Introduction:
I wouldn’t consider myself a contrarian in totality, only in the sense of fundamental religious acceptance. For some, being indifferent towards religious orthodoxy is the ultimate contrarian position, for that, I embody the definition. In the sense of the scientific consensus, I couldn’t distance myself enough from the views of a contrarian. Instead, I apply a healthy portion of skepticism to claims made by this form of inquiry. Science is, by all means, the best way to understand the natural world. Furthermore, science is the greatest driver of the world’s economy from iPhones to stem cell research. So, science appreciation is undoubtedly practical. From such rigorous methods comes innovation spun from the human creative mind. This union between the creativity of humans and the cold demonstrable truths of the world is a process to truly relish. I agree with Charles Darwin, “There is grandeur in this view of life...” as stated in the origins of species (Darwin, C. & Kebler, L. 1859, p. 490). My goal here is to highlight the grandeur that Darwin saw which is the poetry of reality.
Does it Matter:
Matter is commonly defined as the substance of physical objects. Matter can be found in the infinitesimally small atomic world to the voluminous observable universe. Let’s imagine that we have access to the Hubble Space Telescope. We pick a direction to point our telescope and see planets, galaxies, and maybe a white dwarf or two. What we just witnessed is the visible components of the universe. By modern estimates, the visible components of the observable universe make up only 4.9 percent of its mass. The rest of what makes up the observable universe is dark matter around 26.8 percent, and 68.3 percent dark energy (Ade, P. A. R.; Aghanim, N.; Armitage-Caplan, C.; et al. 2013). As we continue to observe the visible components in the universe we see matter follows defined physical laws. The laws that matter follows have produced viable models that cosmologists used to explain the evolution and structure of the observable universe. The laws that matter follows, also have mathematical expressions. These mathematical expressions form a group of physical constants that are static across the observable universe (Varshalovich, D.A.; Potekhin, A.Y. & Ivanchik, A.V. (2000). So, what is poetic about this, the universe is matter in motion.
Humans and stars:
Picture yourself on a beach on a warm summer night. The waves of the ocean rolling rhythmically over your feet. You suddenly look up to marvel at the night sky. Because of this blissful experience, the thought might cross your mind: what can produce such beautiful complexity? Being very inquisitive, you find the answer to your question in a respectable scientific article. You learn in a nutshell, that the physical laws of the universe and all its naturalistic processes are the mechanisms that formed the marvelous night sky. Although this is testable and is the current scientific census being void of any emotional attachment; the reality of this scientific understanding is undoubtedly sublime. Learning about the naturalistic processes that formed the observable universe doesn’t strip the personal value one might have for the known universe. I believe learning how nature works only adds value to how we view the natural world. Verifiable scientific evidence is endowed with its own type of emotional appeal, one that is very much poetically driven as any writings from Shakespeare, or Hughes.
Don’t believe me, let’s test how poetic verifiable scientific evidence really is. Stargazing is a fun activity and can be romantic with a significant other. On a clear night away from the city, the human naked eye can see anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 stars. Administration for such an experience is not uncommon and can provide one with a positive feeling. However, this is not the poetry of reality I’m speaking of. Let’s dive deeper, stars like the ones you’re viewing are responsible for all the heavy elements in your body and on earth. Those elements were ejected due to an ordinary star going supernova. As the elements dispersed some mixed with other matter in the universe and formed new stars. Other scattered elements formed with planetary bodies like Earth. Because of these exploding stars, Earth is rich with heavy elements (Louisiana State University, 1999). From the calcium in our bones to the iron in our blood were all formed in the cores of stars, we are literally made of stardust, isn’t that poetic?
Well if that doesn’t tickle your fancy then let’s take this fact about stars into consideration. A quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson, “There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on any beach, more stars than seconds have passed since Earth formed, more stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all the humans who ever lived” (Tyson, N. G. 2017). This quote highlights the stupendous amount of stars in the observable universe. It also grants the reader a cosmic perspective that they might not have had. This perspective lets us know how small we really are in the vast ocean of stars, in an ever-expanding universe; but it also allows us to recognize how astounding it is, knowing the universe is in us.
Natural watchmakers:
Complexity can be seen throughout the natural world, there is probably no area better to see complexity than in life science. Due to the overwhelming complexity of organisms on this planet; Pre-Darwinian philosophers and theologians concluded this complexity must have an intelligent designer. The famous champion of this view was William Paley. In his book “Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity”, William Paley claimed that complex structures found in nature could’ve only come about due to a god, or an intelligent designer. Paley states, “In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there” (Paley, W. 1803). Living in a Pre-Darwinian era Paley’s argument seemed sound as an explanation to why there is so much complexity. Unbeknownst to Paley, there were natural watchmakers doing the work. What seemed to be an obvious design, is in fact the random process of mutation and the non-random process of natural selection. When we look at the wings of an Amazonian parrot, the teeth of a great white shark, the bark of a red oak tree, and the human eye; we’re seeing natural selection and other natural mechanisms like genetic drift act upon the variation in a given population of organisms.
