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THE SEA EMPRESS & OTHER TANKER DISASTERS

May 12, 2025

THE SEA EMPRESS & OTHER TANKER DISASTERS

Most of the people running this world, including Britain, are too innumerate to understand what is going on, and therefore too ignorant to put it right. And what is worse they don’t care. Yes I know that sounds improbable but I discovered it to be all too true when I got involved in the Sea Empress disaster back in 1996.

She had run into the rocks at the entrance to Milford Haven on the West coast of Pembrokeshire. Even 7 tugs combined couldn’t pull her off. Her bottom was partially ripped out and much of the 140,000 tons of crude oil inside her spilled out into one of our most beautiful national parks putting at risk the lives of innumerable birds, fish , crustaceans and sea-mammals, not to mention the livelihoods of all those employed in the tourist industry of West Wales. She wasn’t insured because, like all big oil tankers, she was far too dangerous to insure. Nor was she regulated because she was registered in a banana republic in Africa .Nor was her construction regulated because she had been built as cheaply as possible in South Korea in order to save oil companies about a penny a litre on a gallon of petrol. The naval architects, if you can call them that, had allowed them to grow in size from 16,500 tons to 600,000 without understanding the dire consequences – or perhaps they didn’t care. The largest weighed 5 times as much as the Empire State skyscraper. Yet they had no effective brakes or anchors, took 10 minutes to turn and 20 kilometres to stop. No wonder no sane insurance company would take such ships, or their poisonous cargos onto their books.

I only looked into all this because my little sailing boat happened to be moored close to the Sea Empress disaster. Using skills acquired as a Space Scientist I was able to analyse oil-tanker safety in a matter of days. I found , to my horror, that none of the “experts”, including marine architects, port authorities or legislators had any idea of the risks involved.. And what was far worse they couldn’t be persuaded to learn. Yes Official Government Inquiries were set up following major specific disasters but they were (deliberate?) white washes either because of their restricted Terms of Reference (US), or composed of the wrong people (UK). It is tragic. Just wait for the next crash. For instance it could end Pembrokeshire or Cornwall as a holiday destination for decades, and perhaps forever. And as for sea life……….

It must be obvious that for any dynamic system to be controllable by humans the reaction-time T(react) must be significantly less than the dynamic time T(dynamic) in which the dynamic system could go seriously wrong. If T(react) is say 2 times shorter than T(dynamic) then the human controller can make 2 attempts to put things right; if 3 times shorter then 3 attempts, and so on. As the consequences of loss of control become more serious one clearly needs a larger margin for error. Drunken driving is so dangerous because alcohol increases T(react) until it exceeds T(dynamic).

As ships grow in size and weight so their reaction times to the pilot’s decisions grows ever longer until they cannot be turned or stopped in time to avert disasters, sometimes with catastrophic consequences for man and/or Nature : example the Amoco Cadiz (1978) piling into Brittany with the release off 270.000 tons of crude oil, or the Sea Empress (1996) with 146,000 tons in Pembrokeshire. A Very Large Crude Carrier or VLCC (above 300,000 tons) takes at least 20 minutes to stop and 15 minutes to turn through 90 degrees, during which time winds, tides and the ship’s own momentum could take it miles. It is madness to allow such massive oil-cans anywhere close to our shores . And little can be done about it (double-bottoms are a sick joke) short of radical down-sizing.. If you want to know how dangerous a large tanker is, drink half a bottle of neat whisky, get into your car and drive it at 80 miles an hour in a built-up area.

We managed eventually to persuade the government to hold a full public Inquiry into the Sea Empress disaster with a High Court judge in charge. What transpired was a sick joke. The ‘Expert’ from the official Marine Investigation Board proclaimed that “The vessel was in in no way to blame because its seaworthiness certificate was up to date at the time of the accident.” Can you imagine such inanity? “It’s safe because someone has issued a paper in advance saying it’s safe.” And yet the High Court Judge accepted it. The wreck was patched up, renamed in case anyone recognised how dangerous it was, and sent back to sea threatening another ghastly tragedy. But what are wild creatures and human lives when there are profits, even very small profits, to be made ?

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‘EXPLORER’ ; EXTRAS

February 4, 2025

Consists principally of coloured versions of images which would be too expensive to include in the printed book where they are rendered in black & white only. Coloured images are particularly important in astronomy because colour can be used to introduce an extra dimension, for instance depth out into space .

Artist P.D.(Paul) van de Velde (C)

This is from Chapter 16 p 93 and shows a bar-tailed Godwit in flight. One such flew non-stop from Alaska to Tasmania ,nearly 9,000 miles in 11 days, when it was only 5 months old. The book includes my enthralling battle to try and understand such apparently miraculous feats.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have captured the most comprehensive picture ever assembled of the evolving Universe — and one of the most colourful. The study is called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UVUDF) project.

This is from Chapter 26 p151 and shows an ultra-deep image of the sky taken with our new camera WFC-3 on Hubble after it had been installed by the very last refurbishment mission of Shuttle and its astronaut crew in 2009. The only two stars on it can be identified by the diffraction spikes on their images. All the other images are of galaxies vast distances away, some of the very small red images with redshifts as high as 7. If the Universe is really expanding they shouldn’t be there, they should be dimmed into invisibility by the so called ‘Tolman Effect’ proposed as the acid test for Expansion back in the 1930’s. Most Cosmologists don’t want to admit this. Here is the kind of challenge that a telescope can pose to the human race. Have we the capacity to change our minds? And how should we go about trying to do so? The latter third of ‘Explorer’ is taken up with such challenges.

From Chapter 27 p155 shows six Quasars as first imaged with Hubble. As seen from the ground they were simply sharp points of light, but from Space they are more complex and interesting. They are galaxy nucleii giving off luminous beams while interacting with structures nearby which they are ‘feeding on’;the long suspected Supermassive Black Holes. In his eagerness to snatch the ‘honour’ of this discovery John Bahcall failed to see these structures and got it all wrong.

From Chapter 28 p 158. Some cosmic objects can only be detected because they leave gaps in the light coming towards us from behind them. Here is a wonderful example of such black gaps in the spectrum of a distant Quasar. Look at how many such ‘QSOALS’ there are ! It s my belief they are caused by Hidden Galaxies along the line of sight. People who do not agree, mainly at snob universities, must come up with an alternative explanation. They struggle.
. This spectrum, taken by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, the world’s first optical array, shows the light from a quasar, catchily named HE0940-1050, after it has travelled through something like a hundred such absorbers. The vertical lines are tell-tale signs of absorption — they show where light has been absorbed by atoms along the line of sight. The coloured light comes from the background Quasar after it has traversed the Earth’s atmosphere. By analysing these lines, astronomers can infer all sorts of information about the material from which the absorbers are made . Wonderful data like this is now on the web making it possible for ‘amateurs’ to take part in ongoing debates about its true significance.
Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689
HST ACS WFC
H. Ford (JHU)

Chapter 28 p 161, Most galaxies exist in clusters not unlike this one imaged with the HST. This clustering makes it extremely difficult to associate a particular radio signal with a particular optical galaxy when there are so many alternatives. This ambiguity has bedevlled the debate over the existence of Hidden Galaxies

The radio dish at Parkes NSW after being fitted with our new HIPASS Hydrogen system in 1996. The 26 ultra-sensitive receivers are in the focus cabin at the top but are analysed by the super-fast correlators in the tower below where the observers operate. 210 feet in diameter, and operated by the CSIRO in Sydney, it was originally built by Taffy Bowen who developed the airborne radar which put an end to the WW2 Blitzes.

The 1000 foot Arecibo radio dish sited in Puerto Rico but then operated by Cornell University. It has huge area but both its sensitivity and its angular resolution are limited by its crude design, never intended originally for astronomy. Unfortunately its astronomers either did not understand or did not acknowledge this and so held up progress in Hidden Galaxy research for nearly 20 years. Its cables eventually snapped and it plunged into the natural depression below.

