Well, it was bound to happen. I have really slacked off in my postings. Am I just lazy, not inclined to on-line rambling, or something else?
Reason #1 is in the eye of the beholder.
Reason #2 is clearly not true, once I get started I perhaps ramble on too much.
Reason #3 has some legs in it.
I never really made my mind up what I was going to be when I grew up. Here my progression:
Starting off in college I was going to be an academic in abstract math and logic. During the idealistic late 60's I changed that to being an academic in real world changing (ecology and resource planning). My research agenda started with the quite modest goal of understanding how humanity came to be where I perceived us to be, on the precipice of self-destruction. To understand humanity I thought I needed to start with Australopithecus and work forward. Needles to say, I didn't get very far before being embroiled in the hot debates of the day:
Were Proanthropus and Australopithecus different species or just different ends of genetic expression?
Nature versus Nurture
Did language cause evolution or is it a consequence of it?
Gee what fun, now I had to understand just what a species is. Start with Darwin and LaMarck, switch over to paleo-botany and try to understand the Cretaceous angiosperm explosion.
Try to understand humanity from the inwards direction, study religion and psychology.
Go to talks by Noam Chomsky to find out about language but instead find out about another view of the politics of the day.
Okay, Okay, enough already......but you can see the pattern there. Lot's of research, forks in all different directions and pretty soon you run out of patience and time. In today's academic world, you can't be an expert in the big picture, you can spend an entire career on very narrow fork in the road.
So this continues to this day. I have a lot of things I would like to blog about, but I just have to do a little bit more research down this avenue, what I find there just might change everything I want to say.......but the avenues never end and side roads are abundant and the obscure lanes and alleyway's look enticing.
Stay tuned, I think I see some light up ahead.
