Human excellence and the trodden path

Human excellence and the trodden path - by P.K.Odendaal - February 2013.

Amended 5 March 2013

One stands amazed at the accomplishments of individuals who have attained feats of excellence never done before, and one thinks that it was built on years of methodical exploration, planning and experimentation. Although these accomplishments go hand in hand with exploration, planning and experimentation, the bigger truth is that it is built on a directionless procession of random events and the variation of circumstances.

The upper layer reveals to us an accomplishment of almost super human effort and insight, but it is built on a thicker layer of bricks or stones of doubt, mindless wanderings, meaningless efforts, botched opportunities, luck, unexpected outcomes and a thing called serendipity.

Science and fairy tales.

Science and fairy tales - by P.K.Odendaal - January 2013

I have written a lot lately about reality and meta-physics, and debunking the false aura of gullibility surrounding science. I need to place these in a multi-dimensional perspective and place it in its most realistic domain.

As starters, I wish to emphasize that science and fiction is the same thing, and therefore we have this strong genre of science-fiction - simply because there is a fine line or no line between the two. It is really difficult to place these two in different domains or different stages of reality. The one is no more real or fantastical than the other, but history has blinded our eyes to the most basic agreement between the two. We have just too many times been fooled into thinking that science is real and fiction unreal or imaginary.