Carl Sagan said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe."
I have been studying (and I DO mean studying) soil for several years, and the subject becomes more complex all the time. As PuddlePirate said, it's not an easy subject... and it's one I find exceeds the PhD level to even begin to make a dent.
Personally I believe soil is alive, although we have been trying (and often succeeding) to kill it for ages out of misguided beliefs and ignorance.
Soil is as complicated as the human body, and in fact has many similarities in terms of what each needs to be healthy. For example, it's easy to say the human body needs the fat-soluble Vitamins A, D, E and K but if you overlook the fact that none of them work without the others in specific ratios (remember limiting factors?), AND none of them work without enough of the right kind of fat, you completely miss understanding those vitamins and all the positive effects they can have.
Additionally there are so many 'specialists' with differing thoughts from their own narrow field of expertise, whether human health or soil health, that they often work against each other simply because the field of knowledge is so vast and those 'getting' the Big Picture are so few.
I wish you luck with a soil forum.
