Knowing for Yourself

About the Book

How have we come to be here? Curiosity about our past blossoms in every mind, especially in the minds of those who have had a small exposure to the study of science. Yet technology and science keep on changing. How much patience do you have with someone who hesi-tates to fly because “flying is dangerous”? Would you bother to attend a technical college where every book was printed before 1920? What can you trust that is said to be “science”? Could you find your own ways to learn about our past? Could you look more closely at things in your environment and make estimates of how old things are around you? If you understood more things about our past, do you suppose that you might be better prepared to think about what looms in our future?

The author believes in you. He has prepared 8 chapters intended to guide you through observations that you can make on things around you, things that are trying to tell you about our history. From tell-tale mounds of dirt along a highway to TV pictures of men on the Moon, from hot rocks in a mine to cooling west winds, he presents at least 122 evidences in our environment for you to think about in your personal journey toward understanding. He offers an outline summary of what “science” has to say about the history of the Earth from the beginning to our recent past.

The author points out that another outline of our past is in our environment, the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. Unlike the textbooks of science that have to be written again after a decade or so, the text in the Bible is translated into your language by experts who want to make sure that no changes in meaning creep into the words you see. Is it possible that the two outlines tell the same story? See for yourself in the last two chapters of “Knowing for Yourself.”

About the Author

Charles KenKnight was trained in science at the University of Minnesota. He began to study what men might step on when they reached the Moon. Later he joined a team at the University of Arizona that developed a little astro-nomical observatory that flew on the first flights to the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn, the Pioneer flights. That instru-ment gave us the first close-up pictures of those planets and during the flight studied one of the three glows in the sky that hinder all astronomers. He also helped in the develop-ment of several instruments to learn about planets that are moving around other stars not too far from us. His PhD dissertation offers guidance for the design of the most obvious way to “see” those planets, a large telescope in space. It will not be easy, he concluded.

In recent years Dr. KenKnight specialized in studies of meteorites. He tries to discern what their contents tell us about the physical conditions that existed when our solar system was beginning. A trip through the Rocky Mountains awakened him to see deposits from recent and long-gone glaciers in dirt, mud, and ice. His training in geology and geochemistry enables him to discuss many other aspects of how teams of scientists - and you - learn about the history of the Earth.