Photo Courtesy of NASA

© all-around-us.com 2004

Photo Courtesy of www.qmc.com.au

At some level, humans long for the stability of clear-cut formal explanations and yet we also long for personal insight; for understanding that matches our experience. By directly engaging ourselves in the process of reasoning we gain knowledge through our own experience.

Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter
a surgeon and sociologist whose writings on the behavior of man in the mass popularized the phrase "herd instinct"

"Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned."

In Intuitive Science we look into what knowledge is and how we can gain knowledge about the mineral world through our own observations.

In Mysteries, we offer a brief survey of some of the ways geology explains the formation of rocks and minerals. Geology as a science is just over 200 years old. Forget rocks are boring and look a little closer.

Minerals and Food explores the role of the plant world in mining minerals and converting them into forms our bodies can use.

In Minerals we give specific geological and crystal information, including photographs and crystal animations, for over 20 individual minerals: Amethyst, Angelite, Aquamarine, Blue Lace Agate, Bloodstone, Carnelian, Celestine, Fluorite, Hematite, Jade, Jasper, Labradorite, Lapis Lazuli, Malachite, Moonstone, Optical Calcite, Peach Quartz, Prehnite, Rock Crystal Quartz, Rose Quartz, Serpentine and Snowflake Obsidian.

Lastly, we have a section on Rock Collecting with photos of mines, and mineral shows, as well as general suggestions on finding interesting minerals, gems and rocks.