charles consult blog

There’s a lot to know before you can get a general picture of reasonably scientific reality.  You have to understand various scientific laws from several directions.  You have to at least understand the scientific method and enough math to be able to approximate calculus.  You have to understand to laws of force and motion, the laws of light and electricity, the laws of temperature and heat, and the laws of logic and information.  On top of that, having an understanding of biology, psychology, sociology, history, and economics (even philosophy) would be useful as well.

That’s why it is so difficult to give reasoned answers to complex questions.  It takes a multi-disciplinary approach to understand how various causes and effects relate to each other.

This is also why I am surprised at the makeup of various corporate and governmental organizations where I am pretty sure that most of the decision makers don’t have a very strong “scientific intuition”.  Even in those areas that do use quantitative analysis, I wonder if there aren’t supporting research providing a historical, qualitative, or other such critical analysis.

Understanding reality in a more scientific way requires that you stand on the shoulders of herd of giants.  Below is an organized list of scientific “giants” that I managed to learn something from:

▼ Basic Science – Herd of Giants

▼ Motion, Force and Flow

• Newton, (Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, etc).

• Bernoulli, et al.

▼ Light and Electricity

• Maxwell, (Faraday, Lenz, Henry, etc.)

• Einstein, (Bohr, Fermi, etc.)

▼ Heat and Temperature

• Carnot, Boltzmann, Gibbs, et al.

▼ Biology

• Mendel, et al.

• Darwin, et al.

• Pasteur, et al.

▼ Psychology

• Skinner, et al.

• Freud, Jaynes, et al.

• Jung, et al.

• Maslow, et al.

▼ Economics

• Bachelier, Samuelson, Smith, Marx, Keynes, Nash, Simon, etc.

• Von Neumann and Morgenstern, et al.

▼ Informatics, Systems, and Design

• Boole, Gödel, et al.

• Shannon, et al.

• Ashby, et al.

• C. Alexander, et al.

List of things I did in the last year:

1. built a bunch of websites in many FOSS technologies,
2. developed e-commerce websites,
3. wrangled domain names,
4. worked with website hosts globally,
5. developed multiple language websites,
6. provided seo numbers and basic analysis to my clients,
7. copied/reworked trademarked branding assets,
8. designed: logos, labels, banners, corp identity, web house-style, full color flyers, business cards, websites, intranet portals, and business forms,
9. wrote original text in website, blog, and twitter,
10. photography in many forms and situations,
11. managed email marketing campaigns,
12. product development feedback,
13. business development and feedback,
14. hit personally all reachable local employment agencies,
15. discovered local neighborhoods,
16. managed small live show at grote markt,
17. researched local media artists,
18. began to work with social networks more,
19. programmed in Python to process a csv database from who knows where,
20. visit “family” and stay engaged,
21. entertained guests, showed my work,
22. paid attention to relevant political issues,
23. met business associates in cafes,
24. stayed in contact with a few old friends,
25. went to the beach a few times,
26. used skype to do international business,
27. used paypal for money transfers,
28. remained in contact with service suppliers globally,
29. researched reforestation and other green subjects,
30. allegedly partner in reforestation company,
31. attended big-shot technical meeting,
32. job fairs – “moooo” I hate’em,
33. tracked currency and other markets to minimize loss,
34. trained,
35. looked at other languages and history,
36. helped my friends the best I could,
37. saw my niece get married on streaming video from 5000 miles away,
38. discussed research and information on company formation, IP,
39. feedback and management of several labels, products, and brands,
40. programmed email servers, email auto-responders, and set up branded email systems,
41. added twitter feeds to my client’s websites,
42. made aggregator websites using automatic content creation software,
43. made websites in 4, 5, or more languages,
44. used more sophisticated tools like teleseminars, mp3 recordings, and video,
45. went to networking events in the city,
46. worked with ventures, financing, and business planning,
47. mundane backups (desktop, databases, websites, cloud.), administration, and emergency preparation.