Let’s take a look at the evolution of the eye. The eye has been an attractive study for many researchers due to the eye being an analogous organ found in many animal species. Before complex eyes, simple light processing photoreceptor cells helped organisms navigate their environment. Photoreceptor cells have two types of molecules, opsin, a light detection protein, and chromophore which is the pigment that takes in light (M F Land; R D Fernald 1992). Due to these light-sensing cells that form eyespots organisms like the Planarian (a species of flatworm) are granted the ability to distinguish light in a given direction. The evolution of the image forming eye has evolved independently in many organisms. Currently, the earliest fossil of complex eyes is dated to the Ediacaran Period form in stem mollusk (McMenamin, Mark A. S. 2016). Vertebrate eyes are even more complex than of mollusks. The camera type eye of vertebrates is composed of epithelial cells that have heavy concentrations of protein crystallin. Crystallins are known to reside in two families, α-crystallins and βγ-crystallins. The function of these proteins were for other tasks, but have adapted in their current role for animal vision (Slingsby, C.; Wistow, G. J.; Clark, A. R. 2013). It’s through these slow changes in eye evolution that we can see beautiful red-orange sunsets, the vast Uyuni Salt Flat, or the pink flamingos of Lake Nakuru.
Even though I can go on about the different adaptations that natural selection has produced to assist organisms in a particular environment; there is an overarching poetic point that needs to be made. This overarching point is steeped in connectivity. All life on Earth is connected through a last universal common ancestor termed LUCA (Kampourakis, Kostas 2014). Life on earth has approximately been around for 3.5-3.8 billion years. Through the fossil record, we can see the constant progression from ancient biogenic graphite to fossilized multicellular organisms (Ohtomo, Yoko; Kakegawa, Takeshi; Ishida, Akizumi; et al. 2014). The realization of this consecutiveness stream of replication through natural processes found in every organism strips away the egotism of humans. Leaving us with the profoundly poetic truth of us not coming into this world from the external, but being grown from within it.
Conclusion:
An individual who possesses a scientific mind is an individual devoted to critical thinking. This analytical style of thinking is steeped in logic and rationality. The scientific mind can contribute to discoveries made on the frontier of science, as well as what develops innovations. To a respectable scientist, critical thinking is somewhat intuitive, although like most skills it takes practice to reach proficiency. However, science doesn’t have a monopoly on critical thinking. An avid consumer of information should adopt critical thinking as a way to make informed judgments about the information they come across. Just as science doesn’t have a monopoly on critical thinking, literature doesn’t have a monopoly on poetry. Since John Keats’s famous worry about the unweaving of the rainbow by Isaac Newton’s explanation of the color spectrum; science and poetry have been in bed with one another. This union between the two practices seems unlikely at first glance. However, after careful analysis, we can see that science and poetry can’t be divorced. Science and poetry have an unwavering married bound to objective reality.
References:
Darwin, C. & Kebler, L. (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: J. Murray. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/06017473/.
Ade, P. A. R.; Aghanim, N.; Armitage-Caplan, C.; et al. (Planck Collaboration) (March 22, 2013). "Planck 2013 results. I. Overview of products and scientific results – Table 9". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 571: A1. arXiv:1303.5062.
Varshalovich, D.A.; Potekhin, A.Y. & Ivanchik, A.V. (2000). "Testing cosmological variability of fundamental constants". AIP Conference Proceedings. 506: 503. arXiv:physics/0004062.
Louisiana State University. (1999). Physicist Finds Out Why "We Are Stardust...". ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 27, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990625080416.htm
Tyson, N. G. (2017). Astrophysics for people in a hurry.
Paley, W. (1803). Natural theology, or, Evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity: Collected from the appearances of nature. London.
M F Land; R D Fernald (1992). "The Evolution of Eyes". Annual Review of Neuroscience. 15: 1–29.
McMenamin, Mark A. S. (2016). Dynamic Paleontology: Using Quantification and Other Tools to Decipher the History of Life. Springer.
Slingsby, C.; Wistow, G. J.; Clark, A. R. (2013). "Evolution of crystallins for a role in the vertebrate eye lens". Protein Science. 22 (4): 367–380.
Kampourakis, Kostas (2014). Understanding Evolution. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ohtomo, Yoko; Kakegawa, Takeshi; Ishida, Akizumi; et al. (2014). "Evidence for biogenic graphite in early Archaean Isua metasedimentary rocks". Nature Geoscience. 7 (1): 25–28.