There are really just a few certain astounding things to focus our thoughts on without hurting our brains. Yet, they may more than enhance our understanding of our world, or at least make us think a little bit more, one simple thought at a time, without devoting years in academia for a philosophy degree or a doctorate in physics. Yes, it is possible to gain knowledge by merely pondering or asking questions. It is in fact true that if we never stop asking or wondering about one little thing or even a lot of things we continue to make the most out of life, no matter how dreary, how unexciting or how ordinary our place is in the one little corner we find ourselves in. To wonder and then to ponder is a gift that disallows us to squander moments of physical inactivity or when all that we have are our thoughts to keep us company.
The sense of wonder is the one privilege only we are allowed to enjoy. No other living thing gets to do that; it's free too! Having said that, we must however not underestimate what other living things get to do that leave us feeling inadequate.
Take the humble egg. Yes, the very same ones we take for granted - packed by the dozens in Styrofoam packaging or molded cardboard crates at the grocery store, or the ones on a nest between the crook of a tree branch, on the ground with matching blotches that mimic the surrounding stony background, or on small pouches hanging by a drooping branch, weaved from blades of grass, or in tiny cups of dirt and bird saliva along cave walls or under bridges. The egg in thousands of varieties and shapes laid by the thousand species of birds around the world is one extraordinary life support structure that defies the best technology man had ever created.
It was the egg and the birds that laid them that led Charles Darwin to ask first one small question then followed by a flurry of more query that led him from the Galapagos to a worldwide understanding of the tenacity of all living creatures so that life as we know it today continues to flourish despite all the hardships and natural calamities over eons of time. That is because every living creature has this one quality, the unique attribute endowed to every species to insure their survival - the ability to adapt.
The egg epitomizes just one of the countless wonders in nature. From what it stands for generally as a biological definition, no embryo may develop without it. As it relates to birds only, it holds a profound complexity like no other in nature, yet it was because of eggs and the ease that they can be gathered that gave our early ancestors easy access to protein without having to chase or go after elusive prey that fought back or posed potential physical harm. It was the egg or the need for it that led to domesticating certain birds (chickens and ducks) that served our ancestors so effectively when they settled down to farm the lands that led to agriculture that led to the foundation for civilization to develop.
Eggs are incubated but they are also incubators for the production of some of the most critical vaccines for humans - the pivotal moment that was the beginning of modern health care. There is more I would like to talk about the humble egg but let's set that aside for now.
Then we have mathematics. We did not invent it. Whether we are here or not mathematics existed, does exist and will continue to exist. We merely discovered it. We did invent the numbering system like 1 or 2 and all the numbers beyond them so that our ancestors knew the value of 1 deer + 1 deer as 2 animals they saw or caught. But whether early man was there or not, two deer always meant that they were twice as many as one, the same way that one stone plus another made two, when our ancestors began to ponder the nature of numbers. Numbers don't lie, however, we've now become good at manipulating them, such as in statistics or for fortune telling.
When the early cave dwellers realized that setting little rocks or marking notches on pieces of wood or bone, to make first use of numbers, the square root of 2 already existed, or that the diameter of any circle was and will always be its circumference divided by an odd looking number that begins as 3.1416 .... that is never ending nor exhibit a pattern. That number was already established as a universal scientific truth even from the time the first stars were created. Pythagoras merely discovered the theorem named after him but all three sides of right triangles did and will always go by this relationship:
.
Then we have the unlikely forces of nature - Shapes. Yes indeed, engineers and scientists do consider shapes, geometric patterns and the mathematics that define them as forces of nature. Shapes, long before we even started to understand them, designed them, created versions of them, were there already for nature to use right from the very beginning of creation. We may wonder whether our physical world are what they are because they were shaped that way, or are shapes the way they are as nature forced them to become.
Bees have for hundreds of thousands of years been building their honeycomb beehives in geometric patterns of the hexagon. Unlike birds nests that come in all kinds of configurations and material, all species of bees use only beeswax in the one and only geometric pattern - that of the hexagon. Let's examine the hexagon for a minute, just to satisfy our curiosity as to why bees chose it. Whether as a flat pattern or in the shape of a tube (as in the beehive), it is the most efficient shape to cover an area or contain the optimum amount of volume with the least amount of material. Bees know to conserve energy and material and no other shape will suffice except for the hexagon. Six equilateral triangles put together will make a hexagon, each side of that triangle has the length equal to the radius of the circle that circumscribe the hexagon, with all the six corners of it resting along the circumference of the circle in six equal spaces. Got that? If that seemed somewhat complicated to you, guess how you feel now when it is all second nature to the bee. But it is not just bees that make hexagons. Even an inanimate phenomenon, like the weather, create hexagons in the form of snowflakes and make them so no two snowflakes are the same. They make finger prints look ordinarily bland. Volcanic eruptions that are as predictably violent as they are chaotic produce lava formations as columnar basalt - as perfect hexagonal columns as if they were fashioned for an architectural project.
