't well understood, or at least I don't understand them. What I have problems with is deciding what subjects are most important when the number of possibilities is growing or has grown explosively.