Oecologia

I wrote this for something else entirely, but I thought other people might enjoy reading it than just the people I wrote it for.  So here's a bucket of thoughts for your Sunday afternoon or any other afternoon that you end up reading this post.

Some people say I have an ambidextrous brain because I am a biology and English double major.  This is not true.  My philosophy of learning is based on two ideas:  first, we are generally far smarter than we give ourselves credit for; second, the world is too big and wonderful not to want to know everything about it.  For me, English and biology are two sides of the same coin.  They both attempt to describe and make sense of the world in which we live.  The former does it subjectively, seeking to describe and explain the individual's inner thoughts and emotions and how these relate to the outside world.  The latter does it objectively, searching for general principles from the outside world and how they relate to every individual.  If biology asks "What is a rose?" English asks, "What is a rose by any other name?"

The combination of English and biology interests me because both disciplines develop depth and meaning for the world around us.  A person may look at a tree and see leaves, a trunk, branches, and have a vague conception that beneath it all lies a root system.  This he probably understands in turn because he has eaten carrots.  What he will not understand is that nitrogen fixation is accomplished by bacteria living in the roots, that photosynthesis tames raw sunlight energy and packages it into sugar, NADPH, and ATP, and that without these two processes, our world would die.  All of life depends on that tree and every other tree doing its job every day.  This person can appreciate the beauty of the tree, but they cannot understand what this tree means.  Some call this ecosystem dynamics.  When people rely so heavily on each other's existence that without one the other would die, we call it love.  This is to me a rose by another name.

I love knowledge because it excites in me a sense of wonder.  Some prominent physicists such as Dr. Kinney from the University of Buffalo claim that all the elements came from the bellies of stars where the rapid heating and cooling of unimaginably huge quantities of hydrogen caused subatomic mutations in the nucleus of the world's most basic element.  If this is the case, God chose to make us from the dust of the ground, and he chose to make the dust of the ground from the dust of the stars.  So here we are:  walking clouds of cosmic dust floating on the cooled egg shell of a molten metallic sphere that spins at thousands of miles an hour around a massive, self-contained burning ball of nuclear fire.  The elements we are made of are held together by magnetic charges associated with the attraction and repulsion of electrons, which spin at millions of miles an hour around tiny nuclei, which for all we know are more little clouds of cosmic dust that are coordinated systems of galaxies extending infinitely into the cosmos of the subatomic.  Galileo looked up and saw infinity.  Van Leeuwehnoek looked down and saw the same thing.

And then we find that there exist Fibonacci Sequences, Mandelbrot Sequences, and Golden Means.  Movement is governed by swirls and swirls are governed by pi, which happens to extend infinitely into eternity.  And then to top it all off, we realize that we are the only creatures on the planet that can understand any of what is happening.  We are composed of elements and we describe elements.  Our minds are composed of thoughts and feelings that we can communicate.  Synapses sparking electricity through cortices leap our tongues and mouths into poetry or song.  Vocal cords create vibrations in the air and are received by apparatuses we each have attached to the sides of our heads.  From here they are translated into electrical signals that are received by the brain. This electricity shoots through the insides of our skulls and the location that these interpersonal jolts of lightning happen to strike governs how we physically respond.  Perhaps the product of all of this is a single tear.

I desire to know the world that by knowing the world, I will know myself, and by knowing myself I may make myself known.  I think this--to know and be known--this is the greatest pursuit of humankind.  Seek to understand God, seek to understand others, and seek to understand ourselves.  I believe this is love, and that this is the fulfillment of the Greatest Commandment.