"Ya gotta be smarter than a rock to pick up a rock."
|
"Your head must be full of rocks." "He's dumber than a box of rocks." These are two age-old sayings that refer to the relative intelligence shown by someone who has bungled something. As the result of using and hearing these sayings quite often and wanting some humorous device to be used when teaching blacksmithing, I came up with a Question: What is the first prerequisite for picking up a rock? The correct answer, or some variation thereof is: Ya gotta be smarter than the rock. Now this has been lauded both for the humor and the stupidity of the combined question/answer. Which is great and what I wanted to achieve. But the q/a combination is not really as simple as it may seem, and there are applications or modifications of it that have merit when getting someone to apply some thought to doing a job of work, such as: What is the first prerequisite to forming a piece of iron (wood, leather, whatever) Well the answer is rather obvious to most of us at this time, but there have been more than a few students of mine who have not associated the two questions at first and needed some prodding to get them to begin thinking. Once they began, however, it really made a big difference in their progress and learning at the forge and anvil. Many years later I discovered that the ancient philosophers had kinda dug into this area of thinking also. They had determined that a rock knew two things: 1. it's resting place 2. how to fall This is a kinda simplistic view of the life of a rock, but it has a certain quaint logic which seems inescapable. The thought of a rock finding it's place can be delved into to discover some serious implications for a rock which has been picked up and is being carried about by some individual who really does not care much about the future of the rock and what it has to do to get to it's resting place, or how long it will take to do so, or what the rock may have to go through to get there. Think about it! A simple scenario is when the rock is dropped in a muddy, silty bog. It may take many years for the poor rock to get to it's place! Another scenario is when the rock is dropped into a stream. Again, it may take many years, even centuries for the rock to come to it's place. But during that time it may be bumped against other rocks and little chips of it will come off and become sand, which never knows its place. Ask any mother housekeeper who lives near sandy beaches or soil. There is a more drastic and traumatic view of what can happen to a rock trying to find it's place. Picture a rock picked up by a mountain climber at the base of the cliff face he is about to ascend. Got it? Now picture him at the top of the cliff looking out into creation and thinking how brave, strong etc. he is for getting there the way he has. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out this poor little unsuspecting rock and drops it from the great height knowing that it will fall at an accelerating rate of one gravity on this planet, or, to be more specific at a rate of 32 feet per second per second. He also knows that the sound of this poor little rock hitting the bottom of the cliff, in this atmosphere, will come to him at the top at a rate of approximately 1100 feet per second. Our smart climber has also brought with him a fancy sports stopwatch and clicks it to start timing as he drops the poor little rock. He is going to determine, with a few calculations, how far he has climbed. Great! So he drops the little rock and off it goes to what it thinks is going to be it's resting place. But when it gets to the bottom, going a gazillion miles a second, it hits a much bigger and harder rock and is shattered into many little pieces. Now we have lots of little rocks, some of which are too small to know their place, just like grains of sand. I guess you could say that the mountain climber is smarter than a rock, but he just didn't care about that particular poor little rock. Or maybe he had developed a grudge against little rocks when he was a child. And you thought rocks had it easy! Are you smarter than a rock? Do you care? Rocks, a Bit of
Philosophy |