I recently watched a large flock of birds fly by. What fascinated me was their synchronized unity in their flight. How do they do it?
Some fish species do the same thing. I once watched a school of fish in the water when suddenly a bird dove in after them. Immediately the clumped together into a tight writhing ball and zigged and zagged in perfect unity to escape.
Another mystery to me is how birds learn to make nests. Has anyone duplicated a robin's nest? Yet they can do it naturally. When are they taught by their parents?
I am interested to find out if there are more nature's mysteries that you might like to share here. Or if anyone has a plausible answer to these wonders of nature.
As nature photographers we enjoy being out in nature. Doing so we become more appreciative of nature and the things that go on there. So I pay attention to things like the mysteries I mentioned.
Great observations, Will, and there are so many other incredible things out there. I'm fascinated by migrating animals, and not just birds - even tiny insects can make some amazing journeys. How does a critter with a brain the size of a pinhead successfully navigate across thousands of miles? Sometimes the journey takes 2 generations to complete and each knows exactly where to go.
I'd also put the 7 mile non-stop flight from Magee to Point Pelee for the warbler's spring and fall migrations. Such tiny birds to go non-stop for that distance! I've also heard of Gulf of Mexico crossings for land birds, but I don't know if they are the warblers or not.
Butterfly metamorphasis.
Diffraction of light, and the colors it produces in insects and bird feathers.
Cheese, cheesecake and yogurt (no, seriously - we are eating rotted foods here)
The cheese and stuff, Dan, you're crackin' me up. I think this list could go on and on. As much as we think we know about the world we live in, there's so may hows, and especially whys, that we just can't come up with answers for.
Ever wonder just why the moon rotates on its axis at exactly the same rate that it revolves around the earth? (That's why we always see the same part of it.) That seems like one heck of a coincidence to me.
Also, it seems awfully coincidental that we live on a planet whose moon is almost exactly the same size in the sky as the sun...
Most substances expand when warmed. But water, one of the most important substances for life on this planet, has this odd property where it contracts between 0°C and about 4°C (not to mention the expansion on freezing--not many substances do that). This means water is most dense at 4°C. Why does this matter? Think about how a pond freezes--from the top down. If water at 0°C was more dense that water at 4°C, ponds and rivers would freeze very differently--water cooled at the surface would sink to the bottom instead of staying at the top to freeze. Eventually the whole pond would reach 0°C and start to freeze uniformly, turning first to slush and then to ice. Kinda hard for fish to swim around all winter under that! That very odd property of water has a huge impact on life in the regions where temperatures drop below freezing every winter.
Super observations, as Guy said, for sure. To me, it shows that there are many, many forms of intelligence way, way different to what we tend to think of intelligence as being - and those others, including some we have access to ourselves, are way, way greater than our cognition.
I just turned 60 and as much of my time as possible has been spent out in nature, observing, photographing and enjoying. When I consider the precision with which the (observable) universe works, and the interdependance among ecosystems, and the incredible knowing ways in the animal kingdom, I have no choice but to believe in intelligent design. I'm NOT talking about religion. What I see is so far removed from religion because religion isn't much more that our feeble and erroneous attempt to explain our existence and justify our weaknesess. No, what I'm talking about cannot be put into words. It's a deep sense of knowing deep down in my "knower" that has no language but nevertheless speaks loud and clear to me that this marvel that we live in and on cannot be some cosmic accident.
There are times when I just sit on a river bank on a quiet rainy day and just weep for the simple beauty that we can't even capture with our cameras. I guess because it's a spiritual beauty and not a visual one.
All I have to do is look at the beauty of a flower and know the answer...many millions of years of evolution.
Hey, I'm not the one that started down this path!!
Think how many things thought of as "miraculous" 100 or 1000 years ago are now commonplace and well understood. I refuse to throw up my hands at every remarkably beautiful thing, or every process we don't currently understand, and say "dang...must be some higher power."
That doesn't mean that I haven't spent more than my share of time enjoying the world around me. I enjoy my birding more than the photography of those birds. However, I'd also rather research the reasons behind a bird's behavior and abilities instead of just being satisfied at witnessing the wonder of it.
Terry, do not forget evolution is still a theory, not a fact, and is always in constant state of revisions. I prefer to believe in a creator over blind- against- staggeringly- overwhelming odds- chance. Especially when we can see intelligence behind the design in nature. That being said I do not want to turn this thread into a God vs Evolution debate. The world is full of wonders in nature which we can devote our time to explore and seek out answers. We could not live long enough to exhaust all that there is to know. Science has helped us understand many things and the search for knowledge of the natural world continues on and on.
I just wanted to remind everyone that we live on a beautiful planet full of intreging wonders and things to discover. And only man has the eyes to appreciate the beauty of a flower.
Will, gravity is also "still a theory". Do you believe in gravity? Please don't buy the ID folks line about evolution being "only a theory". It's accepted in biology every bit as much as much as gravity is in physics.
