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.