Journal Geology Reflections
Possible ideas...
- Nature-walk geology:
Go to a farm or park or recreational area, or walk down a country
road or a nature trail. What of geological interest do you
observe? Look for details up close, and for general features in
the large. Buildings, quarries, fossils in the rocks, forests and
farms, all may have features of interest.
- Urban geology:
Walk down a campus sidewalk or a city street. What of geological
interest do you observe on the OBU campus? In Shawnee or your
hometown? In Oklahoma City? Look well: You will discover more than
you expect!
- Headline geology:
Examine a newspaper or journal for articles of geological
interest. Or read a book!
- Dreamtime geology:
Remember your experiences with the Earth, perhaps in childhood
years, and interpret them in a creative essay.
- Movie geology:
Go through Blockbuster and make a list of films that deal with
geology in some way. Be creative in identifying them--many will
depend on geology in far more subtle ways than Jurassic
Park or Bringing Up Baby. Watch one and reflect on the
significance of geology for the story, or on the significance of
the filmmakers' views of geology for their cinematic vision.
- Respond to a strand of reflection pursued by Peters
or by McPhee. Engage the assigned readings with dialog in
mind, then carry it out by getting a cup of coffee and writing in
your journal with McPhee or Peters at hand.
- McPhee emphasizes the intertwining of human stories with
geological stories, to show that wherever humans might live
their lives together are always affected by the geological
processes going on around them (even if those geological processes
are insensible and ignored, for the most part).
- How have you observed a similar intertwining of human and
geological stories in your own family's experience? In your
hometown? In your home state?
- Do the other text writers show a similar perception or
emphasis? Compare and contrast McPhee and the other texts.
- McPhee and Peters emphasize how particular localities
reveal to a discerning geological eye the usually insensible and
gradual natural processes that continually shape the Earth.
- Why do they emphasize particular places and specific
examples to make their points? Why not just state geological
conclusions in the most general possible form, as geological
laws? Why should a student be required to plow through so many
iterations of the same general causes?
- What is it that makes geology different from other
sciences? What does it mean to be a historical science?
- Why is fieldwork so important to geology? How successfully
does reading McPhee or Peters compensate for our lack of
fieldwork in this class?
- Querying reflections:
What unanswered questions are occurring to you as a result of what
you are learning about geology in this course? How has your
curiosity been aroused? What part of the "known unknown" seems
interesting to you, and why are you motivated to wonder about it?
- There are many controversial aspects of geology (for
an example, see the Wall Street Journal editorial, and my parody
of it, on the north door of the planetarium). Besides the
asteroid-impact hypothesis you might be familiar with flood
geology and creationism. Reflect on any geological controversy and
consider what it reveals about geology that you find interesting.
Many other approaches are quite acceptable!
This is a science course... Experiment!