Chapt 41 p224. A typical data set assembled for the Equatorial Strip by my team at Cardiff and Julianne Dalcanton’s Sloan team at the University of Seattle. No such combination had ever been available before! Bottom left is the original detection made by Diego in his PhD thesis, marked with a dot. Bottom right the confirming data made by scanning the position at Parkes at higher spectral resolution. Note the characteristic double-horned profile. Top left is Julianne’s Sloan image at that position showing an edge-on spiral. Top right the Sloan otical spectrum obtained by placing an optical fibre on the galaxy nucleus.Together these data removed all doubt about the identification of the Hydrogen signal with its optical counterpart,

Chapter 41, p226. An absolutely key image showing a montage of Dalcanton’s Sloan images of some of our Equatorial Strip Hydrogen sources identified at Parkes. Look how various they are, some virtually invisible. Yet the 6 most luminous objects here are the 6 bottom right, all containing more Hydrogen than our huge Milky Way. The most luminous of all is the smudge to the left of the edge-on disc with the bright nucleus. It’s so dim as to be almost lost below our terrestrial sky. This montage alone can leave no doubt that the cosmos is stuffed with Hidden Galaxies. And yet there are some professional astronomers who cannot bring themselves to admit it.

Chapter 45, p243.The Jodrell Bank 250 foot radio dish built out of wartime scrap by Sir Bernard Lovell of Manchester University back in the 1950’s. My favourite radio telescope used by Jon Davies’ team to locate the first truly Dark Galaxy , which is in the Virgo Cluster to which we belong.Why not go along and see the magnificent dish at the Visitor centre near Macclesfield in Cheshire.

chapter 47 p 253.The perfect correspondence between galaxy Dynamical Mass (vertical by logarithm) and Optical Luminosity (horizontal by logarithm) for two quite different samples, one radio selected, (red) one optically selected (blue). Why they should be so perfectly correlated is, to say the least puzzling because the mass is almost entirely Dark Matter whilst the light all comes from stars which are made of ordinary matter. Um….

Chapter 50, p 253. Cape Canaveral ready to launch 2009. Shuttle Atlantis is in the foreground ready to go up on its very last mission to the HST with our camera WFC 3 which is still functioning in 2025. In the background is Endeavour ready to launch as a lifeboat if Atlantis should fail. The orange structure is the huge cryogenic fuel tank, and strapped to it one can see one of the 2 solid state boosters.

Venice 2010, the garden of the Palazzo Francescetti photographed by me from the Ponte Acadamia over the Grand Canal. We astronomers and astronauts gathered here for several days to discuss the latest results from the HST and to celebrate its 20th birthday and the 400th birthday of Galileo’s Starry Messenger the founding document of the whole Enlightenment.

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MY BOOK ‘EXPLORER’ 2025

September 30, 2024

The log. of a journey of discovery to the end of the Universe and even beyond

Is the story of an ordinary man who dug up the rainbow’s end and discovered something far more precious than gold , and that was Wisdom. But nobody believed him – after all they could see he wasn’t a genius. So, when he was very old he wrote down how Wisdom works in the hope that one day all humans could share the recipe. He was fearful that without such wisdom they might well destroy themselves along with much of the natural world which had nurtured them.

In writing, his plan , my plan, was to give a step-by-step account of the journey Illustrating that dauntless curiosity had been the secret, not genius of any kind. And luck of course. He had been one of the tiny crew of the Hubble Space Telescope and so had stumbled upon mysteries which wouldn’t ever let his imagination rest. And that is how eventually he found his rainbow’s end – when he was trying to find something quite else – Hidden Galaxies. What he unearthed enabled him, and perhaps all of us who follow him, to think dozens of times better than we ever could before. I hope readers will find Explorer both an exciting adventure story and a persuasive revelation. That is certainly how the journey felt to the author. It is crafted in sixty very short episodes– entitled as follows:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE 2024 (1 kiloword) 

1 EXPLORER 1968 (930 words) Journal of a voyage as exciting as Magellan’s

2 OVERNIGHT FAME – BUT…..1969 (11 k-words)

The longest essay, included to show what astronomical observing is really like. It’s the discovery of the Crab Pulsar and the evidence that there is a new form of matter in the Cosmos, one teaspoon of which weighs as much as 200,000 ocean liners . But there’s skulduggery afoot.

3 LOST AMONG THE STARS (1969) (1 kw) I see the Universe clearly for the first time , from a mountaintop in Arizona. Smitten!

4 A REALLY MAD IDEA 1969 (1.7 kw) Are most Galaxies hidden underneath our sky? I become obsessed.

5 HOW FAR AWAY ARE QUASARS? 1972 (2.8 kw)  The huge question.Battling with killer hornets in Australia.

6 AROUSING THE BLOOD. 1973 (2.3 kw) How to design far better telescopes.

7 A RARE MOMENT OF ECSTASY 1975 (1.6 kw) A revelation I will never forget.

8 PROJECT TITANIC 1977 (1.1 kw)

9 INTO SPACE 1977 (1 kw) Beginning to plan The Space Telescope (Hubble).

10 A FALTERING START 1977 ( 2.0 kw) The rows start. They have to.

11 THE INTERNET INVENTS ITSELF 1979 (1.2 kw) In Britain first, not Silicon Valley.

12 THE EXPLORER IN THE LIBRARY 1978 (1.3 kw). Mr Cucumber gives me wings

13 TREASURE CHEST 1979 (700 w) How the gems of Cosmic discovery could all be shared.

14 THE GRAND CHALLENGE 1980 (800 w) How were the biggest scientific discoveries in history actually made? What can we learn from them?

15 GHOSTS IN SPACE 1980 (600 w). You can’t see them but they must be there, Or are they?

16 THE SECRETS OF BIRD FLIGHT

1.6 kw) . How can tiny birds cross oceans? Fascinating and unlikely.

17 TILTING THE UNIVERSE 1982 ( 1.8 kw) What it really looks like. They’d all got it wrong! Surely not?

18 HIDDEN GALAXIES IN THE SEWER 1983 (1.3kw)

19 BIRDS ACROSS THE OCEAN 1985. (900 w) It’s more than magic.

20 HITCHHIKING TO THE STARS. 1988 (800 w) Triumph, but then disaster

21 EINSTEIN AND ME 1987. (1.6 kw) An inspiring but troubled relationship. He was a thief …but a wise man as well. How very strange.

22 THE FIRST “CROUCHING GIANT” 1987 (700w) Beaten to the Pole. But what a wonderful surprise too.

23 WHY WEAKLINGS FAIL 1980’s. (1.9 kw) Character in Science.

24 HIDDEN BY SMOKE 1990 (9.2 kw) While observing at The Cape wisdom leaks down from the sky

25 THE BIG FIX. 1990 (1.3 kw) Helping to mend the Space Telescope. Insight in a glider.

26 STRUCK DUMB 1993. (2.4 kw) The Universe wasn’t meant to look at all like this! What’s going on?

27 IMAGING QUASARS 1994 (1.5 kw) Crown Jewels.

28 HIDDEN GALAXIES AND SPECTRAL GHOSTS 1994 (1.8 kw) Could they be related?

29 OUT OF FAILURE 1992. (1.4 kw) Never give up.

30 FEELING IN THE DARK 1992 (2.4kw) Looking for the Light-switch.

31 OIL TANKER DISASTER & IGNORANCE OFTHE BRITISH ELITE 1996 (4.2 kw) What happens when we cannot think straight.

32 SETTING SAIL 1997 (500 w) To explore the universe for Invisible galaxies.

33 THE SHARPEST EYE 1998 (3.4 kw) Designing a new camera for the Space Telescope.

34 CONFLICT AND CONTROVERSY. 1998 (1.5 kw) Conference rows.

35 HORRORS OF THE DEEP 2000. (1.1 kw) What the hell’s going on?

36 ARECIBO FOLLIES 2000 (1.1 kw) Mad Big Telescope Disease among our rivals.

37 THE SWEETEST SPOT (2002) (600 w) The special place to look; among friends.

38 HUMAN THERMODYNAMICS 2004 (2.7 kw) What everyone needs to know but does not. The Professors have got it hopelessly wrong.