"We can see intelligence behind the design in nature." You say that as if it's a rock solid fact, when as a theory, it obviously has one heck of a lot less evidence than does evolution. I don't see obvious intelligence behind nature, and in fact chaos plays a big role. I see nature as a beautiful system of life that has evolved into a self-sustaining balance, until something screws it up, be it natural change in environmental conditions, or more obviously these days, anthropogenic influences.
To my mind, it is perfectly permissible for a person to be scientist, a philospher, and a poet. We can no more separarate the spiritual from the pragmatism of the scientific method than we can separate life from death: they are intertwined in a very real way. It is this that is the mystery.
I can most definitely seperate the spiritual from the pragmatism of the scientific method. In fact, I'd be embarassed to call myself a scientist if I DIDN'T seperate the two.
The scientific method involves theory testing through evaluation of empirical evidence. There's no room for the "spiritual".
On a personal level though, I couldn't agree more that it's permissible "to be a scientist, a philosopher, and a poet".
Terry, I too was trained as a scientist. Years ago, (late 70's) I worked on an experiment that sought to quantify the existence of gravity waves. As I progressed in my learning, I came to find that the science of cosmolgy awakened in me a connection with the spiritual that was real and undeniable. Further study, in particular of the Tao Te Ching and Alan Watts "Tao-The Watercourse Way" served to cement in my mind this intertwining of the scientific and the spirtual. To me, that is a wonderful and mysterious thing. This is what I was trying to get at in my comment above.
-PB
In keeping with Will's original question about mysteries in nature, I am always fascinated by water ouzels in the Sierra. These birds can fly with the best of them, but they also dive into cold rushing creeks and swim the waters looking for bugs on the stream bottom. I think this is so cool, It is a very mysterious behavior.
I hope my comments earlier about "intelligence" were miscontrued as referring to 'intelligent design". That certainly wasn't what I was referring to (I'm not even close to being able to discuss "intelligent design Vs evolution - I know so little about either). I was simply saying I think there are forms of intelligence that are very different to what we typically refer to as "intelligence". There are all kinds of intelligence in animals and plants, as well as in our own bodies, that we dismiss as mere "instinct", when we might possibly learn a whole lot more if we paused and considered what "instinct" really is. The example of the flocks of birds of schols of fish are clearly indicative of some amazing intelligence.
Hey Preston, have you read "the book" by Alan Watts?
Carl - There are some neat explanations and descriptions of the behavior of fish schools and flocks of birds if you do some googling. I haven't seen any explanation of how birds know to flock, or all seem to know the rules - but frame by frame analysis of what causes them to work in unison is pretty neat. This is a pretty good summary, but you could probably find some research papers and things too :
mmmmmm cheesecake.
What were we talking about?
I believe in science and mystery. A scientist or theologian who believes he sees a complete truth just isn't paying attention. If intelligence is the ability to hold competing thoughts, maybe wisdom is knowing you will never be smart enough to figure it out.
Brilliant scientists see the fuzzy edges. Their students believe in hard facts.
Terry, the fossil record certainly does not support evolution. Gravity is a law of nature. I believe in it. And obey it.
Design in nature? Consider galaxies arranged in clusters and not strewn about in space. Consider also that our solar system is perfectly placed in the Milky Way Galaxy. The sun is just the right star and that the earth is just the right distance from the sun. The earth orbits the sun at just the right speed and is tilted on its axis to give us the seasons. Protecting us from harmful things from space is the earth's atmosphere. On the surface, plant life is dependant on carbon dioxide. Plants in turn give off oxygen. All this from blind chance? Paul mentioned the moon. The moon's gravity helps stabilize the earth's axis. Without the moon the earth would be wobbling as it went. Consider the marvel of photosynthesis. Consider the relationship between living things such as the bee and the flower. There is one type of flower that is entirely dependent on a single type of hummingbird. Consider also that man is the only creature that can marvel at all these things.
Preston, I too wonder at birds that can "fly" underwater. Like the one I mentioned at the beginning. I had my camera in my hands but I was totally taken by surprise and now I can only wish I had got the shot. But the memory remains clear and sharp.
"The fossil record does not support evolution"? What?
Gravity is a theory just as is evolution, with research continuing into the mechanisms behind both. We understand some components of both, but by no means have total knowledge on either. However, there's one heck of a lot of evidence supporting both, while there's absolutely no empirical evidence to support any kind of design by a higher power.
The marvel of photosynthesis? Life forms evolved to use energy from the sun, just as all life evolves to best use the resources in its environment. As plant life started contributing oxygen to the atmosphere, more life forms adapted to take advantage of the new environment. Evolution.
Hummingbird and flower? I can't think of a better example of evolution!!! Hummingbirds EVOLVED to use their long bills to extract nectar from flowers. Plant and animal species evolved together, each continually evolving strategies for dealing with each other.
Galaxies arranged in clusters, not "strewn about"? You make it sound as if they're all aligned in a perfect pattern that spells out "GOD IS HERE!". They're not. They ARE scattered all over the place. Make no mistake about it...chaos plays one heck of a role in the universe.
Everything you're talking about is SCIENCE. Yes, conditions on earth eventually became favorable for life to developed. Life began to develop, and as conditions on earth changed, life adapted to fill new ecological niches.
Where's the design? What evidence is there of design? Beauty or wonder, where this post started?
