Nature's Miracles.
Do you believe in magic or miracles? This is the a question that’s been posed for @ecotrain’s first pop-up question and, for me, the answer depends on how you view it. You see magic or miracles are often things we just don't understand, yet and there is still plenty we don't understand and may never fully understand. After all, if you'll allow a slight misquotation: ”There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” I don't believe that we can do things that are not within the scope of the universe, but I do believe there is more to life than most of us have tapped into.
For me the creation of life is miraculous. From tiny seeds, eggs and sperm an entire new entity grows. Science can only explain so much of it, mostly the physics of it, but it can never really explain the sentience of life. We create computers which can process more and more information, but we still haven't touched on the level of ability the brain has.
Recently I was reading an investigative paper on how probiotic bacteria removes heavy metals from both soil and the human body. At the start of the paper they explained that they don't fully understand all the processes of how it works, only that it works, but the paper tried to explain what they were able to discover.
All these things that we don't know are miracles for us. Nature is the most magical thing we have. Yet mankind is so often arrogant in our belief that nature can be improved by us, even bettered by us. Nature has had millions of years to evolve and experiment, yet we start to understand a fraction of it and think we can do a better job. Working with nature is one thing, but going against it never works out, even if at first we think it does.
Did you know that an egg can be hatched in a cup?
This is pretty amazing, but the success rates in this manmade environment are much lower than in nature's environment of a porous shell with an antibacterial layer. A shell that allows oxygen and CO2 to be moved in and out while the chick is growing. A shell that slowly loses some of its minerals, to be absorbed by the growing chick and weaken the shell ready for hatching. A shell that ultimately makes for a healthier chick, upon hatch. Something that we can't replicate.
Other things that nature makes and we can't replicate are spider’s and caterpillar silks. They are the strongest materials known to us, but they elude our understanding to create them artificially. Recently we have become aware that plants are connected and communicate via Mycorrhizal networks; internet super highways of fungus, if you like. All life is potentially more connected than we realise. In fact, the movie, Avatar, could be quite close to this truth. Yet, as we try to make our own magic and miracles, we seem to be pulling further and further away from nature, destroying it as we go and with it destroying our connections.
Nature is magic; she is a miracle. Given time she can heal and balance out any destruction we cause. Bacteria will break down most things, eventually, rendering them inert. Our plastics, oil spills and poisons that we leave behind, nature will deal with and if necessary, she will deal with us as well.
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Its breath-taking. I was recently reading about the way deciduous trees shed their leaves; and the entire thing is this incredibly choreographed process.
Nutrients in the leaves are reclaimed in a specific order, then cells along the shear line secrete a hormone that dissolves the glue holding them to each other.
The tree is simultaneously building up a thick layer of sealant over the exposed end of the twig, to protect it from insects and the cold after the leaf has dropped.
The reclaimed nutrients are stored in the rest of the tree, and re-used in Spring to grow more leaves.
I'd always just known it as, something that happens; but like with so many other natural processes; the closer you look at it, the more incredible it is.
Isn't it amazing what we take for granted? Such an intricate process to allow the trees to survive the extremes of winter. Even our own bodies do a lot for us that we take for granted, despite the pressures we put them through.
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Nature is truly full of miracles. I love the examples you brought, and I'm certain they are just scratching the surface of the iceberg... whose greatest part remains submerged. And the greatest miracle of them all, is that the more we understand them the more unexplainable things we are presented with. As if nature was an eternal mystery.
I agree, we have most certainly only scratched the surface. Nature will continue to surprise us for a long time to come.
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@minismallholding Heya, according to me every moment nature does some miracle only we don't observe them as we are always busy with the things.... Thanks for sharing so thoughtful words... Keep going... =)
Yes. We take so much for granted and forget how much wonder there is in the world as we rush around in our daily lives.
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I hope so...it's criminal to think how much harm we're causing the planet.
Take people off the planet and it won't be too long before everything we've ever made or done disappears back to the earth. Some things might take a few thousand years, like our stone carvings, but even mountains are eroded eventually.
People are venturing back into areas around Chernobyl. Leave it to nature for a bit and it will recover. Radiation slowly gets washed back down into the earth.
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im so glad you wrote this post!! beautiful! it was the first thing i thought of when i asked the question..about the simple magic of life itself. i mean realy that is the ultimate miracle of all! Nice one!!!
Great minds think alike! ;D
The miracle of life was never more poignant than when I had a life growing inside me. That's when it truly struck me just how miraculous life is. I'd not really done anything to deserve or create this miracle, yet here I was fueling it. Here I was being given the chance to guide and nurture this new life.
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Nature IS miraculous and as clumsily as we try to imitate and take over, it is NEVER quite the same. A sweet contribuiton to the challenge, my dear. :)
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Thank you.
Yes, our imitations are mere illusions of what nature can do.
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There's a lot of stuff that we can't replicate (yet) and some of what we encounter in our environment, has allowed various species to survive for millions if not billions of years. What gets me about evolution, is not the diverse range of animals and plants we have (some blurring the lines between the two categories), but the choices / options that have come about because of needing to survive in different environments.
Bioluminescence, echo location, wings, horns, stingers, fins, gills, legs, claws, the ability to sense electro-magnetic fields, seeing into the ultra violet spectrum (birds). hearing in different frequencies (dogs vs humans), thinking, imagination, camouflage, etc. The list really goes on.
Some of this stuff has always been there but we have yet to discover it.
Now imagine the technology you are reading this on, and then trying to explain via time travel, what it does to your younger self (say 10 years). It would be so foreign, but would your earlier self consider it magic... or a miracle?
:D
My younger self was already seeing hand held video games and Star Trek, so we probably have to go back another 1 or 2 generations for that to seem more magical. You have raised an interesting thought, for me, however. These things are considered normal for us everyday people, yet we couldn't necessarily explain how they work. So why don't we see them as magical? Maybe because we know that someone can make them and explain them.
Yes, evolution and nature has found ways to survive almost any environment. I think that animals and plants will even evolve to live in the pollution we leave behind. Look at Chernobyl. The radiation has created variations on species within the fallout area.
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