39 RECYCLABLE OIL & PTEROSAUR WINGS 2000 (700w) How we could save the planet

40 EUREKA 2004 (1.4 kw) Applying Information Theory to explore the Cosmos; Revelations.

41 TRIUMPH AT LAST ? (1.4 kw) Could this be it?

42 WITCHCRAFT STATS AND BACK (1.1 kw) Deluded Statisticians.

43 THE AUSTRALIAN FIASCO 2005 (1.4 kw). Not again; surely not.

44 DISASTERS OF PROBABILITY. 2004 (900 w)

45 FIRST DARK GALAXY 2008. (1.1 kw) Unrefutable truths, but implacable enemies.

46 THE BIG SHOOT- OUT IN CARDIFF. 2007 (1.5 kw) Spectacular rows.

47 GREAT SECRETS BEGIN TO EMERGE 2007 (1.8kw) Intimations of a vast discovery.

48 HARD TO BELIEVE 2008 (3.4 kw) But here it is.

49 CRIMINALS IN ASTRONOMY 2008 (2.6 kw) All over the place.

50 LAST MISSION TO HUBBLE & THE BIG PRIZE 2009 (2.0 kw)

51 DETECTIVE’S EQUATION 2010 (2.3 kw) How we can ALL think far better. We must!

52 OCKHAM’S RAZOR – THE BASIS OF WISDOM 2011 (2.5kw)

53 FATAL MISTAKES. 2013 (1.8 kw) How wrong the human race can sometimes be. We’ve got to admit it.

54 ANIMAL WISDOM 2014. (2.6 kw). Smarter than the Ancient Greeks.

55 WAS THERE A BIG BANG? 2014 ( 1 kw) Probably not.

56 GALAXIES – HIDDEN NO MORE. 2017 (0.7 kw) At last!

57 ‘CATEGORICAL INFERENCE’ ,THE BEATING HEART OF THINKING. 2018. ( 3.4 kw)

58 THE SECRET OF HUMAN SUCCESS 2018 (1.8 kw) No it’s more than brains and was invented by Turquoise miners around 1800 BC.

59 ROTTEN REASONING 2018. (4.2 kw) And how to avoid it.

60 DARK MATTERS. 2024 (1.5 kw)

61 MY OWN BLUNDERS

62 THINKING AND PROGRESS Miracles await if we learn to think. But academics can’t teach us because they’ve screwed it all up.

63 WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

64 LAST WORDS

INDEX

64 SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 2024 (600w)

THE PREFACE

If you read. this it should give you some idea of. whether. you want to read on

Here it is updated to Feb 2025

Imagine that as a young explorer  you were the first human to realize that the Earth must be round, and devoting the rest of your life to proving it so. Your contemporaries are divided into two camps; the much larger thinks the idea is preposterous and devise any number of arguments to support their view; the much smaller band of rival explorers want to test  it out but snitch the largest  share of glory for themselves. That is my story ,which I want to share with you here. Except it wasn’t a round Earth in my case but the realization that most of the structures in  Space are invisible to us because our local light levels blind us to their existence. What a lifetime challenge – to overcome the doubters and defeat the jealous rivals. Here I aim to share the ebb and flow of that battle. Could life be any more exciting?

My life has been led at  the very forefront of scientific research. In my 20s I became an astronomer who made some useful discoveries. I was then picked to join the select Hubble Space Telescope crew to explore the universe properly for the very first time: we are still going strong after 35 years. A university appointed me to become a full professor in my 30s  and were enlightened enough to leave me free to do much as I willed . Thereafter for eight months of every year, I roamed the world in search of discovery and adventure. I had become the explorer I had always wanted to be as a  boy. My interests range far beyond  astronomy, and I stumbled upon one or two startling  ideas which I hope will not be lost, because they could benefit all of us on this planet, and not just humans. If at least one of the following four ideas does not intrigue you  then read no further:

  1. According to Einstein scientists advance by using their common sense, but he couldn’t explain how Common Sense Thinking (CST) works. After 40 years of probing I have found out how. 14 -year- olds  could now be taught to use its main tricks: Bayes’ Rule for gambling successfully; The Detectives Equation for deciding wisely; the Principle of Animal Wisdom (PAW) for avoiding fatal mistakes; Ockham’s Razor to avoid wasting time, and Categorical Inference to free CST from mathematics. In the real-world decisions usually have to be reached  on the basis of conflicting evidence. Common Sense Thinking is all about reaching sound decisions in the face  of conflicting evidence. Check it out because, once  you can master CST,  all manner of insights tumble out of the sky.
  2. When we were crossing the Atlantic back in 1968 a  tiny warbler landed aboard  our ship mid-way. It seemed like a miracle to me. How could such a  tiny creature  have flown so far without food or rest?  I  vowed to get to the bottom of animal flight and eventually (it took  10 years)  I did. But that left a  monstrous puzzle, literally monstrous – but also a huge opportunity. My theory proves that no creature weighing more than 12 kg. can fly –  and none can. But in Texas the fossils of Pterosaurs are found with wing-spans in excess of 13 metres and weights of at least 150 kg. They could only have  flown  using blood that could pick up sunlight directly and turn it into energy without using oxygen or exhausting carbon-dioxide . When you think about it that is ‘Recyclable Oil’– endless energy for all , without any disastrous environmental consequences. Why don’t we attempt to synthesise Recyclable Oil (RO), and save the planet, including all those wonderful creatures  now on their way to extinction?

3) How come we can think so much more effectively than our cousin  chimpanzees – who share 98.5% of our genes? Armed with Common Sense one can show it is all about phonetic writing, which was only devised 3,800 years ago by Turquoise miners in the Sinaii peninsula. Without that we cannot put enough evidence together to reach sound conclusions in any but simple situations. Common Sense Thinking plus phonetic writing took us to the  Moon – but why stop there? For instance I have  used them to ask   “What are the roots of Progress?”  and out popped the answer: Curiosity, Honesty, Adaptability, Numeracy, Tolerance, Literacy, Committees and Sustainability [ CHANTLiCOMS for short].  Once one can think straight, and understand  the  roots of Progress, all  manner of  vistas open up – in Philosophy, in History and in Politics for example. One can even draw up a League table of nations defined by their Progressiveness. You might be surprised at some of the placings.

4) But  2,500 years ago scholars in ancient Greece thought they had found the  recipe for Certainty – Deductive Logic. Ever since, scholars have frowned upon Common Sense Thinking  as inferior – precisely because of its Provisional nature. They still frown upon it today –  but of course they are hopelessly wrong. That means they cannot teach our young ones how to think. Thus  most contemporary education is “Baducation”. It is, in Einstein’s words   “Teaching  fish  to climb trees”. How are we going to change this catastrophic state  of affairs?  We could do you know – and fast. The results would be dramatic

But why should  you pay attention to me?  I’m no genius – I don’t even believe in that phenomenon – for which there is no evidence , not in Science anyway. But I have been privileged to spend more time at the very frontier of knowledge than anyone else I know. I was born incorrigibly curious – my exasperated parents dubbed me ‘Mr Why’; I have read  at least 8000 books; and have been ruthlessly selfish with my time, devoting at least three hours  of every day to Thinking, ruminations which are recorded in diaries stretching back 70 years and containing 2 million words. It is not surprising then that  one  or two provocative ideas have turned up. Bugger fame – it’s far too late for that. But it is worth trying to keep the candle of Learning alight in the dark. After all it has flickered  out  before – more than once.