I'm a man, and I find women to be beautiful and wonderful, as do most of us. By design? Or simply biological forces driving us to continue the species?
I'm not without great appreciation for the beauty and wonder on this planet. Any photographer has that appreciation. I don't link that beauty and wonder with some higher power though.
And Terry, there is room for the spritual in science, it depends on the tradition one comes from . For most of the western world, whose spiritual tradtions originate in Christianity, science and spirit are divorced since the early church did not accept the scientific method. However in the Islamic tradition, science and spiritualism went hand in hand from the very beginning since early Muslim scientists saw the wonders of the world as signs of the Creator and went aoubt explaining the mechanisms put in place in the universe and saw them not only as physical laws but divine laws. When thories were brought out, they went about using the scientific method to explain the how something occured, but the why was always attributed to God. I have been trained as an engineer and have a doctorate in that field, and the phenomena I see in the universe are a clear sign of the Creator...But lets not get too off track of this post.
I am always amazed at trees. Theier life cycle, their shapes and how each speices of tree moves and sounds different in the blowing wind.
William, evolution is certainly "a theory". But the word "theory" is misinterpreted by non-scientists quite often. What you refer to as "just a theory" is in sciency a "hypothesis". And evolution has long left the hypothesis stage. Theories are well founded and well accepted (such as Einstein's theory of relativity, which is a demonstrated fact). Theodosius Dobzhansky once said that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", and as a biochemist, I can say that this perfectly reflects my experience.
I don't realize how the fossil record or the hummingbird should refute evolution. Maybe the fossil record questions that evolution is perfectly gradual as was initially suggested, but it doesn't question evolution per se (and completely refutes creation, but that's just my opinion...).
How it comes about that galaxies are scattered in the way they are is a completely different topic, but physicists are trying to explain how and at what stage the universe got its "grayniness" after the big bang. Nothing supernatural here...
I appreciate all the replies. Youssef, that each species of trees sounds and moves different in the wind is something I never realized before. Good observation.
Science is just another tool used in man's feeble attempt to explain what God was able to create by simply speaking it into existence.
As a young man I was completely captivated by science and scientific theory. I studied biology for 4 years, chemistry for 2 years and even delved into oceanography study for a quarter. I thought Darwin was a genius and bought into the evolutionary theory of the origin of species, even though my biological studies in heredity and genetics countered that theory at every turn. Genetic traits tend toward mediocrity rather than the extraordinary. Most mutations are "bad", not good, and most mutated specimens never survive to reproduce. The off chance that a single mutation, even a slightly beneficial one, would cause a single individual to be so successful that it could influence a species through reproducing the trait, without intelligent intervention, in it's offspring is almost laughable. It would have to be a very dominant trait to even survive the reproduction process and few natural mutations are genetically dominant. For this to happen in all species would be an astronomical feat.
Natural selection can cause extinction of a species or can favor an already pre-existing species, causing it to become a dominating life form in it's preferred habitat, but it will never explain the vast diversity and complexity of life. Plants can't "decide" to modify their make-up. Animals and birds can't change into something else when their habitat changes. They either thrive or die. Natural selection can explain why Northern deer are bigger bodied than their Southern bretheren but they are all still deer and always have been. The best suited will survive at the expense of those who aren't when climates and conditions change but they don't change into something else to do so.
The fossil record is a relatively small collection of bones and rocks that we have used to kindle facinating theories about the evolution of life. All they really tell us is that there were once some really fasinating life forms that are now gone. How can evolution explain why two birds can live in the same habitat, eat the same food, have the same breeding cycle and after all these millions of years still be two completely different colors? Why do Robin and Blue Jay males and females look virtually alike and yet other neighboring bird pairs look so very different? So many animals and birds have what we call "adaptations" in such numbers, all of which must exist simultaneously for them to be successful, that developing all those traits by chance in in the "evolutionary genetic crapshoot" is virtually impossible.
Science is seldom science at all. It is better described as "current scientific concensus". Man has been trying to scientifically describe his surroundings for thousands of years and yet the Earth was flat and the was also the center of the known universe just a few hundred years ago. But we have evolved into much smarter beings since then...
God created the heavens, the Earth and life in abundance. I am in awe every time I view it, ponder it,examine it and document it. When I die I will know all it's secrets and yet, for a time perhaps, only other men may know that I ever existed. All the rest of nature will keep on going with no thought of me at all.
That's one warped view of science. "Science is seldom science" at all?
OF COURSE science is better described as "current scientific consensus". People have SUCH a misconception of what science is about. We develop hypotheses, test them with empirical evidence, and alter or toss out the hypothesis if the evidence doesn't support it.
THAT'S SCIENCE!!! SCIENCE, and scientific knowledge, are, well, forever EVOLVING. We don't answer one question, stop, and say, "Hey, that's it!! We've solved evolution. Now let's move on to, oh, global warming or something else!!"
You also state "Animals and birds can't change into something else when their habitat changes." C'mon...this is flat out, 100% incorrect. Abundant, overwhelming empirical evidence shows otherwise, and in time scales that can be shockingly short, even observable in the human span of evolution science.
