To Study Nature

 

Eine ganz eigne Liebe und Kindlichkeit gehört, nebst dem deutlichsten Verstände und dem ruhigsten Sinn, zum Studium der Natur. Wenn erst eine ganze Nation Leidenschaft für die Natur empfäht, und hier ein neues Band unter den Bürgern geknüpft wird, jeder Ort seine Naturforscher und Laboratorien hat, dann wird man erst Fortschritte auf dieser kolossalischen Bahn machen, die mit ihr im Verhältnis stehn.

 A very special love and childishness belongs to the study of nature, together with the clearest understanding and the calmest sense. Only when a whole nation feels passion for nature, and a new bond is forged among its citizens, and every place has naturalists and laboratories, will progress be made on this colossal exploration that stands in proportion to it.

                                                                                                                 —Novalis

 

To study and attempt to understand nature, and especially the dynamic relationships that exist in nature—is this not the best antidote to the artificiality that threatens to overwhelm our twenty-first century hearts and minds? Thomas Merton wrote about sitting on a rotten tree stump and finding a black widow spider living there. He reflected that, “It is strange to be so very close to something that could kill you, and not be defended by some kind of an invention. As if, wherever there was a problem in life, some machine would have to get there before you to negotiate it . . . As if the whole of reality were in the inventions that stand between us and the world: the inventions which have become our world.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander) The bee teaches us that it needs no human-made tool to extract nectar from the flower; the tree, that it needs no plastic straw to drink from the soil; and the bird, that it doesn’t need GPS to find its way home. I am not saying that certain technologies aren’t useful or even beneficial, but nature reminds us that they are not always necessary. And our technical prowess is not a basis for certainty, nor is technology consistently reliable or useful in every circumstance. The deuterocanonical book of Baruch ends with the Letter of Jeremiah concerning idols. The author ridicules so-called gods that are made by human hands, and at one point writes, “Bats and swallows alight on their bodies and heads—any bird, and cats as well. Know, therefore, that they are not gods; do not fear them.” (Baruch 6:21-22) I think about piles of old computers that I have seen sitting in disposal lots, and how these ingenious devices are now the homes of pigeons and mice, and I think to myself, “They are not gods; do not fear them.”