REFERENCES

There are a whole series of coloured images associated with the material. To put them in a book would make it impractically expensive.  So at the end of this book is a section headed SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL with many pointers to extra stuff, particularly to my website mjdisney.org . In the mean time you. can look them up in our parallel Post entitled ‘EXPLORER EXTRAS’. The paperback version of the full book (450 pages) should appear , along with the author’s other books, on AMAZON in mid Feb 2025

Referring to a different essay in this book I write [e22] for essay 22.

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MY BOOK ‘COMMON SENSE THINKING’

August 3, 2022

This is a very short book (only 60 odd pages) about a very big subject – Thinking. It is based on the belief that we can all learn to Think far more effectively by sticking to a few simple rules. Why those rules work is a complicated business, but we leave the ‘Whys’ out here (indicating where you can read about them elsewhere). We hope everyone over 13 could read this little book and become a whole lot smarter after doing so.

But how could that be true? Because 2,500 years ago the ‘experts’ on thinking imagined that they had found new ways of doing so that would lead to Certainty. But it turned out that they were hopelessly wrong. Unfortunately they confused everyone about the matter, especially the highly educated, so all we have to do now is abandon their wild goose chase for Certainty, and revert to the tried and tested ways of Common Sense. What we will be looking for instead are convincing betting odds on our ideas and our decisions being right.

The key to understanding was Darwin’s realisation (in 1859) that we humans too are animals, and therefore that Thinking must be a survival mechanism that has evolved over a million generations of struggle out in the wild. As such it must be highly effective otherwise humans would have become extinct. The thinking method advocated here is the way I believe that all smart animals, unconfused by education, use. You simply can’t beat it!

Who am I to claim any expertise in the matter of thinking? I have been an astronomer and Space scientists all my working life (50 years), using what I believed to be ‘The Scientific Method’. But then events led me to question exactly what that Scientific Method was. A dozen years of fascinating research eventually brought me to realise that it was all about Common Sense Thinking (CST for short), and to the actual mechanisms by which CST must work. This book is a brief account of what I found out, written in the hope that it will revolutionise other peoples’ thinking as much as it has definitely revolutionised mine. And if you won’t take my word here is what Albert Einstein had to say:

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant, and has forgotten the gift.”

Let’s unearth that sacred gift of Nature and share it amongst ourselves once again. Let’s re-learn how to think.

‘COMMON SENSE THINKING’ is actually a very condensed and simplified version of my big book ‘THINKING FOR OURSELVES’ described elsewhere on this site under the ‘My Books’ category

TABLE OF CONTENTS BY CHAPTER

1 THINKING LIKE EINSTEIN

2 THINKING LIKE A GAMBLER

3 THE CASE OF THE MISSING WIFE

4 MURDER IN THE LIBRARY & PAW

5 KEEPING IT SIMPLE; GET OUT THAT RAZOR

6 NUMBERS; PAWN THEM.

7 WHEN TO DECIDE AND ACT: 64

8 WHAT ABOUT YOUR PRIOR?

9 DOES IT WORK?

10 THE LIMITATIONS OF COMMON SENSE

11 ENEMIES: EDUCATION VERSUS COMMON SENSE

12 BUT IS IT RIGHT?

13 A SERIOUS HEALTH WARNING FOR THINKERS.

SUMMARY OF THE BOOK

EXTRA STUFF ( OPTIONAL)

The worked examples with hints are at a url in my ‘Post:

“ABOUT MY BOOK TFO&&&” and if you click on that it will download.

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ABOUT MY BOOK TFO&&&

August 21, 2021

UPDATES ON A LIVING BOOK

This post is so titled because it stands for “THINKING FOR OURSELVES-ADDITIONS” where “Thinking for Ourselves” refers to my book with that title originally published in 2020 and updated in 2021 (For details see elsewhere under ‘My Books’ Category or under Tags on ‘Thinking’.) But from now on I want the book to become live, so that it can be continually updated here on line. Here you will find Exercises with Answers, corrections, images, calculations, supporting data, more detailed and improved arguments, readers comments with my responses to what is intended to become what I call ‘A LIVING BOOK’.See at the bottom of this Post how to make such Comments.

All the additions are shown below, mostly under a Chapter number and page number in the paperback book, version 2021.

GENERAL

EXERCISES WITH ANSWERS can be found at;

at the following url:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/tfoexans.pdf

AUTHOR’S MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT TFO (as of Aug 21)

         I finished the book 3 years ago with the surprising but triumphal discovery of Categorical Inference – which connects the whole scheme for Common Sense Thinking so naturally and necessarily with Animal Thinking and Evolution. And IF it’s right it could change the world.

         At that point I sometimes get struck with what  I believe they call ‘Imposter Syndrome’– how could little me have unearthed a powerful scheme entirely missed by giants such as Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein? It doesn’t seem likely does it?

         But then I look at some of its manifest achievements such as:

  • Explaining Humankind’s dramatic leap in mental capability around 1000 BC.
  • Its unique mechanism for balancing conflicting evidence, as illustrated with its success with Hidden Galaxies.
  • A first transparent and convincing explanation for Ockham’s Razor.
  • Its powerful mechanism (PAW) for dealing with Systematic Errors, which have kept us back so many times  for so long.
  • It’s perfect dovetailing into Animal Thinking and Darwinian Evolution.
  • The multiple new insights which spring from it – see this blog and my other book “History of the Brits’ [HOB ch.5]. For instance  it comes up with the keys to human Progress, what I call ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ .

So then I am reassured. But, but……Why little me again? All I can say to myself, and to potential readers is :

 “It was bloody minded doggedness more than anything else. I started out with the modest ambition to find out what I believed was already known  –  the Scientific Method, only to find to my surprise that it was not, but that it probably had something to do with Common Sense, but that hadn’t been defined either. So I asked myself a different question: ‘How could animals think?’ and thereafter progress became relatively rapid  because now I could entirely  ignore Philosophy, Mathematics and Religion.

So I didn’t have to be a genius, which I definitely am not. And one doesn’t have to be a genius to make a great discovery. Look at Darwin – he spent the first  30 years  of his idle life slaughtering wild creatures for fun. Basically he was an illiterate lout – but he stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery of all because he happened to be in the right place at the right time – the Galapagos Islands  in 1838. But he was only there because his exasperated father had sent him out there as a punishment, saying “You wouldn’t even make a decent rat-catcher.” Indeed there’s little evidence of ‘genius’ in science more generally [ See Chapter 3 of TFO to see how great discoveries have been made in history] – so even if I’m not a genius , TFO  could still be right.”

CORRECTIONS.

As of 21/8/21 there are only 2 because I have just made two dozen corrections to the original paperback edition.They are

P 302: replace ‘Sherman’ with ‘Pershing’.

P 456, line 7: replace 13 with 23.

But the most important of those for purchasers of the older editions are at:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/tfocorrsjun20.docx

ADDITIONS AND MODIFICATIONS BY CHAPTER

CHAPTER 1 (‘Can we learn to think better?’) p 15

CHAPTER 2 (‘Different kinds of Thinking’) p25

CHAPTER 3 (‘How do Scientists Think?) p46

CHAPTER 4 (‘Natural Thinking and Bayes’ Rule’) p95

There are several Posts on the fascinating subject of ‘Galaxies’ , including ‘Hidden Galaxies’, in the ‘Astronomy’ Category here, with many images.

CHAPTER 5 (‘The Detective’s Equation’) p132

CHAPTER 6 (‘Numbers and Thinking’) p154

CHAPTER 7 (‘Woolly Thinking and Ockham’s Razor’) p170

There are several posts here on ‘Big Bang Cosmology’ — which I use as a case study in dodgy thinking, under the ‘Astronomy’ Category’.