Evolution has been observable EVEN IN MAN in recent times!! European ancestors relied heavily on milk products as an important food source. A specific gene which allows the digestion of milk into adult life is now widely prevalent in those of European ancestry, but the gene is rare in people of other ancestries.
Guess what? EVOLUTION in reponse to change in condition. Or is god suddenly deciding europeans need this gene? C'mon.
It's ludicrous to say animals and plants can't change when their habitat changes. You're somehow trying to differentiate between evolution and natural selection?
Pretty simple...if there were no evolution, no "positive" change in genetics for a lifeform, then there would BE no natural selection!! Every animal would have the exact same genetics!!! There would BE no creature with an advantageous genetic makeup that survived, while every other creature of the species died.
You have a complete misunderstanding of what evolution is all about. I'm not picking on you by any means, but it's misunderstanding and misinformation that has often led to the religious attack on evolution.
You flat out state "God created...everything" as if it's some established fact. It's not, and scientific evidence shouldn't be warped to try and support that view.
I must disagree. All knowledge can be split into three basic categories, that is things that we know. We can derive knowledge intellectually, empirically or revealatory. Science falls under the category of the empirical. That is all Science is. Science can never answer Why, but only How. No matter how much we investigate, and no matter how well we theorize and postulate and model what we can empirically measure, we can never come to the ultimate answer of why things are they way they are. We can only describe them based on our measurements and all that is empirical.
If we neglect the intellectual we would fail in developing theories to start with. But again, itellectual thought can only take us so far as well, and whatever we do intellectualize, we must find a way to prove our theories otherwise they are useless to us. And again, the intellect can be completely dumbfounded in many cases.
The last realm of knowledge is revelatory. We are told something is and end of story. This is where the idea that God created everything comes from. Is it not odd that every major religion in the world has a creation story? Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddism, they all start off saying the first creation was light. How can that be that all these traditions can be similar in the origin when they were not only separated geographically but also temporally to orders of magnitude?
The realm of revaltory knowldge is vast and can explain many things. For example, the development of the human fetus is described in the Muslim's book, the Qur'an, in exacting detail from the zygote, to the embryo, to the fetus and infant ready to be born. This was known 1400 years ago among the Muslims, way before modern gynecology every understood what was going on inside the womb. They never disected people back then to know this stuff, they had no way of knowing, yet was revealed. Neither Science nor intellectual thought can explain how Jesus could walk on water, or bring a dead man back to life, or give a blind man his sight back. Miracles break the empirical patterns we typically experience in the world. In fact the word miracle in Arabic is Mu'jiza, which literally means an incapacity because miracles incapcitate both the intellect and empirical observations as to how something can happen.
Like I said in my previous post, I was steeped in science, mathematics and engineering for close to 24 years of my life, earning a Ph.D in mechanical engineering along the way. So I know the limitations of empirical science. I again will firmly state, empirical science and intellectual thought can only answer the what and how, but never the why. Why is the realm of the spiritual, and unless we are given that knowledge through revealation we can never arrive at the answer. And thus this precludes that a Creator is the source of all that we experience in this life which further necessitates that the spiritual is intimately involved in the pursuit of the empirical and intellectual, which in turn keeps us humble. Otherwise we will revel in our own arrogance and meet our demise as the past civilizations did because of that very thing.
Here is another observation. Did you ever notice that just at sunrise or a few minutes just after sunrise if the air is perfectly still you will start feeling a breeze blowing and what was previously comfortable temperature wise suddenly becomes chilly? All perfeclty expalinable by sicence but none the less mysterious when it happens.
Of course in a state where individuals are well optimized, the probability that a mutation is beneficial is low, while the probability that the same mutation is detrimental is high. There's no doubt about that. However, you forget two things:
1) Time. There's an enormous amount of time available to evolution. Much more than to a normal lab project.
2) In a setting where the organism is poorly adapted, the probability that mutations improve its fitness is comparably large. It's still extremely small, but it's larger than in the case where an organism is perfectly adapted.
There are countless examples in microbes and viruses of how mutations can improve fitness. Just think about drug resitance in HIV, where single point mutations can have a large effect (and don't say now that microbes and multicellular organisms are "two distinct things"). Or one more example (one I've witnessed for myself) - I don't know how familiar you are with metabolism. Anyway, chorismate mutases are necessary for biosynthesis of tyrosine and tryptophane. E. coli had their CM deleted and replaced with a severely disfunctional variant from another bacterium. Guess what, under selective conditions we obtained highly efficient enzymes within two weeks. Two weeks is a laughable time compared to what is available to nature, but still, there were plenty of mutations that improved the fitness of those poorly adapted microbes, many of them exchanging active site resiudes that directly interact with the substrates...
Bottom line: It works. There's no scientifically funded doubt in the fact that evolution does take place (and no, the "discovery institute" doesn't do science). The only reason to doubt it is if it conflicts with your world view (e.g. religion), which is wholly unscientific.
There is no "why". There's no need for a "why". Things just happen, there's no higher power or reason behind them. Only human minds want to construct a "why" because that makes them feel less miserable.
