Some rocks exhibit jointing. That is, they have vertical or near vertical separations that split the rocks in checkerboard or near-checkerboard patterns. Typically, joints form as a landscape rises, occupying more volume and accommodating that increased volume by many splits. The joints are zones of weakness, a feature that is apparent at many waterfalls, including Niagara Falls and many of the falls in the shales of the American Northeast. Flowing water can dig as it flows over the breaks. The result is an ever-widening gap and more force on the down slope side of a joint. Eventually, rock breaks away, undergoes further erosion, and becomes the site of a waterfall.
Joints also occur in rocks that have no running water to gouge and enlarge them. It is through joints, for example, that water can seep into limestone and dissolve it, forming caverns. Look at the ceilings of most limestone caves, and you will see an elongate joint where water first entered what was formerly solid rock. And joints occur in sedimentary rocks underlying highways and neighborhoods. Their presence weakens the rocks and exacerbates the potential for landslides and rock falls.
To prevent disastrous collapses, civil engineers drive rock bolts from one side of a joint to the other; they pin the two sides together. Rock bolts can be seen along highway road cuts and also at Niagara Falls. Hey, jointing and erosion have made the falls, but if further erosion continues, the famous falls will move farther upstream toward Lake Erie. What would happen to the tourism at the current site of the falls?
So, the engineers have done what they can to save the falls on the Canadian side. The rock bolts should hold for a few decades—at least that’s what the engineers think. You don’t have to rush off to see the horseshoe falls today; they will be there tomorrow. But forces of Nature being what they are—that is, unrelenting—even the bolted units will break away. We can slow the process, but we can’t warrant it forever.
We might ask whether or not joints and rock bolts serve as an appropriate analog for the human makeup. As we develop, we occupy larger volume both physically and mentally. Let’s ignore the former, which becomes a source of a never-ending diet for reducing it. Instead, let’s think about the latter, that mental volume. As we gain knowledge through experience and education, we increase our perspectives. That increase usually comes at a cost. New knowledge often involves some little break from old knowledge. New information can make formerly uniform thinking into a jointed mix of ideas, little separations from ideas of the past. In some instances, those little ideas add up to a profound separation, and a segment breaks off to be completely eroded away. Paradigm shifts are like that.
Because we find some security in the relative unity of our knowledge and ideas, we often find ourselves engineering to prevent jointing. Some of us will do anything to bolt our mental states. We want to keep them from inevitable erosion by the ineluctable flow of knowledge and ideas from elsewhere. For security’s sake, we try to preserve the waterfall where it now stands and where we and others can find familiar shapes and processes. However, just as the Lockport Dolomite of Niagara Falls is under constant attack from unstoppable waters acting on its joints, so we are under an information and knowledge attack. People in ancient, medieval, and even early modern times could never experience the flood of information and knowledge that flows past us through the Web and TV. And unlike the single river that cuts and widens the joints at Niagara, the current discharge of information is like the confluence of many rivers at a waterfall, all increasing the force against any weaknesses already present.
You can attempt to bolt the mental rocks to hold old ideas together, but you might try allowing some of those separations to occur. What will you lose if new knowledge simply moves a spectacular waterfall from the site of old breaks once so desperately bolted? If anything, the new waterfall will become a site for your own personal tourism, a new wonder in your personal world.
Joints also occur in rocks that have no running water to gouge and enlarge them. It is through joints, for example, that water can seep into limestone and dissolve it, forming caverns. Look at the ceilings of most limestone caves, and you will see an elongate joint where water first entered what was formerly solid rock. And joints occur in sedimentary rocks underlying highways and neighborhoods. Their presence weakens the rocks and exacerbates the potential for landslides and rock falls.
To prevent disastrous collapses, civil engineers drive rock bolts from one side of a joint to the other; they pin the two sides together. Rock bolts can be seen along highway road cuts and also at Niagara Falls. Hey, jointing and erosion have made the falls, but if further erosion continues, the famous falls will move farther upstream toward Lake Erie. What would happen to the tourism at the current site of the falls?
So, the engineers have done what they can to save the falls on the Canadian side. The rock bolts should hold for a few decades—at least that’s what the engineers think. You don’t have to rush off to see the horseshoe falls today; they will be there tomorrow. But forces of Nature being what they are—that is, unrelenting—even the bolted units will break away. We can slow the process, but we can’t warrant it forever.
We might ask whether or not joints and rock bolts serve as an appropriate analog for the human makeup. As we develop, we occupy larger volume both physically and mentally. Let’s ignore the former, which becomes a source of a never-ending diet for reducing it. Instead, let’s think about the latter, that mental volume. As we gain knowledge through experience and education, we increase our perspectives. That increase usually comes at a cost. New knowledge often involves some little break from old knowledge. New information can make formerly uniform thinking into a jointed mix of ideas, little separations from ideas of the past. In some instances, those little ideas add up to a profound separation, and a segment breaks off to be completely eroded away. Paradigm shifts are like that.
Because we find some security in the relative unity of our knowledge and ideas, we often find ourselves engineering to prevent jointing. Some of us will do anything to bolt our mental states. We want to keep them from inevitable erosion by the ineluctable flow of knowledge and ideas from elsewhere. For security’s sake, we try to preserve the waterfall where it now stands and where we and others can find familiar shapes and processes. However, just as the Lockport Dolomite of Niagara Falls is under constant attack from unstoppable waters acting on its joints, so we are under an information and knowledge attack. People in ancient, medieval, and even early modern times could never experience the flood of information and knowledge that flows past us through the Web and TV. And unlike the single river that cuts and widens the joints at Niagara, the current discharge of information is like the confluence of many rivers at a waterfall, all increasing the force against any weaknesses already present.
You can attempt to bolt the mental rocks to hold old ideas together, but you might try allowing some of those separations to occur. What will you lose if new knowledge simply moves a spectacular waterfall from the site of old breaks once so desperately bolted? If anything, the new waterfall will become a site for your own personal tourism, a new wonder in your personal world.
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