CHAPTER 8 (‘Common Sense’) p198

CHAPTER 9 (‘Error Analysis’) p236

CHAPTER 10 (‘Systematic Errors, The Elephants in the Room’) p268

CHAPTER 11 (‘Statistics – or Terror Analysis’) p294

Statisticians turned themselves from humble clerks into a dogmatic priesthood based on several misunderstandings, on their part. They need to be put firmly back on their stools. Having spent 30 years trying to teach Statistics at university, I gradually came to realise that the profession has got itself hopelessly lost in the No-man’s land between Induction and Deduction. Look what confusing advice they have given to the government over the Covid pandemic, They’re not scientists, they’re mostly priests, who hide behind higher mathematics when they are challenged. See Post “Statistics: exposed at last” under ‘Thinking’ Category.

CHAPTER 12 (‘Persuasion’) p342 t

CHAPTER 13 (‘Poor Thinking’) p357

CHAPTER 14 (‘The Extraordinary History of Thinking’) p407

CHAPTER 15 (‘The Peculiarities of Science’) p451

In Sect (15:12) ‘What about Mathematics’ I only gave some modest examples because I didn’t want to frighten off non-mathematical readers but on this site its maybe worth drawing attention to some more spectacular examples. For instance on pp 471-472 I then failed to recognise the full and dramatic implications of mathematics when applied to immigration: basically because immigrants arrive every year, while children arrive only a couple of times or so in a female’s life, immigration is no less than 160 times more significant than natural birthrate when it comes to population increase! Thus immigration into the UK at present is equivalent to 3 British mothers out of 4 having an extra child! If you don’t believe me, and I found it very difficult to believe it myself, you should consult the url:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/immigmaths-copy.pdf

Then the modern world, including radio, broadcasting, television, Relativity, satellites, mobile phones, the internet…. were all implicit in a set of equations derived by two Brits in the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell and Oliver Heaviside. You don’t have to understand the equations in detail but one can certainly admire a human artefact millions of times more momentous than either The Rosetta Stone or Tutenkamun’s Tomb. See:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MAXWELLSEQUATIONS.pdf

CHAPTER 16 (‘Consequences and the Ascent of Mankind’) p476

On p486 there is a very brief discussion of Time. If you want to see a deeper discussion of a profound topic see the Post “WHAT IS TIME?” under the Category ‘Thinking’. Those who want to look deeper into TIME can look at the Post ‘MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS’ (under ‘Thinking’ Category )which explains why Relativity has changed our view that Time is absolute; it’s not, according to physicists. Even so Time is still a great mystery; there seem to be several different kinds of time. all mistakenly labelled with the same four lettered word.

GLOSSARY p513

REFERENCES p526

APPENDICES pp 547 to 604

INDEX p612

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HOW THE MODERN WORLD WORKS:NUMERACY

April 29, 2021

AN EXAMPLE: MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS

The invention of the phonetic script about three and a half thousand years ago enabled humans to suddenly think about a million times better, and they took off. Likewise the invention of a script for thinking quantitatively, that is to say Mathematics , could lead to thinking of a different kind that is just as powerful. In fact it has already: Maxwell’s Equations (ME).

Some arguments are of a purely quantitative nature. For instance in our post “Civilization and Moonpower” we demonstrated that large cities not dependent on slavery only became feasible once tidal energy was harnessed, as was possible in North Western Europe, where it is far more abundant than elsewhere. Here I talk about the most momentous piece of Mathematics ever done, Maxwell’s Equations.

Maxwell’s Equations describe the interaction between Electricity, Magnetism, Space and Time. They were an attempt to write down the experimental findings of the ‘electricians’ Hans-Christian Oersted (1820) and Michael Faraday (1831) but they led to a totally unexpected insight, and thus to the modern world: “Electromagnetic waves can propagate across empty space at the speed of light”.

Out of that insight (1864) there was to come Radio (1887), Transatlantic wireless (1901), Relativity (1904), Electronics (1912), Broadcasting (1920), Television (1930), Code-breaking (1930’s onward), Radar (1935), Microwaves (1940), The Electronic Computer (1943), Communication Satellites (1960), Space Travel (1969), The Internet (1980), Mobile Phones (2000). … while the Second World War could as aptly be called ‘The Radio War’ because it was started by Radio ( broadcast hate propaganda), controlled by radio (e.g. Churchill and Roosevelt talking to their peoples), won by radar in its many guises both in defence and attack, and lost by code-breaking ( e.g. : the battles of Midway and Kursk). A huge operation like the D-Day landing would have been unthinkable without the command and control made possible by radio.

Einstein is rightly famous for his E=mc2 equation (1905) but in a sense he and others (for he was only one of several) were only adding footnotes to Maxwel’s Equations which in themselves prove that Space and TIme cannot be at all as we had thought them to be.

So what are Maxwell’s Equations? There are 4 of them actually and you can write them out in different ways using rather different vocabularies. Textbooks on Electromagnetism can make them look both galumphing and arbitrary, when, as I believe, they are inevitable; the world couldn’t have been constructed in any other way. I find that both beautiful and totally unexpected. They, and the many stories behind them, are certainly worth having a look at even if you have no ambitions to use them yourself. You can regard them like The Rosetta Stone, as a wonder to behold, though they are far far more remarkable and momentous than that iconic stone. If you don’t believe me look at:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MAXWELLSEQUATIONS.pdf

Yes they do look unfamiliar, even frightening, but that’s probably because you’ve been put off Mathematics by bad teaching.The world is full of Baducation and bad ideas . And one of the most debilitating , which goes back to the Ancient Greeks, is the notion that “Mathematics is Deductive in Nature”, and therefore quite different from our normal everyday Common Sense Thinking , which is Inductive. But that is a complete misconception. It’s as if the Maths teaching profession have mistaken the grocery- bill for the groceries. Don’t take my word for it: Morris Kline, that most eminent Historian of Mathematics wrote: ” “Mathematics is a human activity and is subject to all the foibles and frailties of humans. Any formal, logical account is pseudo-mathematics, a fiction, even a legend, despite the element of reason.” [‘Mathematics, The Loss of Certainty, ‘ OUP, 1986]

So many of us have been put off maths because we’ve been taught it back to front by the maths- teaching profession: deduction first, intuition afterwards. No wonder so many of us rebel. If you look at the following url you can see the Theorem that “The angles in any triangle add up to two right angles‘ being taught in the two alternative ways so that you can judge which is best for yourself:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/dedvindmaths.docx

The consequence of all this innumeracy are fairly tragic. Most of us are innumerate and, in my opinion, innumerate people can never become wise, not any more, not in the modern world( see all the current confusion over Covid vaccination statistics). The great news is that innumeracy is by no means irreversible. Maths is a subject peculiarly suited to self-instruction over the Internet. I suggest that everyone who earns a certificate of numeracy receives an immediate grant of £15,000 while many prestige professions and jobs be reserved entirely for the numerate. Thus a large fraction of a population could become numerate at a trivial cost by comparison with many infrastructure projects. And surely widespread wisdom is more desirable than say more runways. It’s probably no accident that the most numerate people on Earth (the Japanese) are also the wealthiest (UN figures).

The consequences of all this innumeracy are fairly tragic. Most of us are innumerate, and in my opinion innumerate people can never become wise, not any more, not in the modern world ( see all the current confusion over Covid. vaccination Statistics). The good news is that innumeracy is by no means irreversible. Maths is a subject especially suited to self instruction over the internet. I suggest that everyone who can earn a certificate of numeracy receive an immediate cash award of £15,000, while many prestige jobs and professions should be reserved for the numerate. Thus much of a population could become numerate at a trivial cost: Widespread wisdom is surely more desirable than say more runways. It is probably no accident that the most numerate people on Earth (the Japanese) are also the wealthiest (UN figures).http://Baducation

If you would like to see a wide-ranging discussion of numeracy and innumeracy in the British context, taken from my book ‘History of the Brits’ (Amazon 2020) you might like to click on:

If you want to see a wide-ranging discussion of Numeracy in the British context you might like to click on:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/HISTORY15numeracy.pdf

Anyway , for those who can appreciate them, Maxwell’s Equations are every bit as beautiful as great music, prose or poetry . They enable us to hear , in Tennyson’s words “…the horns of elfland faintly blowing….” On the other hand the consequences of innumeracy can. be tragic. The Sea Empress disaster which drowned Pembrokeshire in oil back in 1996 was the outcome of innumeracy pure and simple, It’s. in the above url too.