Neither Science nor intellectual thought can explain how Jesus could walk on water, or bring a dead man back to life, or give a blind man his sight back.
Why does one simple word "God" bring out the defensiveness in people who do not believe. I'm not saying that you have to believe in a creator or a higher intelligence, just respect my belief.
Nature is just that... things that are natural and/or not made or influenced by man. If that is the case, then why not appreciate it for its wonders for whatever reason makes sense to you. Personal beliefs aside, there is much in nature to wonder about, learn and, especially, enjoy in each and every day that you are alive.
Science can only answer the "How", but can't answer the "Why"?
But spirituality supposedly CAN answer they "Why"? No, spirituality answers nothing. Answers based on faith and faith alone simply aren't answers at all. This is where religion and spirituality utterly fail.
If spirituality answers the "why", then why are these supposed rock-solid "answers" so incredibly different depending upon which religion is involved? These "answers" are simply guesses that are manipulated to fit within an uncompromising religious framework.
So...those of a religious persuasion are allowed to express their beliefs, but when those who do NOT believe in some higher power express their beliefs, it's "defensiveness"?
I respect any belief system that has mutual respect for other belief systems, and once again, that is where religion utterly fails. According to Christian beliefs, ONLY those adhering to a narrow interpretation of the world will be "saved", while the rest of us poor saps are doomed forever to rot in hell, even those in other religions with very similar belief systems!
Christianity doesn't respect my beliefs, or the beliefs of any other "non-believer". But yet respect is demanded in return?
I would like to respectfully request that we move away from the spiritual/religious aspects of this thread and simply note those things in nature that are wonderful and mysterious.
I simply do not desire to see anyone here get hurt because of their personal beliefs.
Eye contact. With another person... with my dog... with an Orca... with horses... a walrus... a dolphin.... Just a few examples. When the "connection" happens it's a wonderous thing, isn't it!
Catherine, in my experience eye contact induces a response. With another person it is usually a smile or even a greeting. In the animal world, prolonged eye contact could be taken as agresssion and a sign of dominance. Eye contact is a powerful aspect of communication' and it is a wondrous thing.
Discussion
37 repliesSome fish species do the same thing. I once watched a school of fish in the water when suddenly a bird dove in after them. Immediately the clumped together into a tight writhing ball and zigged and zagged in perfect unity to escape.
Another mystery to me is how birds learn to make nests. Has anyone duplicated a robin's nest? Yet they can do it naturally. When are they taught by their parents?
I am interested to find out if there are more nature's mysteries that you might like to share here. Or if anyone has a plausible answer to these wonders of nature.
As nature photographers we enjoy being out in nature. Doing so we become more appreciative of nature and the things that go on there. So I pay attention to things like the mysteries I mentioned.
Thank you for your replies.
Will
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
Guy
Butterfly metamorphasis.
Diffraction of light, and the colors it produces in insects and bird feathers.
Cheese, cheesecake and yogurt
Also, it seems awfully coincidental that we live on a planet whose moon is almost exactly the same size in the sky as the sun...
Most substances expand when warmed. But water, one of the most important substances for life on this planet, has this odd property where it contracts between 0°C and about 4°C (not to mention the expansion on freezing--not many substances do that). This means water is most dense at 4°C. Why does this matter? Think about how a pond freezes--from the top down. If water at 0°C was more dense that water at 4°C, ponds and rivers would freeze very differently--water cooled at the surface would sink to the bottom instead of staying at the top to freeze. Eventually the whole pond would reach 0°C and start to freeze uniformly, turning first to slush and then to ice. Kinda hard for fish to swim around all winter under that! That very odd property of water has a huge impact on life in the regions where temperatures drop below freezing every winter.
-Paul
Super observations, as Guy said, for sure. To me, it shows that there are many, many forms of intelligence way, way different to what we tend to think of intelligence as being - and those others, including some we have access to ourselves, are way, way greater than our cognition.
Cheers
Carl
There are times when I just sit on a river bank on a quiet rainy day and just weep for the simple beauty that we can't even capture with our cameras. I guess because it's a spiritual beauty and not a visual one.
Hey, I'm not the one that started down this path!!
Think how many things thought of as "miraculous" 100 or 1000 years ago are now commonplace and well understood. I refuse to throw up my hands at every remarkably beautiful thing, or every process we don't currently understand, and say "dang...must be some higher power."
That doesn't mean that I haven't spent more than my share of time enjoying the world around me. I enjoy my birding more than the photography of those birds. However, I'd also rather research the reasons behind a bird's behavior and abilities instead of just being satisfied at witnessing the wonder of it.
I just wanted to remind everyone that we live on a beautiful planet full of intreging wonders and things to discover. And only man has the eyes to appreciate the beauty of a flower.
Thanks for all the great replies.
Will
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
"We can see intelligence behind the design in nature." You say that as if it's a rock solid fact, when as a theory, it obviously has one heck of a lot less evidence than does evolution. I don't see obvious intelligence behind nature, and in fact chaos plays a big role. I see nature as a beautiful system of life that has evolved into a self-sustaining balance, until something screws it up, be it natural change in environmental conditions, or more obviously these days, anthropogenic influences.
