Geological principles

Welcome to just a few of my collections of geology photographs. I have by nature, being a landscape photographer and geologist focused on what I can see with a camera. So, this is geology from a photographers perspective. The pictures are meant as an illustration and hopefully a way to confirm or in some rare cases enlighten the user. Of course, geologist are always discussing their theories, so if you find an something you would like to have a conversation on, or if its just wrong or mislabeled, let me know! And remember all photographs are free to use. Just don’t forget to give credit. Thank You.

A couple of notes. Definitions I use should be cited. Occasionally I will comment. Use the search engine. I have tried to use keywords throughout. Now for a little geophilosophy.

First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner” Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean: The curse of the Black Pearl

Rules, laws and principles in geology are few and far between. And as Captain Barbossa stated even when they exist they are more “guidelines" then actual rules.

Most sciences work best when following laws are certain principles or by using models in what are known as closed systems. (A closed system generally is one where all of the variables are known and the environment is controlled.) The difficultly is that in geology, very few laws or principles exist. Even if we try to create models, it is nearly impossible to properly scale them or identify all of the appropriate inputs in order to generate models that truly reflect the environment we are trying to re-create.

Geology is made up of extremely complex systems. Even the complexity and all of the minute details ranging from the mineral composition, thickness of structures, the way forces interact, or how rocks react over time, to name a few issues, make it very difficult to coming close to unraveling all of the mysteries contained in geology.

Historically, geologists have used both inductive and deductive reasoning methods. The disciplines of mathematics, chemistry, biology, and physics lend themselves to providing an approach where deductive reasoning is used. That is, there are laws or principles that can be applied modeled or tested. Deductive reasoning characterizes a reasoning process of logical reasoning from stated propositions. As such it could be best described of the application of a given theorem or law to explain an artifact or occurrence.

Due to the nature of Geology, its scope and its complexities, we often have to observe and then empirically proposed a hypothesis or theorem. In this case we must use inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning comes from observing one artifact or even a series of events and using the logic from that artifact to reason that another similar occurrence was caused in the same fashion.

With a photograph we can only see what the photographer lets you see. It does not always show the complete context. With this caveat I leave you to explore and see what I have seen and draw your own conclusions. JP

“Moreover, the man who has once thus lifted his thoughts to the heavens will surely not hold aloof from the earth as a whole; for it is obviously absurd, if a man who desired to give a clear exposition of the inhabited world had ventured to lay hold of the celestial bodies and to use them for the purposes of instruction, and yet had paid no attention to the earth as a whole, of which the inhabited world is just a part — neither as to its size, nor its character, nor its position in the universe, nor even whether the world is inhabited only in the one part in which we live, or in a number of parts, and if so, how many such parts there are; and likewise how large the uninhabited part is, what its nature is, and why it is uninhabited. It seems, then, that the special branch of geography represents a union of meteorology and geometry, since it unites terrestrial and celestial phenomena as being very closely related, and in no sense separated from each other "as heaven is high above the earth."” Page 27-29 Strabo Strabo Geography Book 1-2 Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1911 Harvard University Press Cambridge Mass


Searching for part of a word will return common pluralizations of that word, e.g., searching for "flower" will return photos keyworded "flowers." Searching for two or more words will return only photos or galleries that contain each of those words. Order does not matter, e.g., searching for Ball Sweetheart will return results for galleries/photos that contain the word ball and the word sweetheart. Case doesn't matter. So Ball and ball will return the same results. Numbers searches will return gallery or photo results if that number is part of a caption, gallery title, gallery description, or if it comprises a keyword.

Multiple Keywords just need to be separated by a comma or semicolon


Note all photos are geo-tagged but you can search by clicking on the map where photos exist.

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