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RECYCLABLE OIL

November 29, 2020

Imagine a liquid which, if left out in the sun, absorbs energy from it and goes into its ‘Charged’ state. Later when it passes through the engine of your vehicle it is induced to release that solar energy without burning Oxygen, but reverts to its inert “Discharged’ state and is stored in the vehicle’s waste tank. Afterwards, at the refuelling station the inert liquid is exchanged for fresh ‘Charged’ liquid which goes into your fuel tank, and off you go again. The discharged liquids are collected, re-energised in the sun, and then recycled through the whole process; again and again and again. And because no Oxygen is is burned, no Carbon Dioxide is produced to pollute the atmosphere and warm the globe. In other words humankind would be getting all the energy it needs in a convenient form from the Sun , without damaging the planet. We’d have harnessed endlessly Recyclable Oil, or ‘RO’ for short. And why not? If cabbages can turn sunlight into chemical energy why can’t kings? Eating cabbages, burning the Oxygen which the cabbages have produced as a by-product, and then breathing out CO2 doesn’t have to be the only way we can survive. Sunlight is abundant and free. Surely, by taking thought, we can make use of it without preying on cabbages — or their fossils — and mucking up the atmosphere into the bargain? Grudges will say it can’t be done; but then they always do. As Francis Bacon wrote 400 years ago: ” But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this — that men despair and think things impossible.”. Anyway I believe there’s evidence that someone succeeded long long ago:

Mind you one could reasonably argue that if RO were feasible then some creature in all the aeons of past Evolution would surely have exploited it already. The fact that none has is pretty convincing evidence against its practicality. Anyway if you do a simple sum you can show there isn’t enough sunlight out there to power a normal animal. Such a solar powered creature would have to be spread out like a blanket to catch enough of it. Surely that rules the idea out?

A slide from a Powerpoint presentation produced by my son Mathias for a talk he gave on our joint behalf at his own university, University College London back in 2005. It more than hints at what is coming next.

Almost, but not quite. I want to convince you that once upon a time there was a solar creature that ruled our skies for over a hundred million years, only to be wiped out in the great meteorite extinction which ended the age of dinosaurs.

Look at the next photo which I took in the Natural History Museum in New York in 2000:

The fossil wing of a gigantic dinosaur excavated in Texas, with behind it the complete skeleton of a much smaller specimen. The shoulder bones in particular look more like those of an ox than a bird. I was flabbergasted when I saw it because the laws of physics simply rule out such a monster from flying. But what else did it do if not fly? Bigger specimens up to 11 meters in span have been excavated since, though none is complete.

When alive the creature would have had a total wingspan of twenty feet or more and weighed around a hundred kilos. When I saw it first my hair literally stood on end. Why? Because a long term interest of mine had been the science of animal flight (principally birds) and I knew at once that the creature hanging from that ceiling could never have flown — not using normal metabolic processes; never, never, never! To stay aloft it could only have used solar power directly (and didn’t its giant wingspread resemble a blanket?).

Science is hard, mainly because there is so much to learn. We overcome that by specialising early, then specialising further again and again, learning more and more about less and less. That is all very well but it does have crippling limitations. To tackle any really ambitious project we have to form teams in order to broaden our individually narrow specialities. But what if nobody on the team is aware that fact X, from an entirely different field, will be the indispensable key to solving our problem? That happens all the time, and as we become increasingly specialised, may become the greatest brake to further progress in research.

Let’s take a famous example. Hans Christian Oersted was an undistinguished Danish scientist employed by his government to look into the hazards of storms at sea. Reading through the logbooks of ships that had survived, he could hardly ignore the frequent reports that during electrical storms the compasses on board went haywire. At the time (1820) nobody knew that Electricity and Magnetism were in any way related — but Oersted could hardly avoid that inference. So he went out and bought a battery (they’d just come on the market) and sure enough he found that modest currents would cause any compass nearby to swing dramatically. He published a brief note ( in Latin) which set laboratories across the world on fire. In particular Faraday and Ampere worked out the details of Electromagnetism, as it came to be called, and the modern world began: motors, dynamos, telegraphy, radio, Relativity, broadcasting, television, the computer — they were all waiting in the wings of history. But to set off that frenzy of invention it took Oersted’s almost accidental recognition that two previously unrelated phenomena were in fact intimately connected.

In my case the the accident was a warbler that landed on our ship during a storm in mid-Atlantic. To me it seemed like a miracle that such a tiny ball of feathers had made it out so far with no opportunity to either feed or rest. Not believing in miracles I set out to find its secret for myself, with no help from the existing literature. It took me ten years to crack the Range problem and a further two to prove that no bird weighing more than 12 kilo’s would ever fly. It could never generate the requisite power. So what was this monster doing hanging above my head in New York? It must have weighed at least a hundred kilograms,. What was more it could never have taken off, or landed safely. So how could it stay forever up in the sky? Solar power seemed to be the only possibility.

So if I am right Recyclable Oil once did exist upon this Earth — Pterodactyl’s Blood — and if it existed once surely we could synthesize it again — and save our planet?

You might suppose that everyone would be excited by such a possibility. Not a bit of it. On the contrary. Why not? It’s that bloody Specialisation once again. Palaentologists know all about pterosaur bones but don’t understand aerodynamics or physiology sufficiently well to convince themselves that pterosaurs couldn’t fly by normal means, while aerodynamicists knew how to design airliners but are not all that interested in dusty old pterosaur bones. Worst of all no one has that combination of knowledge in paleantology, aerodynamics, mathematics, physiology and energy- generation to convince themselves, or anyone else, that RO could be waiting just round the corner, to save us all. I know, because I’ve tried, and so has my son, to convince different audiences both in print and in person. Nobody has so far been able to find anything wrong with our arguments , but then nobody has so far been sufficiently convinced to publish them either

So then I grew desperate and tried to put the truth, as I see it, in a novel called Pterodactyl’s Blood, which is described elsewhere on this site, but which almost nobody has read so far. The facts are:

  • No animal weighing more than 11 kilograms could ever fly because Oxygen powered physiology is too weak to sustain the required power. Period.
  • Yet pterosaur fossils with wingspans of up to 30 feet testify that they indubitably did.
  • But creatures of that size could never have taken off ( running speeds of over 50 mph required) nor landed without crippling themselves. So they must have remained airborne, day and night, throughout their lives.
  • With Oxygen metabolism ruled out the only means of sustaining themselves in perpetual flight was direct solar power. And such was their wing area in proportion to their likely weight that this looks entirely feasible — even with moderate solar efficiencies ( less than 10%).
  • But such a departure from normal zoology would surely leave tell-tale marks in the fossil record. For instance solar powered pterosaurs could not have had feathers. And so on and so on……

What distinguishes honest science from mere speculation is vigorous Hypothesis-Testing. So we subjected the Solar Power Hypothesis to every test we could think of, and it passed. With no reasonable alternative it therefore deserves very serious consideration, especially so since it could , in principle, solve the Global Warming problem.