-PB
The scientific method involves theory testing through evaluation of empirical evidence. There's no room for the "spiritual".
On a personal level though, I couldn't agree more that it's permissible "to be a scientist, a philosopher, and a poet".
-PB
In keeping with Will's original question about mysteries in nature, I am always fascinated by water ouzels in the Sierra. These birds can fly with the best of them, but they also dive into cold rushing creeks and swim the waters looking for bugs on the stream bottom. I think this is so cool, It is a very mysterious behavior.
-PB
I hope my comments earlier about "intelligence" were miscontrued as referring to 'intelligent design". That certainly wasn't what I was referring to (I'm not even close to being able to discuss "intelligent design Vs evolution - I know so little about either). I was simply saying I think there are forms of intelligence that are very different to what we typically refer to as "intelligence". There are all kinds of intelligence in animals and plants, as well as in our own bodies, that we dismiss as mere "instinct", when we might possibly learn a whole lot more if we paused and considered what "instinct" really is. The example of the flocks of birds of schols of fish are clearly indicative of some amazing intelligence.
Hey Preston, have you read "the book" by Alan Watts?
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mflockswoop.html
What were we talking about?
I believe in science and mystery. A scientist or theologian who believes he sees a complete truth just isn't paying attention. If intelligence is the ability to hold competing thoughts, maybe wisdom is knowing you will never be smart enough to figure it out.
Brilliant scientists see the fuzzy edges. Their students believe in hard facts.
However, that's not what has been discussed here. Science doesn't mix with the "spiritual" or other terms used here.
"Fuzzy edges" as you call, or an imperfect understanding? You bet! But that "fuzz" isn't explained by mysticism or spirituality.
Design in nature? Consider galaxies arranged in clusters and not strewn about in space. Consider also that our solar system is perfectly placed in the Milky Way Galaxy. The sun is just the right star and that the earth is just the right distance from the sun. The earth orbits the sun at just the right speed and is tilted on its axis to give us the seasons. Protecting us from harmful things from space is the earth's atmosphere. On the surface, plant life is dependant on carbon dioxide. Plants in turn give off oxygen. All this from blind chance? Paul mentioned the moon. The moon's gravity helps stabilize the earth's axis. Without the moon the earth would be wobbling as it went. Consider the marvel of photosynthesis. Consider the relationship between living things such as the bee and the flower. There is one type of flower that is entirely dependent on a single type of hummingbird. Consider also that man is the only creature that can marvel at all these things.
Preston, I too wonder at birds that can "fly" underwater. Like the one I mentioned at the beginning. I had my camera in my hands but I was totally taken by surprise and now I can only wish I had got the shot. But the memory remains clear and sharp.
Thanks again all.
Will
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
Gravity is a theory just as is evolution, with research continuing into the mechanisms behind both. We understand some components of both, but by no means have total knowledge on either. However, there's one heck of a lot of evidence supporting both, while there's absolutely no empirical evidence to support any kind of design by a higher power.
The marvel of photosynthesis? Life forms evolved to use energy from the sun, just as all life evolves to best use the resources in its environment. As plant life started contributing oxygen to the atmosphere, more life forms adapted to take advantage of the new environment. Evolution.
Hummingbird and flower? I can't think of a better example of evolution!!! Hummingbirds EVOLVED to use their long bills to extract nectar from flowers. Plant and animal species evolved together, each continually evolving strategies for dealing with each other.
Galaxies arranged in clusters, not "strewn about"? You make it sound as if they're all aligned in a perfect pattern that spells out "GOD IS HERE!". They're not. They ARE scattered all over the place. Make no mistake about it...chaos plays one heck of a role in the universe.
Everything you're talking about is SCIENCE. Yes, conditions on earth eventually became favorable for life to developed. Life began to develop, and as conditions on earth changed, life adapted to fill new ecological niches.
Where's the design? What evidence is there of design? Beauty or wonder, where this post started?
I'm a man, and I find women to be beautiful and wonderful, as do most of us. By design? Or simply biological forces driving us to continue the species?
I'm not without great appreciation for the beauty and wonder on this planet. Any photographer has that appreciation. I don't link that beauty and wonder with some higher power though.
And Terry, there is room for the spritual in science, it depends on the tradition one comes from . For most of the western world, whose spiritual tradtions originate in Christianity, science and spirit are divorced since the early church did not accept the scientific method. However in the Islamic tradition, science and spiritualism went hand in hand from the very beginning since early Muslim scientists saw the wonders of the world as signs of the Creator and went aoubt explaining the mechanisms put in place in the universe and saw them not only as physical laws but divine laws. When thories were brought out, they went about using the scientific method to explain the how something occured, but the why was always attributed to God. I have been trained as an engineer and have a doctorate in that field, and the phenomena I see in the universe are a clear sign of the Creator...But lets not get too off track of this post.
I am always amazed at trees. Theier life cycle, their shapes and how each speices of tree moves and sounds different in the blowing wind.
Science and spiritualism do not go hand in hand. Period. True science is seperate from bias, from "spirituality" and religious belief.
Any preconceived notions on the workings of the universe potentially taint research.