Back to my special fascination with the egg. If proven true beyond any reasonable doubt - more likely than not as research seems to lead that way - that modern day birds descended from dinosaurs (whose fossilized eggs are common specimens) then the egg represents over 200 million years of a perfectly designed feature of adaptation. The platypus, a mammal, seems to think so as well, that even today when all its furry cousins have gone to one reproductive method of live birthing, this odd holdout still lays eggs.
Egg shapes vary according to the needs of the particular egg layer. Long distance flying birds have elongated eggs because their physiology demands a more streamlined body that influences the shape of their Fallopian tubes to be narrower while flightless birds like the ostrich or emu that are not constrained by a streamlined physique have spheroidal-shaped eggs, closer to a baseball than to a football (American football, that is). Birds metabolism is so high that their elevated body temperature is detrimental to the development of the embryo. The solution is the egg. Away from the inside of the bird's "womb", the egg's temperature is then regulated in the nest. Other birds are so highly adaptable as to regulate the rate of incubation of their eggs. A small species of bird in Europe regulate the incubation period of their eggs in such a way that they'd all hatch at a very narrow window of a week to ten days every spring in time for when a species of caterpillar develop in the area which, not surprisingly, occurs and ends within 7-10 days. Birds are smarter than we give them credit for, surely undeserved of the reputation of having a "bird brain".
Speaking of brain, this is where we come in. It is where we excel. It is our insatiable desire to know that starts with wondering first, then we ponder what, why, and how that lead us to answers that lead to increase in knowledge that brought us to where we are today. We've done well. Very well indeed.
Unfortunately, technology has brought us to today. With its one singular side effect. It is making us lose the one gift that the Creator endowed us with. The gift to wonder. Once we lose that completely then we lose our humanity. Technology may be smart but it lacks the one thing that only we have. The ability to ponder the things around us; the ability to perceive those closest to us and to be mindful of them because outside of those for whom we care and those who care in return, we will have become as inanimate as a computer chip. If you think that is spoken in jest, try and observe young people today. They could be physically congregated as a group of three or a dozen but yet so invariably segregated, hunched over, lost to the world of a palm-size screen, oblivious to what goes on around them.
If we believe that we are creation's highest point then we must admit that the only thing that differentiates us from all other creatures is our ability to wonder and to ponder because those two are the precursors to why we search, which leads to knowledge that leads to understanding. Even if all of our pondering and wondering comes to nothing of significance, the ability to do them is still the greatest gift of all that no other living thing is able to do. So, cherish that thought and hope and pray for the day when everyone looks up and look around to rediscover the person sitting nearby and one to another.
P.S.
My fascination with the hexagon continues and here to prove a minor point. These photos are from an ongoing project that once finished will be detailed in my woodworking blog. While I will take credit for this, my most recent elaborate project, I will be humbled by the bees because they do not have the benefit of advanced geometry, nor the engineer's drawing instruments or the woodworking power tools. I planned this a lot; the bees just do it barely within an hour after their brief juvenile period and unerringly build a perfect beehive.
The upper part of this planter will rotate on a Lazy Susan carousel (with ball bearings) so that plants around the column will have equal shot at the sun's rays by the window if regularly rotated from day to day.
Why I showed this is merely to serve as an example that when we wonder, then when we ponder, we sometimes find a way that leads to that one "aha" moment.
The egg epitomizes just one of the countless wonders in nature. From what it stands for generally as a biological definition, no embryo may develop without it. As it relates to birds only, it holds a profound complexity like no other in nature, yet it was because of eggs and the ease that they can be gathered that gave our early ancestors easy access to protein without having to chase or go after elusive prey that fought back or posed potential physical harm. It was the egg or the need for it that led to domesticating certain birds (chickens and ducks) that served our ancestors so effectively when they settled down to farm the lands that led to agriculture that led to the foundation for civilization to develop.
Eggs are incubated but they are also incubators for the production of some of the most critical vaccines for humans - the pivotal moment that was the beginning of modern health care. There is more I would like to talk about the humble egg but let's set that aside for now.
Then we have mathematics. We did not invent it. Whether we are here or not mathematics existed, does exist and will continue to exist. We merely discovered it. We did invent the numbering system like 1 or 2 and all the numbers beyond them so that our ancestors knew the value of 1 deer + 1 deer as 2 animals they saw or caught. But whether early man was there or not, two deer always meant that they were twice as many as one, the same way that one stone plus another made two, when our ancestors began to ponder the nature of numbers. Numbers don't lie, however, we've now become good at manipulating them, such as in statistics or for fortune telling.