If you want to find out more about Recyclable Oil there are three possibilities:

Read my novel Pterodactyl’s Blood — its all in there bar the technical calculations. (described under ‘My books’ Category)

Look at the Power Point Presentation my son prepared for a seminar at his university — University College London. You should be able to see it at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/irg0asowzd5wdqs/disney_pterosaur_2010v2.ppt?dl=0

Or go direct to our rejected science paper ( which may be hard going) at:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ROdraftXV-1.pdf

and see what you can make of it.

As always comments are more than welcome.

PS There are several more posts on this site about Flight, particularly bird flight, even a simple primer on aerodynamics which should enable one to understand where the Range and Power Equations come from. There’s nothing genius about it, but the consequences are dramatic. That warbler for instance. Click on my Tags and Categories.

PSS We were not the first to worry about pterosaurs with such vestigial legs taking off ( see references in our Science paper) but nobody before us realised the Power-problem, which is quite definitive.

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ABOUT ME AS AUTHOR

October 9, 2020

          Until my family moved to the city when I was ten I had never been in a library. Thereafter Kings Norton Public Library became the theatre of all my dreams and ambitions; real teenage life in Birmingham seeming tame by comparison. Books became my wings and I soared off like a young albatross in search of its destiny. One day, so I dreamed, I would become an Explorer, a World Traveller and, of course, ‘The ‘Great Novelist’.
          Then I had a stroke of luck , though it certainly didn’t feel like that at the time. At thirteen I was diagnosed with a “ progressive and incurable disease of the spine” and incarcerated in a ‘hospital for incurable children’ deep in the countryside. There I aged 30 years in 6 months and suffered a mid-life crisis early enough to really do something about it. Having had my dreams so nearly snatched away I emerged from hospital implacably resolved to live them out. Although cured, the problem was that I was too late: I learned that every bloody corner of the Globe had been explored already !
          Then Sputnik came to the rescue. To Hell with the Earth; I would explore the Universe instead. And so, eventually, it came to pass. The dreamy boy became the dreamy astronomer who travelled the world in order to observe his beloved galaxies from remote mountain-tops from The Warumbungles to the Russian Caucasus. But even they weren’t high enough and the dreamy astronomer became the luckiest man alive when he was invited to join the team that would design, build and eventually use The Hubble Space Telescope. What an adventure that would turn out to be: disputes, disasters, surprises and discoveries the equal of any experienced by Marco Polo or Ferdinand Magellan. That Space Telescope saga is a tale that has to be told, and could only be told convincingly, by one of the lucky crew. But life was now far too hectic and thrilling to leave any time to do more than keep a diary of the events. Indeed the voyage turned out to be far more exciting than the romantic boy had ever dreamed in that quiet library long, long ago: a beautiful princess rescued from behind the Iron Curtain; a tiny warbler whispering profundities in his ear in mid-Atlantic; the secret of the Scientific Method appearing down on a coral reef off Tonga… you couldn’t make it up; nobody could. And yet it all really happened; it did.

          Eventually however the frenetically busy astronomer semi-retired with his princess and sat down to write… and write … and write. The intended Great Novel became instead a saga of four – the quartet “Written in the Stars” (WITS). It had to be semi-fictional because a factual account of a voyage lasting fifty years would be far too tiresome to read. Elisions had to be made, shortcuts taken, complexity simplified, continuity of character and narrative maintained, while the true cast of thousands was pared down to a manageable caravan of family, friends, colleagues, rivals and enemies travelling through time together. Anyway the story insisted on writing itself. Year by year the characters took over control, while the cheeky Imps which sit on every author’s shoulder intervened from time to time and sometimes couldn’t be denied. However I did manage to insist that at least the Scientific side of the venture should be utterly faithful to the facts. In any case why fictionalise that science when the facts exceeded anything that fantasy could conjure up?

          Prospective readers might be put off by books with a scientific background, imagining that they will be full of Frightfully Clever nerds doing Frightfully Clever things. But mine definitely are not. I am not FC myself (failed 11 plus) while, in my experience, successful astronomers are exceptional only in their outsized curiosity, their enjoyment of their occupation, their dogged tenacity and perhaps their search for some meaning to unusually obsessive lives. As the physicist Steven Weinberg put it: “The effort to understand the Universe is one of the few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy”. Being Frightfully Clever simply doesn’t cut it. However I do confess to a fascination with characters who do, or try to do, very hard things, whether it be climbing a precipice, rescuing a spacecraft or operating in an almost hopeless case. So there are many such in my books. I suppose the fascination here is that they too are explorers, but of the far deeps of the human heart and mind, looking down there for connections that the rest of us up here cannot see. Thus Henri Poincaré, the true inventor of Relativity, confessed that he did the best of his very great works when he was fast asleep.

          Although the saga took a dozen years to write I am almost ashamed to admit that I really enjoyed the process and was sad when it came to an end. I hope that enjoyment comes across to the reader as something we can both share. My iconic novel is “The Wind in the Willows”– in which a group of friends explore their world, have adventures together and enjoy a great deal of reflective fun. Isn’t there a bit of Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad in all of us ? There certainly is in me – mostly Toad I regret to say. And I can assure you, having done a great deal of both, that simply mucking about in telescopes is even more fun than simply mucking about in boats.

          My third boyhood ambition was to Travel to wild and romantic places, and observational astronomy allows one to do that in spades. Practically anywhere on Earth is on the way home to Britain from Chile, New South Wales or The Cape. So I indulged myself and in WITS include many adventures and encounters which took place in faraway places such as Cherkessia, the Rub al Khalid, the Bay of Fires, Garafia, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Castel Gandolfo, the Masai Mara, Ootacamund, Immarettia … By contrast most of us also have a profound need for a territory of our own. Far too many Brits simply do not appreciate how bloody lucky they are in their home land. Having been ‘nearly everywhere’ I contend that our island has no superior as a territory in which to live, especially Wales where I come from and reside. I have thus tried to convey, throughout WITS, that widespread sense of ‘longing for home’, which the Welsh call ‘Hiraeth’ . If we are not proud of our home territories, we won’t look after them properly, as we desperately need to do, especially now so much of the world is rapidly going to hell.


          I am an old man now, born in 1937, with eight books on Amazon, rather rushed out during 2020/1 when Covid 19 struck. The next big challenge is to get anybody to read them. I am convinced that one book could change the world (‘Thinking for Ourselve’s or TFO), optimistic that five could entertain it (WITS & Strangle), and hopeful that one (‘Pterodactyl’s Blood’ , PB ) might save some of those wonderful species that mankind is hurrying towards extinction. I’m afraid that I’m hopeless at marketing – indeed feel it is a faintly shameful activity – especially when one is trying to peddle one’s own stories, as here. But I’m bound to try – otherwise what was the point of ever writing them down? The Odds can’t be good but… who knows?


VIDEOS
If you want to see the author talking about Cosmology and galaxies there is a 45 minute Youtube video of him being interviewed by the Physicist and Author Alexander Unzicker about 3 years ago at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KskJrJmfr34

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ABOUT MY BOOK ‘STRANGLE’

September 30, 2020

A NOVEL ABOUT THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

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The vital struggle at the heart of World War II was the Battle of the Atlantic in which British and Canadian seamen on one side, German U-boat men on other, tried to starve their opponents into submission. It lasted for 6 years; 6000 vessels and 100,000 lives were lost; nothing less than the survival of Western Civilisation hung in the balance. By comparison, titanic battles such as Waterloo, Stalingrad and Trafalgar barely count.

         Conditions for the seamen on both sides were atrocious, for much of it was fought up in far Northern latitudes normally shunned by prudent shipping. Tempestuous storms, gigantic waves, icy seas, tiny corvettes and U-boats….only the very toughest of  men fighting for their families could have stuck it.

Journalists and politicians never went out there, while secrecy was vital. So the public was never to learn of the real struggle that would  decide all of  their fates.

         Every ingenuity was sought by both sides to get that decisive edge: code-breaking, bluff, radar, wolf-pack tactics, long range reconnaissance, sonar, acoustic-torpedoes, Huff-Duff, Operational Research, depth charges,  Hedgehog ….. sailors on both sides sought for measures, counter-measures and counter-counter measures which might turn the tide.