You can be "spiritual" and be a scientist. You can NOT use that spiritualism, based on faith and faith alone, to explain scientific phenomena.
I don't realize how the fossil record or the hummingbird should refute evolution. Maybe the fossil record questions that evolution is perfectly gradual as was initially suggested, but it doesn't question evolution per se (and completely refutes creation, but that's just my opinion...).
How it comes about that galaxies are scattered in the way they are is a completely different topic, but physicists are trying to explain how and at what stage the universe got its "grayniness" after the big bang. Nothing supernatural here...
Basil
Will
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
As a young man I was completely captivated by science and scientific theory. I studied biology for 4 years, chemistry for 2 years and even delved into oceanography study for a quarter. I thought Darwin was a genius and bought into the evolutionary theory of the origin of species, even though my biological studies in heredity and genetics countered that theory at every turn. Genetic traits tend toward mediocrity rather than the extraordinary. Most mutations are "bad", not good, and most mutated specimens never survive to reproduce. The off chance that a single mutation, even a slightly beneficial one, would cause a single individual to be so successful that it could influence a species through reproducing the trait, without intelligent intervention, in it's offspring is almost laughable. It would have to be a very dominant trait to even survive the reproduction process and few natural mutations are genetically dominant. For this to happen in all species would be an astronomical feat.
Natural selection can cause extinction of a species or can favor an already pre-existing species, causing it to become a dominating life form in it's preferred habitat, but it will never explain the vast diversity and complexity of life. Plants can't "decide" to modify their make-up. Animals and birds can't change into something else when their habitat changes. They either thrive or die. Natural selection can explain why Northern deer are bigger bodied than their Southern bretheren but they are all still deer and always have been. The best suited will survive at the expense of those who aren't when climates and conditions change but they don't change into something else to do so.
The fossil record is a relatively small collection of bones and rocks that we have used to kindle facinating theories about the evolution of life. All they really tell us is that there were once some really fasinating life forms that are now gone. How can evolution explain why two birds can live in the same habitat, eat the same food, have the same breeding cycle and after all these millions of years still be two completely different colors? Why do Robin and Blue Jay males and females look virtually alike and yet other neighboring bird pairs look so very different? So many animals and birds have what we call "adaptations" in such numbers, all of which must exist simultaneously for them to be successful, that developing all those traits by chance in in the "evolutionary genetic crapshoot" is virtually impossible.
Science is seldom science at all. It is better described as "current scientific concensus". Man has been trying to scientifically describe his surroundings for thousands of years and yet the Earth was flat and the was also the center of the known universe just a few hundred years ago. But we have evolved into much smarter beings since then...
God created the heavens, the Earth and life in abundance. I am in awe every time I view it, ponder it,examine it and document it. When I die I will know all it's secrets and yet, for a time perhaps, only other men may know that I ever existed. All the rest of nature will keep on going with no thought of me at all.
OF COURSE science is better described as "current scientific consensus". People have SUCH a misconception of what science is about. We develop hypotheses, test them with empirical evidence, and alter or toss out the hypothesis if the evidence doesn't support it.
THAT'S SCIENCE!!! SCIENCE, and scientific knowledge, are, well, forever EVOLVING. We don't answer one question, stop, and say, "Hey, that's it!! We've solved evolution. Now let's move on to, oh, global warming or something else!!"
You also state "Animals and birds can't change into something else when their habitat changes." C'mon...this is flat out, 100% incorrect. Abundant, overwhelming empirical evidence shows otherwise, and in time scales that can be shockingly short, even observable in the human span of evolution science.
Evolution has been observable EVEN IN MAN in recent times!! European ancestors relied heavily on milk products as an important food source. A specific gene which allows the digestion of milk into adult life is now widely prevalent in those of European ancestry, but the gene is rare in people of other ancestries.
Guess what? EVOLUTION in reponse to change in condition. Or is god suddenly deciding europeans need this gene? C'mon.
It's ludicrous to say animals and plants can't change when their habitat changes. You're somehow trying to differentiate between evolution and natural selection?
Pretty simple...if there were no evolution, no "positive" change in genetics for a lifeform, then there would BE no natural selection!! Every animal would have the exact same genetics!!! There would BE no creature with an advantageous genetic makeup that survived, while every other creature of the species died.
You have a complete misunderstanding of what evolution is all about. I'm not picking on you by any means, but it's misunderstanding and misinformation that has often led to the religious attack on evolution.
You flat out state "God created...everything" as if it's some established fact. It's not, and scientific evidence shouldn't be warped to try and support that view.
I must disagree. All knowledge can be split into three basic categories, that is things that we know. We can derive knowledge intellectually, empirically or revealatory. Science falls under the category of the empirical. That is all Science is. Science can never answer Why, but only How. No matter how much we investigate, and no matter how well we theorize and postulate and model what we can empirically measure, we can never come to the ultimate answer of why things are they way they are. We can only describe them based on our measurements and all that is empirical.
If we neglect the intellectual we would fail in developing theories to start with. But again, itellectual thought can only take us so far as well, and whatever we do intellectualize, we must find a way to prove our theories otherwise they are useless to us. And again, the intellect can be completely dumbfounded in many cases.
