Build your house on a rock -
not such ancient wisdom

The wisdom of establishing a solid foundation when building a house is a given these days because it is a sensible investment to guard against earthquakes and mudslides. But do we ever think of the legacy of our ancestors as foundations of the basis for modern discoveries? That hardly ever enters our minds. Yet none of the major - or minor - discoveries could have taken place without the observations, imaginations, creativity, and actions of those gone before.

Think of the discovery of the double helix. The Nobel laureates are the first to reveal that they look at previous studies and make use of the latest technologies to come up with the final understanding of that wonderfully symmetrical twisting ladder that illustrates the building blocks of life.

Some ideas, like the glacial ice flows configuring the Columbia basin, were full blown theories completely rejected by contemporaries until geological tools and carefully detailed studies followed to verify the concept.

Other earth shaking ideas like evolution came up simultaneously in unlikely locations around the world but when brought forth in symposiums actually solidified the theory.

In any scientific venture, observation of nature is the key - the basis of all science - instilled in the human psyche because we began in nature, observing nature, searching for the truths of "How did we come to be here?"

Some science had to wait for machines that could view and measure data before going on to "construct" a building. But when that microscope or spectrometry was developed, the data accrued made sense and opened new vistas of discovery.

And all science, all knowledge builds on past discoveries and inventions, not only to develop theories and add information but to improve the storage and transmission for future use.