From the Editor
Luis Ayala
Even though I’ve been offering rum consulting services for around three decades, I am still surprised during client engagements when I hear things such as:
“We always adjust the pH of the fermentation, but we don’t know why.”
“We always proof down our spirits by adding the water in stages, but we don’t know if it really matters.”
“We never use PVC hoses to handle alcohol, but we don’t know why.”
Doing the right thing is important, but knowing WHY we’re doing it is critical: it allows us to extrapolate or deduce additional things we should be doing to achieve the desired goals.
Sometimes we allow gaps to exist in our knowledge, either because we believe that gaining the additional knowledge is impossible or impractical.
Even the brightest minds are susceptible to this, so much so that there are names for this concept: “The God of Gaps” or “The Alien of Gaps” (the later for those who believe, for example, that the Egyptian pyramids were built by extraterrestrial beings, only because they can’t accept or explain how humans could have done it).
Perhaps the best example of The God of Gaps is Sir Isaac Newton’s assertion, in his famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, that a problem he could not explain scientifically was “fixed by God.”
One of the best outcomes of science, over time, is that these “gaps” of knowledge are slowly replaced with facts. The growing accumulation of knowledge then leads to more questions (more gaps), and the cycle continues.
To be content with gaps as permanent fixtures in our knowledge base would be disastrous to our ability to improve ourselves, our societies and our industries/institutions.
So, next time you catch yourself saying something along the lines of “I always do it this way, but I don’t know why,” challenge yourself to fill in that gap with facts. Chances are that those new facts will then shed light on additional areas of your life.
Cheers!
Luis Ayala,
Editor and Publisher
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rumconsultant