The Author
After over thirty years as a scientist or engineer of researching, modeling, simulating, and analyzing man-made technological systems, I want to turn my attention to the complex, natural systems that have emerged without Man, especially biological, geological, and cosmological systems. In this endeavor, I approach these systems as a journalist rather than an engineer or scientist.
My objective for this website is to bridge the cognitive distance between the interested non-scientist and the work done by the scientists studying these systems.
My inspiration for the content of this website derives from the experience I had at the 2012 Santa Fe Science Writers Workshop under the mentoring of accomplished science journalists: David Dobbs, George Johnson, Susan Blakeslee, Maryn McKenna, Michelle Nijhuis, et al.
Otherwise, I enjoy reading and learning about science and want to communicate that enjoyment to others in a way that promotes science as the foundational structure of humanism—an emerging and promising new ethos for the planet—and ultimately increases the per capita happiness on this planet through an understanding of the epistemology of what we know and how we know it.
Humanism, which focuses on human values and concerns and espouses reason, ethics, and justice, is a positive philosophical attitude or worldview based on a reliance on scientifically acquired evidence. Consequently, the growth of humanism is dependent upon the growth of public recognition, understanding, and acceptance of scientific knowledge.
The title of this website has been inspired by a favorite radio tune I listened to as a preadolescent kid back in the late 1950s—Green Door, by Jim Lowe [1956].
What’s behind that green door? To get in, tell ’em “Joe sent me” … 😎
The Website
Among the seven categories—Science, Universe, Earth, Ecology, Life, Mind, and Logos—for filter-searching posts is the category logos, an important term in western philosophy, psychology, rhetoric, and religion. Perhaps this term needs a bit of explanation to be sure interested visitors understand the intent.
The pre-Socratic Greek philosophy Heraclitus (c. 535 — c. 475 BC) was the first to use the term to mean an opinion. Aristotle (c. 384 — 322 BC) gave logos a different technical definition in the Ars Rhetorica, using it as meaning argument from reason, one of the three modes of persuasion. The other two modes are pathos, which refers to persuasion by means of emotional appeal, “putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind”, and ethos, persuasion through convincing listeners of one’s “moral character” [source: Wikipedia]. Logos is used here in the same manner of Heraclitus and Aristotle: to argue an opinion about any post to which it is applied. Whereas this application relates to the opinion of the post’s author, other relevant opinions will be attached by way of a moderated comment section for each post.
As envisioned, any post may fall under one or more of the seven categories. These seven categories represent evolutionary points along a spectrum of creation spanning from consciousness to cosmology, from the microcosm of Reality to its macrocosmic counterpart, from our inner world of thoughts to our perceptions of the outer world, and from physics to astrophysics, but not forgetting the emergence of biological life on the planet and the blurring line between life and non-life, biology and machine, and biological evolution and technological evolution.
The sense of the writing can be either scientific, metaphysical, or philosophical. As the website logo suggests, there are many doors we can open and explore together in the corridors of science, modern or ancient. Thus, behind the metaphorical green doors, we will explore what is known and how we know it. But, the curious red door at the end of the corridor represents the space beyond the boundaries of what is known—speculation and the implications of such speculation …
You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension—a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone
[Opening narration – season 4 & 5 of the TV series The Twilight Zone (1959 — 1964)].
Thales [THAY:leez] is used as the pseudonym for the author of all posts unless written by a guest author. Thales of Miletus [mi:LAY:tus] (c. 624 — c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. Many regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, and he is otherwise historically recognized as the first individual in western civilization known to have entertained and engaged in scientific thought. Thales is recognized as having made a break from understanding the world and universe by mythological explanations to instead find explanations for the existence of natural things and phenomena by theories and hypothesis, ergo science [source: Wikipedia].
This website will, from time to time, also bring reviews by Thales of articles and books by noted scientists and philosophers.
Thales