         Not only guts, but science, and a scientific attitude towards the evaluation of evidence became vital. The central character Sturdee is a young physicist and amateur sailor recruited into Western Approaches Command, based in Liverpool which was charged with winning the battle for the Allies. He goes to sea to try and find out why the Royal Navy can’t sink U-boats. He flies out to mid ocean with Catalina crews to discover why air reconnaissance is so effective at discouraging U-boats. He analyses convoy escort tactics while in a hurricane at sea and realises that Thucydides’ principle of Concentration in Battle is still paramount. But can he persuade Admirals and Ministers to change their minds? A shy lad at the outset he has to become a dogged, astute and relentless  man, not only to help win the battle at sea but to persuade his landlady, the formidable Joan, that she’s actually in love with him, and not with her far more glamorous fiancée. The Odds are against him all round but…… imagination and tenacity may sometimes succeed – in love as in war.

         I have been fascinated by this epic since growing up during the war close to a beach in Wales where all the sad detritus of that struggle washed ashore: life-rafts, charred timbers, oiled up sea birds, bodies, oranges, mines…..    and later, as a scientist myself, I came to realise that the innumerate historians’ accounts of the epic most often missed the point. By April 1943 the US Navy had given up, the wolf packs were ravaging Allied convoys, the casualties were appalling – all seemed lost; even the Admiralty despaired. A month later it was all over and Admiral Doenitz recalled his U-boats. What turned the tide? Was it code-breaking, science, admiralty……. or just plain guts?

         The book came out on Amazon as a paperback in 2021. Readers who enjoyed ‘The Cruel Sea’ (Nicholas Monsarrat) or the television series Das Boot might enjoy this also. The author, besides being a Space astronomer is a sucker for the Hornblower novels (CS Forrester) which he’s re-read many times. Go to the Amazon website to find out more about this, and other books by the author. [450 pages, £12.50 paperback, £3.99 e-version.]

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ABOUT MY BOOK : ‘HISTORY OF THE BRITS from a scientist’s point of view’.

September 30, 2020

What we aim for, and what we can achieve, are largely determined by who we think we are, by our self-confidence. And that is as true for nations as it is for individuals. Where we British go in future will be decided by what we think about our past. So this is a history of the Brits with its eye on the future. It is different partly because it is written by a scientist who believes that technology, mathematics and science have been so crucial to history that historians without a scientific background are virtually condemned to miss the point. Think of the following: vaccination, Darwinism, universal sewage and clean water, Calculus, broadcasting, the industrial revolution, representative democracy, the telescope, organised sport, tourism, railways, megacities, the middle class, the jet engine, anti-sepsis, computing, expert committees, the abolition of slavery, electronics, nursing, the electric motor, steel, cement, steam-ships, astronavigation, chemistry, Energy, atomic theory, artificial dyes, television, refrigeration, ATMs, the atomic nucleus, , antibiotics, IVF, …… one could go on and on. They were all British developments or insights which have revolutionised mankind’s life. No other society has left such a legacy – or anything approaching it. Surely it is vital to try and understand how it came about – if only to prevent the magic spring from drying up, and that is what this book is largely about. If Ancient Greece was interesting the evolution of Britain is vastly more.

The technlogy that made civisation possible
Civilisation requires above all the transport capacity to feed and fuel great cities. The Greeks and Romans relied on slaves whose backs and spirits they broke before they were replaced by constant conquest. Not only were they brutal but they were long term unsustainable. But an ingenious alternative was to be found eventually in North Western Europe, Britain in particular: Moon power. You are looking at a Thames Sailing Barge which, with crew of only 2 men and a boy, could easily carry more than a thousand fit slaves, or more than 250 horses and carts. Thus great cities like London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Glagow, Bruges, Rouen, Bristol and Edinburgh became possible for the first time in history; without slavery. See Chapter 2 ; Civilisation and Moon-power. The sails are mainly used to get in and out of favourable tidal streams. Powell/Alamy Live News

My main qualification to attempt a history is a lifetime spent as a Space scientist and astronomer trying to sift through and make sense of conflicting evidence. A sceptical, outsider’s point of view is essential for that, as well as a willingness to change one’s mind – which is never easy. And It helps that I have lived and worked in a dozen countries, experiences which help me to see Britain in a more impersonal light. My portrait of Britain will show her from a new angle, and so by a rather different light.

According to Einstein there is only one fruitful way to think – and that is to use Common Sense Thinking (CST). CST is essential to winnow sound conclusions out of conflicting evidence. But how does Common Sense work? They don’t teach us at school or university because scholars don’t understand it. So I go into CST in some depth before tackling vital issues which historians have almost entirely neglected. For instance: much of human activity is dominated by simple underlying mathematical principles, but conventional historians don’t ‘do’ mathematics. Thus, for example, they don’t understand why nations, including the British, have been forced into continually warring with one another. If we could understand, we might be able to stop it. Civilisation grows out of great cities, but sustainable cities require vast amounts of cheap power just to feed and fuel themselves. Why did London and Glasgow succeed where Rome and Athens failed? It was Moon-power.Why do people go to hot countries to relax, but risk their lives to come and live in cool ones? It is all to do with Thermodynamics – which dominates all of human existence. It turns out that Britain’s climate is ideal. The Armada and the Luftwaffe were both repulsed by expert committees, Britain’s greatest legacy to civilization? But why do committees work?

Healthy societies must progress; but what is Progress? Our study of CST enables us to pin down its 7 key principles, its Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which turn out to be: Curiosity, Honesty, Adaptability, Numeracy, Tolerance, Literacy and Democracy which then illuminate the whole subject and explain Britain’s uniqueness. But can it remain Progressive? Yes; but only if we thoroughly understand what those Seven Pillars of Wisdom are, and just why they work. So this is about some fundamental and fascinating issues that other historians, because of their background, or rather their lack of scientific background, have left out. Britain’s future could be either very dark; or very bright, depending on our understanding of what Progress entails. George Orwell said: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own history”. The author believes that modern Brits have allowed their history to be stolen away. It’s time to put the record straight.

                              TABLE OF CONTENTS,

Preface      Another History; What on Earth For?  p 1

Chapter 1: Geography: This Sceptred Isle    p 6   

Chapter 2: Civilisation and Moon-power     11

Chapter 3: The Royal Navy     16

Chapter 4: A Mathematical Portrait of History     19

Chapter 5: Progress: Why Nice Chaps come in First     29

Chapter 6: Committees     41

Chapter 7: Parasites.    48

Chapter 8: Can History have a  Scientific Method ?    60

Chapter 9: Why Men have  had to Fight.    71

Chapter 10: Britain in the Second World War.    81

Chapter 11: The British Empire: Achievement or Crime?     90

Chapter 12: Escaping its Priestly Chains.     98

Chapter 13: The Baleful Shadow of America.     105

Chapter 14: Half-baked Economics; the Modern Religion.      128

Chapter 15: Numeracy; the Seventh Pillar of Wisdom      146

Chapter 16: Population and Immigration:  the Numbers.     162

Chapter 17: Innovation.    182

Chapter 18 The History of Thinking.    206

Chapter 19 Mass Immigration – the Big Creep.     219

Chapter 20 Baducation.    P 235

                Retrospect and Prospect.    255

                If I had my way. 258

Chapter 21 The Superpowers Aren’t [ on line only at my post HOB&&& ]

                Au Revoir      261

                Acknowledgments   267

The paperback version [ ISBN – 9 – 781086157499] with 77 kilo-words came out on Amazon in June 2020 priced at £10.00 HOWEVER THIS IS A LIVE BOOK WITH MORE STUFF BEING CONSTANTLY ADDED IN MY POST HOB&&&.

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