The last realm of knowledge is revelatory. We are told something is and end of story. This is where the idea that God created everything comes from. Is it not odd that every major religion in the world has a creation story? Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddism, they all start off saying the first creation was light. How can that be that all these traditions can be similar in the origin when they were not only separated geographically but also temporally to orders of magnitude?
The realm of revaltory knowldge is vast and can explain many things. For example, the development of the human fetus is described in the Muslim's book, the Qur'an, in exacting detail from the zygote, to the embryo, to the fetus and infant ready to be born. This was known 1400 years ago among the Muslims, way before modern gynecology every understood what was going on inside the womb. They never disected people back then to know this stuff, they had no way of knowing, yet was revealed. Neither Science nor intellectual thought can explain how Jesus could walk on water, or bring a dead man back to life, or give a blind man his sight back. Miracles break the empirical patterns we typically experience in the world. In fact the word miracle in Arabic is Mu'jiza, which literally means an incapacity because miracles incapcitate both the intellect and empirical observations as to how something can happen.
Like I said in my previous post, I was steeped in science, mathematics and engineering for close to 24 years of my life, earning a Ph.D in mechanical engineering along the way. So I know the limitations of empirical science. I again will firmly state, empirical science and intellectual thought can only answer the what and how, but never the why. Why is the realm of the spiritual, and unless we are given that knowledge through revealation we can never arrive at the answer. And thus this precludes that a Creator is the source of all that we experience in this life which further necessitates that the spiritual is intimately involved in the pursuit of the empirical and intellectual, which in turn keeps us humble. Otherwise we will revel in our own arrogance and meet our demise as the past civilizations did because of that very thing.
Here is another observation. Did you ever notice that just at sunrise or a few minutes just after sunrise if the air is perfectly still you will start feeling a breeze blowing and what was previously comfortable temperature wise suddenly becomes chilly? All perfeclty expalinable by sicence but none the less mysterious when it happens.
Of course in a state where individuals are well optimized, the probability that a mutation is beneficial is low, while the probability that the same mutation is detrimental is high. There's no doubt about that. However, you forget two things:
1) Time. There's an enormous amount of time available to evolution. Much more than to a normal lab project.
2) In a setting where the organism is poorly adapted, the probability that mutations improve its fitness is comparably large. It's still extremely small, but it's larger than in the case where an organism is perfectly adapted.
There are countless examples in microbes and viruses of how mutations can improve fitness. Just think about drug resitance in HIV, where single point mutations can have a large effect (and don't say now that microbes and multicellular organisms are "two distinct things"). Or one more example (one I've witnessed for myself) - I don't know how familiar you are with metabolism. Anyway, chorismate mutases are necessary for biosynthesis of tyrosine and tryptophane. E. coli had their CM deleted and replaced with a severely disfunctional variant from another bacterium. Guess what, under selective conditions we obtained highly efficient enzymes within two weeks. Two weeks is a laughable time compared to what is available to nature, but still, there were plenty of mutations that improved the fitness of those poorly adapted microbes, many of them exchanging active site resiudes that directly interact with the substrates...
Bottom line: It works. There's no scientifically funded doubt in the fact that evolution does take place (and no, the "discovery institute" doesn't do science). The only reason to doubt it is if it conflicts with your world view (e.g. religion), which is wholly unscientific.
Basil
There is no "why". There's no need for a "why". Things just happen, there's no higher power or reason behind them. Only human minds want to construct a "why" because that makes them feel less miserable.
Did he?
Basil
Nature is just that... things that are natural and/or not made or influenced by man. If that is the case, then why not appreciate it for its wonders for whatever reason makes sense to you. Personal beliefs aside, there is much in nature to wonder about, learn and, especially, enjoy in each and every day that you are alive.
Science can only answer the "How", but can't answer the "Why"?
But spirituality supposedly CAN answer they "Why"? No, spirituality answers nothing. Answers based on faith and faith alone simply aren't answers at all. This is where religion and spirituality utterly fail.
If spirituality answers the "why", then why are these supposed rock-solid "answers" so incredibly different depending upon which religion is involved? These "answers" are simply guesses that are manipulated to fit within an uncompromising religious framework.
Defensiveness? Is that what you call it?
So...those of a religious persuasion are allowed to express their beliefs, but when those who do NOT believe in some higher power express their beliefs, it's "defensiveness"?
I respect any belief system that has mutual respect for other belief systems, and once again, that is where religion utterly fails. According to Christian beliefs, ONLY those adhering to a narrow interpretation of the world will be "saved", while the rest of us poor saps are doomed forever to rot in hell, even those in other religions with very similar belief systems!
Christianity doesn't respect my beliefs, or the beliefs of any other "non-believer". But yet respect is demanded in return?
I simply do not desire to see anyone here get hurt because of their personal beliefs.
Thanks, everyone,
-PB
Once again, all replies were appreciated.
Will
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
Eye contact. With another person... with my dog... with an Orca... with horses... a walrus... a dolphin.... Just a few examples. When the "connection" happens it's a wonderous thing, isn't it!
Will
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada