Education of a Scientist

Most people would consider me well-educated. After all, I have a Bachelor of Science, a doctorate in Paleontology and a Masters of Divinity. By all standards, I am in that small elite of highly educated folk. Yet, I recognized this past year, that my education is rather limited. I've got the science and theology areas covered pretty well, but there are some huge gaps in my knowledge and education.

This came home to me as I watched Donald Trump make a run for the presidency and win. I could see the similarities between his rhetoric and that of a crazy madman from 1930s Germany. I even heard a rumour that Donald Trump had Mein Kampf on his nightstand table. Now, turns out that rumour isn't true. Trump actually kept a book of Hitler's speeches (My New Order) in his nightstand, not Mein Kampf. Still... the fact that Trump was so appealing to a huge number of Americans perplexed and continues to perplex me. Are they all crazy? Have they lost their collective minds? What has happened to democracy? Has Social Media and Reality TV turned politics into Entertainment. Is feminism going backwards? What will happen when the President of the United States is a climate-change denier? So many questions.

I realized through this process that my education in many of these matters is woefully inadequate. Like many of us, I rely on Facebook and the news sites for my information. Possibly not the most accurate, broad-ranging or complete news sources in the world. So... there was a hunger to learn more.

At the same time, I have been looking for an Annual Challenge to whet my writing skills this coming year (2017). A few years back, I tackled reading the bible in a year. I handled that quite nicely - reading 4.5 pages of the bible each day and blogging about it. It was a challenge and yet doable.

With these two ideas swirling through my head - a yearning for more knowledge and a craving for an annual challenge, I have a plan for 2017. I researched "world-changing books" and after looking at many lists, created my own list of books that have made a difference in the world. It's a rather broad-ranging list and includes a few heavy-weights like Don Quixote and War & Peace. After drawing up an Excel spreadsheet with page numbers for all of the books (60 or so)... I realized that I might have to make this a multi-year project. Right now, I've pushed the heavy weights to the bottom of the list. The remainder is still well over 20,000 pages and... even reading 50+ pages a day, I'm not sure I can get all of them done in a year. For the first month then, I will aim for 20-30 pages a day (with a daily blog) and see how I do. I know that some books will flow quicker than others. Maybe I'll do 50 pages of the Little Prince and only 10 pages of Mein Kampf.

Next up... the List of Books to Expand my Education. Stay tuned.