Derek Ager
“The earth, like the life of a soldier”

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“The history of any one part of the earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror. ”

— Derek Ager

In The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (1973).

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In Derek Ager’s book, The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record, the subject quote comes from his concluding paragraph:

“The final conclusion I come to therefore is that, though the theories of plate tectonics now provide us with a modus operandi, they still seem to me to be a periodic phenomenon. Nothing is world-wide, but everything is episodic. In other words, the history of any one part of the earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror.”

In his Preface, he gave his rationale for writing the book: “because the ideas it contains have been fermenting in my brain for years and I had to write them down,” as his personal “commentary on the general pattern of earth history.” He admitted, “it is stratigraphy looked at by a non-stratigrapher.” Here, in his opening of the book, he made his first reference to a soldier when justifying his interpretations as a non-stratigrapher:

“I can offer the excuse that the non-combatant usually has a clearer picture of the battle than the soldiers actually engaged in the fighting.”

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)

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