When the early cave dwellers realized that setting little rocks or marking notches on pieces of wood or bone, to make first use of numbers, the square root of 2 already existed, or that the diameter of any circle was and will always be its circumference divided by an odd looking number that begins as 3.1416 .... that is never ending nor exhibit a pattern. That number was already established as a universal scientific truth even from the time the first stars were created. Pythagoras merely discovered the theorem named after him but all three sides of right triangles did and will always go by this relationship:
.Then we have the unlikely forces of nature - Shapes. Yes indeed, engineers and scientists do consider shapes, geometric patterns and the mathematics that define them as forces of nature. Shapes, long before we even started to understand them, designed them, created versions of them, were there already for nature to use right from the very beginning of creation. We may wonder whether our physical world are what they are because they were shaped that way, or are shapes the way they are as nature forced them to become.
Bees have for hundreds of thousands of years been building their honeycomb beehives in geometric patterns of the hexagon. Unlike birds nests that come in all kinds of configurations and material, all species of bees use only beeswax in the one and only geometric pattern - that of the hexagon. Let's examine the hexagon for a minute, just to satisfy our curiosity as to why bees chose it. Whether as a flat pattern or in the shape of a tube (as in the beehive), it is the most efficient shape to cover an area or contain the optimum amount of volume with the least amount of material. Bees know to conserve energy and material and no other shape will suffice except for the hexagon. Six equilateral triangles put together will make a hexagon, each side of that triangle has the length equal to the radius of the circle that circumscribe the hexagon, with all the six corners of it resting along the circumference of the circle in six equal spaces. Got that? If that seemed somewhat complicated to you, guess how you feel now when it is all second nature to the bee. But it is not just bees that make hexagons. Even an inanimate phenomenon, like the weather, create hexagons in the form of snowflakes and make them so no two snowflakes are the same. They make finger prints look ordinarily bland. Volcanic eruptions that are as predictably violent as they are chaotic produce lava formations as columnar basalt - as perfect hexagonal columns as if they were fashioned for an architectural project.
Back to my special fascination with the egg. If proven true beyond any reasonable doubt - more likely than not as research seems to lead that way - that modern day birds descended from dinosaurs (whose fossilized eggs are common specimens) then the egg represents over 200 million years of a perfectly designed feature of adaptation. The platypus, a mammal, seems to think so as well, that even today when all its furry cousins have gone to one reproductive method of live birthing, this odd holdout still lays eggs.
Egg shapes vary according to the needs of the particular egg layer. Long distance flying birds have elongated eggs because their physiology demands a more streamlined body that influences the shape of their Fallopian tubes to be narrower while flightless birds like the ostrich or emu that are not constrained by a streamlined physique have spheroidal-shaped eggs, closer to a baseball than to a football (American football, that is). Birds metabolism is so high that their elevated body temperature is detrimental to the development of the embryo. The solution is the egg. Away from the inside of the bird's "womb", the egg's temperature is then regulated in the nest. Other birds are so highly adaptable as to regulate the rate of incubation of their eggs. A small species of bird in Europe regulate the incubation period of their eggs in such a way that they'd all hatch at a very narrow window of a week to ten days every spring in time for when a species of caterpillar develop in the area which, not surprisingly, occurs and ends within 7-10 days. Birds are smarter than we give them credit for, surely undeserved of the reputation of having a "bird brain".
Speaking of brain, this is where we come in. It is where we excel. It is our insatiable desire to know that starts with wondering first, then we ponder what, why, and how that lead us to answers that lead to increase in knowledge that brought us to where we are today. We've done well. Very well indeed.
Unfortunately, technology has brought us to today. With its one singular side effect. It is making us lose the one gift that the Creator endowed us with. The gift to wonder. Once we lose that completely then we lose our humanity. Technology may be smart but it lacks the one thing that only we have. The ability to ponder the things around us; the ability to perceive those closest to us and to be mindful of them because outside of those for whom we care and those who care in return, we will have become as inanimate as a computer chip. If you think that is spoken in jest, try and observe young people today. They could be physically congregated as a group of three or a dozen but yet so invariably segregated, hunched over, lost to the world of a palm-size screen, oblivious to what goes on around them.
If we believe that we are creation's highest point then we must admit that the only thing that differentiates us from all other creatures is our ability to wonder and to ponder because those two are the precursors to why we search, which leads to knowledge that leads to understanding. Even if all of our pondering and wondering comes to nothing of significance, the ability to do them is still the greatest gift of all that no other living thing is able to do. So, cherish that thought and hope and pray for the day when everyone looks up and look around to rediscover the person sitting nearby and one to another.
P.S.
My fascination with the hexagon continues and here to prove a minor point. These photos are from an ongoing project that once finished will be detailed in my woodworking blog. While I will take credit for this, my most recent elaborate project, I will be humbled by the bees because they do not have the benefit of advanced geometry, nor the engineer's drawing instruments or the woodworking power tools. I planned this a lot; the bees just do it barely within an hour after their brief juvenile period and unerringly build a perfect beehive.
 |
| This is how six equilateral triangles make a hexagon, shown partially glued up |
 |
| These will become hexagon plant/pot holders that will be attached to a rotatable hexagonal column planter. |
Why I showed this is merely to serve as an example that when we wonder, then when we ponder, we sometimes find a way that leads to that one "aha" moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment