In 1924, Bogdanov started experimenting on himself. The Russian physician would give himself blood transfusions and he claimed that it had stopped his baldness and improved his eyesight. Four years later, another transfusion of blood infected with tuberculosis and malaria caused his death.

Carl Scheele

Famed pharmaceutical chemist, Scheele discovered many different types of chemical elements. He also discovered a process that was very similar to pasteurisation. Unfortunately for Scheele, he had a bad habit of tasting everything he discovered. He died of symptoms very similar to mercury poisoning.

Sir David Brewster

Brewster was the Scottish inventor of the kaleidoscope. His main interests were, of course, optics and light polarisation. In 1831, a chemical experiment he was working on went terribly wrong and it almost blinded him. Brewster had eye difficulties for the rest of his life.

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Elizabeth Ascheim

Ascheim was the wife of Dr Woolf, they both had a major fascination with the x-ray machine (invented by Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen). The couple spent years experimenting with the machine which was attributed to the widespread and violent cancers they died from.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo is famed for his work on refinement of the telescope. He was overly fascinated with the sun and spent a lot of his time staring at it. Not surprisingly, this led to extreme damage to his retinas which left him blind for the last 4 years of his life.

Sir Humphrey Davy

On the bright-side (for the world at least) Davy’s work on various gases led to the discovery of the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide. Unfortunately for him personal, the inhaling of the gases he worked with led him to become an invalid for the last 20 years of his life.

Jean-Francois de Rozier

De Rozier was a famed physics and chemistry professor. He assisted in the first untethered balloon flight, which included a sheep, a chicken and a duck. He went on to attempt the first crossing of the English Channel by balloon. It was just an attempt because the balloon deflated and he fell to his death.

Marie Curie

It was in 1898 that Curie and her husband Pierre discovered radium and polonium. She was a double Nobel Prize winner for her work spent performing radiation research and studying radiation therapy. It caught up with her though as the constant exposure led to her contracting leukaemia.

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Michael Faraday

Two bits of bad luck for Faraday. It was bad enough for him that he suffered from the effects of chronic chemical poisoning, but he also suffered sever damage to his eyes after a nitrogen trichloride explosion. It didn’t dampen his spirits though.

Robert Bunsen

Bunsen will, of course, always be noted for lending his name to the Bunsen burner, the standard way to torch something in a classroom. Bunsen almost died twice of arsenic poisoning. After an explosion of cacodyl cyanide one day in his lab as he worked, he lost the sight in his right eye permanently.

Real handwriting experts study the forms of  handwritten letters and compare them. For example, if someone says that I signed a check and I say I didn’t, a handwriting expert will take my signature and compare it to the one on the check. People’s signatures tend to vary enough that this comparison can be helpful- though not definitive- in an investigation.

Graphology says that you can determine someone’s personality based on the forms of their loops and strokes. Graphology is not backed up by scientific studies- it is based on the idea that our personalities are locked deep within our unconscious minds and that you can read the unconscious in the tiny loops and swirls in your writing.

Graphology doesn’t say anything specific, it’s amounts to little more than a personality test. A graphology test (see .pdf file below) says that “closed ‘e’s mean secrecy” and “large broad upper loops  indicate emotion”. What does that mean? Everyone has emotions. Everyone has secrets, too. This makes the graphologist sound accurate.

Graphology doesn’t test anything definite. However, it is  fun- like reading your horoscope aloud at the breakfast table.

Phrenology

Is your skull lumpy?

See a phrenologist.

Phrenology was first proposed by Franz Josef Gall in 1800. Phrenology is based on the idea that the skull is divided into parts, each part signifying a certain attribute or area of one’s life. Bumps and ridges in certain areas show how a person behaves.

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Phrenology was big in the 1800s and is linked to physiognomy- the idea that a person’s facial shape said something about their intelligence, kindness, courage, etc.

It seems phrenology was a license to judge people by their looks. More than that, it has no scientific basis- the skull is just a case that protects the brain. However, parts of the brain itself do correspond to certain activities and behaviors- not quite the way phrenologists thought. Modern CAT scans and other readings show us how real head examination should be done.

Personology

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell if someone was a murdering, lying, son-of-a-so-and-so just by looking at them? How much of pseudoscience is based on wishful thinking?

Personology is similar to phrenology in that it uses a person’s body to judge what kind of person they are. Developed by a Los Angeles judge in the 1930s, personology has become a new age method of evaluating a person. Proponents claim that the “science” has great implications for hiring people, marrying, dating etc. An example of a personological observation is that coarse hair indicates a person who is “less sensitive”. A wide jaw indicates authority. A square chin indicates combativeness.

Can you imagine saying “no, we won’t hire you, because we don’t like your chin?”

Rumpology

Rumpology is similar to chirology (palm-reading). Except it’s different. Wikipedia says that rumpology is performed “by reading the lines, crevices, dimples, warts, moles and folds of a person’s buttocks in much the same way a chirologist would read the palm of the hand”.

The most well-known face of rumpology is the mother of actor Sylvester Stallone, Jacqueline Stallone. Her website is here. Stallone says that rumpology was practiced by the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians and Greeks.

Stallone further claims that the crevice of the rump corresponds to the split between the hemispheres of the brain and that your left cheek tells you about your past and your right cheek tells you about your future.

British rumpologist Sam Amos claims to have read Victoria Beckham’s rump, among other celebrities. German psychic Uri Beck is another ass-reader. Since he is blind, he has to do the whole thing by touch- not a bad job if you like groping booties for a living.

The religious (usually “Christian”) side of the argument centers on two concepts: that God placed man on the Earth, and that evolution isn’t even possible as all animals (and people) reproduce according to their kind. A mutation can’t really turn one species into another, can it? Most species even have different numbers of chromosomes, you can’t possibly say that Down Syndrome is the cause of that! Well, look at dogs. We have so many different dog breeds and they all look different. They may all be of the same species, but we bred them from wolves to begin with, over a period far less than life is supposed to have existed.

How did we get complex organs, like the digestive tract and nervous system? They could have started out as extra tissue, but their composition caused various effects (for instance, the brain conducted electricity throughout the body, essentially taking control, which helped it survive) and then the trait was passed on and gradually improved, with each improvement being able to survive while defects generally didn’t. As for DNA- who knows, but it’s really cool!

But none of that matters. God created the Earth and everything in it, the Bible says so (and the Torah, and possibly the Koran) and the Bible is the word of God. Well, technically it isn’t. The Bible was scribed by men, then translated by more men. Back in those days civilization was hardly civilized at all, people believed wholeheartedly in giants and dragons and witches, they could have been mistaken on any point God told them. God could not have made them write it right, because that would violate our all-important free will. Therefore the Bible is merely a rough outline at best.

Of course I’m not taking sides, so I’d like to tell you something interesting: for a brief period of time, I was Christian. I believed in God and heaven and I considered the Bible to be fact. I figured out in moments how it could be possible that God created Earth less than one million years ago. He must have placed all those fossils there. Just before writing this article I even came up with a reason: to give some people a sense of purpose. It has certainly done that. Even though we have radioactive dating machines, there is no saying for sure that God did not simply put the atoms in that state to give us more to do with the rocks we dug up. I can think of number of other ways it could be inaccurate as well.

So if both sides of the argument are just as plausible, perhaps a third explanation is actually true. And you can’t make a completely foolproof argument for either side. You just end up with hurt feelings and anger all around. So please don’t argue about it.

1. Heat is needed to create the amino acids  required for life, but that same heat destroys them. In the lab, when scientists create amino acids, they rwemove them from the heat before they can be damaged. In a natural setting this would never happen.
2. In the lab, two types of amino acids are always created, so called right and left handed amino acids. however, only left handed amino acids are found in living things. Right handed amino acids actually wreck amino acid chains! Since they are only able to create both in the lab, this is a failure.
3. Evolutionists also have a problem with oxygen.. In the lab, oxygen is not included in their experiments because it would destroy the molecules they are trying to make. The problem is that as soon as a cell is created, it needs oxygen to live. so if life really could be created in a test tube, there needs to be both oxygen and no oxygen at the same time. Many times origin of life scientists assume that the early earth had no oxygen on it, but there is geologic evidence that disputes that. Scxientists look for two types of rock, pyrite and hematite. Both these rocks contain iron. Hematite is mad when oxygen is present, pyrite is made when oxygen is not present. When oxygen is added to the hematite at creation, it turns the rock red from the iron oxidizing. Scientists have found this type of rock in some of the oldest rocks known, that are dated to be precambrian. This shows that there most likely WAS oxygen in Earth’s early atmosphere.
4. The final dilemma  are the ingrediants needed to make amino acids. Formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide,and sugars are used to artificially create amino acids. Even if scientists succeeded in making life it would die instantly from the toxic chemicals!

All of these dilemmas provide great proof that we did not evolve, we were created in the image of the God of the universe!

“Proof” of Evolution

Scientists continue to find “proof” for evolution and the Big Bang because that is what they are looking for. They try to find facts that will support their theory and then twist whatever evidence they have to make it support evolution. One example of this is that they use homologous parts as proof for evolution. This is not a reasonable argument to make in favor of evolution. Men and women both have nipples but this has not led scientists to conclude that men used to breast feed their children. In the same way, two things with similar features does not mean they were once used for the same purpose or that they had a common ancestor. Yet, they still use homologous parts to prove evolution. They say that because whales have bones in their fins that resemble limbs, then that must mean they must have had limbs earlier on. Unless you were trying to find proof for evolution, all you would determine from this is that whale’s fins are similarly designed as that of limbs.

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The Impossibilites of Evolution

Not only is there not any real proof of evolution or the Big Bang, both of them are impossible. The Big Bang Theory involves a massive explosion of gases that created everything we once have (prior to evolution). There are two problems with this theory. The first is this: where did those gases that were part of the explosion come from? Without a God creating them the only possible answer is spontaneous generation or an eternal universe. The idea of an eternal universe is much like what Christians believe about God, that it has always been around. An eternal universe is not possible because the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics tells us that usable energy is constantly being turned into non-usable energy. This means two things: 1) There was a point in time when all the energy was usable and 2) Eventually all the usable energy will be used up. So the universe cannot be eternal or we would have a never ending supply of energy and if it was eternal then all the energy would have been used up sometime in the infinite past and would have resulted in “heat death”. So, the only possible solution is spontaneous generation and this has never been observed and pretty much proven impossible. The next problem with The Big Bang Theory is that after the explosion there was more mass, matter, and energy than before the explosion. The problem here is that the Laws of Conservation tell us that neither mass, matter, or energy can ever be lost or gained. The Big Bang Theory violates all three of these laws and is therefore impossible.

Evolution is also impossible once you hit a certain point. We all know that Micro-Evolution or Natural Selection is a truth of nature. We can observe animals changing and adapting on a small scale, but at a certain point evolution can go no further. Our DNA encodes for each and every characteristic we have. Random mutations and differences in our DNA are what causes us to have different characteristics. While these mutations can result in some pretty drastic changes, they have never been observed to result in completely new characteristics. Without the DNA for feathers then there is no mutation that could result in feathers. Without the DNA for scales there is no mutation that could result in scales. Without the DNA for gills there is no mutation that could result in gills. If there were mutations that could result in these things we would see diseases where non-feathered things grew feathers, non-scaled organisms grew scales, etc. Evolutionists might fight back and say that these are a result of many small changes over time, but how can you sort of have feathers, sort of have eyes, sort of have scales? Furthermore, we have never seen non-intelligent things become intelligent. What sort of change in DNA could cause something to think? It has never been seen and never will be seen because such a mutation is not possible. Non-living things will never become intelligent or living no matter how much time you give them. Evolution on a large scale, or Macro-Evolution has not only never been observed, it isn’t even possible.

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Many atheists have told me that they would happily look into a theory that was better than the one already put in place. As shown there are many flaws with the current theory, but none for Intelligent Design, so why isn’t it looked in to? Why is the current theory taught as fact if ID has no flaws, but Evolution and the Big Bang do? I think it’s time that ID gets some more respect among scientists and is at least looked into.

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Haeckel produced illustrations that people could take in and understand, images that glowed with color and brought the exotic and remote in to the libraries of the world.  Really, there had not been anything like these extraordinary prints before.  They were the culmination of decades of works for Haeckel, a contemporary of Darwin and he did much to popularize the work of the English naturalist although their ideas did diverge at several important points, as we shall later discover.  The above is the 89th plate from Art Forms of Nature and shows a variety of turtle species.  From the Leatherback at the top left to the Common Snapping Turtle (bottom right), Haeckel captures them marvelously.  This was no attempt at photorealism, however.  Note how sea and land (seamlessly) merge in the picture.  His images, did, however, encapsulate his sense of order.

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They still look like something out of a science fiction novel, so imagine how they must have seemed to their late Victorian audience.  The central medusa is Desmonema annasethe which was first categorized by the man himself.  It was named after his wife, Anna Sethe, who had died the previous year.  A mistake commonly held is that Darwin’s tome, The Origin of the Species was massively illustrated. In fact it was not a work of popular science, it was a technical book.  Although the sales belied the fact, many if not most people would have been immediately confused by much of Darwin’s language.  In fact he was the Steven Hawking of his day.  Many people bought The Origin of the Species, much as a century later they would buy A Brief History of Time.  Few would get to the end of either. 

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Haeckel looked at the Origin of the Species and realized that it would not be completely understood by the literate class.  Origin was hugely difficult, plus it was long and had only few illustrations.   So in 1868 he published Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (published in English as The History of Creation).  It was a hugely provocative title for the time (Haeckel was not an ingénue, he knew this) and it was massively successful, being reprinted many times over the next few decades.  Art Forms of Nature, from which the print of spiders above is taken, would be the pinnacle of his attempts to marry art and science.

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There was a method behind the choices that Haeckel used for publication.  His world view – politically as well as naturally – was one of order, organization and symmetry.  The subjects of each lithographic plate were carefully selected so that they would encapsulate the organization of organisms – with symmetry of paramount importance.  Each image of each plate was carefully arranged to maximize their visual impact and to drive home Haeckel’s world view.  The above made up the first plate of the second volume of Art Forms of Nature and shows radiolarians – classified as Discoidea.  They would help promote and encourage one of the fads of the time – that of parlor microscopy.  Although his art is somewhat exaggerated there is no denying its beauty.

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We have the advantage of television and video, where the wings of these hummingbirds can be slowed down to a fraction of their normal speed.  Of course in the early twentieth century no such technology existed but the lithos of Haeckel enabled people to see the exquisite creatures in flight – and without the necessity of visiting them in taxidermic form in museums.  It is no surprise, then, to learn that a large amount of art nouveau artists and architects found his work inspirational.  His influence can be seen in the works of the likes of Hans Christiansen, Karl Blossfeldt and Hendrik Petrus Berlage. 

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As in his art, so in life.  This carefully composed photograph shows Haeckel (left) and his then assistant Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai in the Canaries in 1866 when he was thirty two years of age.  He was no stay at home biologist and naturalist.  Throughout his length career he discovered several thousand new species.  He also coined many biological terms that we use today, the most notable being the word ecology. 

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A variety of moss species, then classified as Muscinae.  We now classify them as Bryophyta which includes not only mosses but hornworts and liverworts as well.  This was the seventy fourth plate in the Art Forms of Nature series.  During his career Haeckel produced over a thousand engravings based on the watercolors and sketches he had made on his travels.  Of these one hundred of the best were put together to create the ten volumes of Art Forms of Nature.  The first volume came out in 1899 and the final in 1904 (when they also became available as a complete work).  Many of the organisms included in the tome were first described and classified by Haeckel himself.  It must be noted here the contribution of Adolf Gilitsch, the lithographer who translated them from sketch to print.

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The forty ninth plate shows a variety of sea anemones.  Although his accomplishments as an artist cannot be denied – and many of his ideas are important to (at least the history of) evolutionary theories there are several large and outstanding buts.  Some of his ideas around microorganisms that led to humanity have been disproved.  He also took some rather large leaps in the dark, albeit leaps available from evidence which existed at the time.  He sent a pair of his students to Indonesia on a wild goose chase, in pursuit of the human ancestor (no remains of which had then been found) that he has decided would be found there.  Needless to say it wasn’t.  Somewhat more frightening was his belief in the superiority of some types of human over others.

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A depiction of a variety of lizards makes up the seventy ninth lithograph.  The eight lizards pictured were chosen to demonstrate the diverse examples extant in the Lacertilia suborder.  Some of the colors and certainly the spatial composition of the print are an aesthetic choice much more than a true reproduction of nature.  The chameleon in the top is shown in comparison to the flying dragon and Texas Horned Lizard of the second.  We have the Flying Gecko on the third and on the bottom the Thorny Devil.  In the little more than a hundred years since this print was produced the suborder here has been replaced by a bewildering array of new infraorders and suborders.

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The seventy fourth plate shows a variety of orchids, resplendent when shown all together and showing the huge variety of the species in just a few examples.  Although a huge supporter of Darwin, Haeckel did not believe in Natural Selection.  Instead he believed in Lamarckism.  Put simply this is the belief that the efforts of an individual organism during its lifetime in terms of acquired characteristics can be passed on biologically to its offspring.  Otherwise known as soft inheritance, this theory has been abandoned now but it is still of some use.  Certainly, an examination of the evolution of human ideas and cultures could be placed within the idea boundaries of Lamarcksim and it is in fact related to memetics – the study of self-replicating units of culture.

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Frogs classified as Batrachia make up plate number sixty eight.  Top left can be seen the pouch frog of Venezuela.  The females have a back pouch in which the eggs develop until they are ready to hatch as tadpoles.  Also shown is the Flying Frog of Borneo – the one leaping through mid air, with its widened foot webbings.  These webbings are used as a form of parachute which enables the frog to leap from tree to tree without falling from the canopy.

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Segmented worms!  Haeckel would also be proved wrong in his ideas about the evolution of man.  He took a linguistic approach which he then developed in to a multi-regional hypothesis that various species of Homo sapiens had evolved in isolation of each other.  This was very much against Darwin’s Out of Africa theory and remained very much the main competition until the 1990s.  Darwin’s theory has been shown to be correct since the human genome was finally deciphered.

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Ascidiacea or as we know them more commonly, sea squirts, is the eighty fifth plate and the black background contrasts beautifully with the colors of the squirts.  Although many of his theories were disproved Haeckel did show prescience in another field – modern history.  He was the first person to use the term First World War.  In a letter to a newspaper he wrote “There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared “European War”…will become the first world war in the full sense of the word”.  This was in September 1914. 

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Although he made many mistakes which to our modern sensibilities are somewhat shocking, Haeckel was very much of his own time.  He will probably in the future be remembered more for his exquisite representation of life on earth and his ability to transport people from the comfort of their homes to see places and lives unimagined.

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Daoist philosophy and modern science are very different at first glance and come from two very different backgrounds. I will set out to describe how similar they are and how the two systems can be used to encourage the other to push forward with their methods to find a flourishing life for us all. Both of these systems of understanding view and look to explain what they consider to be natural processes to find the answers they need. There are differences in their world views but in this, they can both be viewed to have important knowledge to lead to a flourishing life. They both look for knowledge in different methods and move to use that knowledge in different ways yet even with this their discoveries can both benefit each other. It is in this way that the complex systems that both study lead us to see how their systems interact with each other and how they can make great bounds by working together.

When first learning about Daoism, the process of yinyang is necessary to understand all the other theories behind Daoism. Yinyang is a cycle between, not opposites, but complementary contrasts such as good and bad, night and day. The cycle of yinyang is a circular process which is continuous. Science, on the other hand, looks at a linear progression through time as things change and evolve. For science, each thing stands on its own and is the same or different, not comparative and relying on other things to compare it to. This is not always the case but in the example of day and night some scientific studies do not take into account the changing of the light but only the fact that there is or is not light. This is done to look at specifics of things such as plants which are affected by light but, as far as my knowledge is, not how they are affected by changing light. Scientists do accept that there is a slow change from day to night but in many cases they do not think it is significant to them. In these ways science is still consistent in not always seeing a gradual cycle, a concept very important to Daoism.

Chang, or consistency, is best described as a ‘continuous repetition of the cycle and paths of natural processes.’ The cycle of yinyang shows a repetitive cycle which holds true to Chang and is the basis of the concept. The majority of scientists hold that there is a linear progression, as previously mentioned. This is not a cycle but there are repetitive process which holds a course forward. There are then multiple processes occurring multiple times to continue the forward progression, not one of returning. The Daoist cycle of yinyang is consistently returning, fan and in doing so forms a cycle. If scientists looked at this, they could observe that they are following the cycle but that they have no way to know when the cycle will begin again. For all that we know the known length of humans and this earth may have just been one revolution so far. This would allow for how both Daoists and many scientists look at the worldly progression to be acceptable to the other.  

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Both modern science and Daoists look to solve their problems through observing nature. The largest difference between the two is their method. Science is defined as being tentative, testable, falsifiable, repeatable, based on physical reality, and it can be explained by the five senses. Using these ideas scientists start by observing their surroundings and making a guess at what could explain what they have observed. This is then tested through changing specific parts of the environment of the observation to see how that effects the observation. From the results of this a new observation is made and the process is continued. Scientists are then manipulating and changing nature to understand its basic qualities and Daoists look to observe nature in its natural state with out putting it into circumstances which it would otherwise not be in. Through manipulation, science sometimes looks to find out how things work without interactions, with other systems. This is not how nature always works and it is necessary to also study the interactions of organisms or we cannot see them acting naturally.

Scientists do see that there are many systems, all interacting with each other to make each one work naturally, in nature, though they are not always testing this. There are some instances such in genetic studies where test organisms are given minimal media to live off of, not things they would normally live on or eat to sustain them which is quite unnatural. Ziran, or naturally, is how nature is and in this way Daoists study nature. Daoists have a different approach then many scientists, by looking at natural things in their natural environment with out changing the situation, one can observe things acting naturally. Everything’s ziran is considered to not be a fixed path but more of the natural instincts associated with everything’s inner nature. By understanding other natural paths Daoists believe that we may be able to discover our natural path and, by following it, find a flourishing life.

Both modern society and Daoists look to find a way for a flourishing life though they each have different ideas of what this is. In our modern society we are all looking to live happy lives, whatever this may mean for each of us. Modern science can help with this by keeping us healthy and by enriching our lives with technology among many things. These may allow us to be happier but they are not always natural and from a Daoist perspective, and may lead us away from leading a flourishing life. Daoists believe that ziran is the way to a flourishing life but this is not all that is needed. According to Daoists, in society now we are not living naturally at all and it is necessary that we return, following the yinyang cycle, to nature and escape the human constructs of society. It may not be possible to return to nature completely but it is the act of returning and becoming more natural that is most important to Daoists to live a more flourishing life. The important thing to then look at is how to bring science along with this returning to nature.

In returning to nature Daoists succeed in their mission, but brining flourishing for science is not as easily done. Scientist are trying to move forward by adding their gained knowledge to nature and allowing us to evolve as a society and species so that we can gain the happiness that is desired. This is done through adding technology and other things we take for granted. A Daoist does not believe this is advantageous but that instead of adding to society one must be like pu, the uncarved block. This is because pu is purely natural and has nothing added to it making it unchanged. Daoism says that this is how all should be, natural and unchanged by the world around us, allowing us to flow through the time of this world without letting society move us into an unnatural realm, where the Daoist believe our society currently is. It could be argued that, as our society starts looking to traditional healing techniques and turns to Chinese medicine we are looking for ways to help our society return to nature. Chinese medicine is based off the Daoist principles of yinyang, jing (essence), qi (energy), shen (spirit) and returning to nature (Reid).  Incorporating this system of medicine, which is accepted by Daoists as being natural, may encourage our society to start to return to become more natural, and perhaps live a more flourishing life bringing science as our society starts to return to nature.

Even with all the problems Daoists have with society science does not delve into the problems with society, but only problems society may have with the ideas they come up with, such as moral issues. Science pushes society to accept new ideas which are not commonly accepted. As religion and philosophy are much more traditional, science is a relatively new frontier for thinkers. In some ways science will, after a time, homogenize our society, making everyone think similarly by trying to disprove everything science does not accept. For Daoists they would not want everything being the same rather each of these different things should follow their natural path of what is right for them, regardless of others paths, not being homogenized. To be even more natural Daoists look to embody nature, as embodiment is the natural mode of learning. This way they believe they can solve the problems society has brought while still incorporating natural processes discovered by science. At the same time this will allow Daoists to maintain religion and philosophy, keeping traditional societies which profit the returning to nature, being they were from older societies which frequently were more connected to nature and lived more naturally.

Daoist philosophy does have other benefits over science other than keeping with tradition and nature. The Daoist that looks beyond science is capable of looking at the universe as a whole and determining that we are part of something larger, a system which is consistently rotating, changing, and yet because of this is always the same. This interacting complexity of systems is understood as such by scientists as well. For a Daoist to describe this it requires the understanding of natural processes as the bare minimal for life to continue. Scientists though have ‘made a science out of it’ and have looked a microscopic level to discover the specific minerals required for life of many organisms. Though this is clearly unnatural because by looking at this minimal media needed for life of scientist they miss the larger picture which, oddly enough, includes society and interactions, both with other organisms and the abiotic, non-living environment. Some times these are considered but frequently these can be overlooked as unimportant. For instance a scientist may not see the importance of a tree for casual shade for an animal though a Daoists would see that it is natural for the animal to casually wander, frequently under a tree. Walking under a tree maybe the animal’s natural tendency, being an important experience to the animal, making it natural and with out this it tendency being in the sun too long may be harmful, a fact that my easily be over looked by scientists. Science could understand this through testable methods though this may frequently be an observation that would be overlooked as unimportant and scientists then may remove the tree to study the animal without realizing how the tree itself is vital to the nature of the animal.

            When we then go back to look at this through a human perspective of how we should live, Daoists believe that we should live as the animals we are, naturally. Science on the other hand sees ‘nature red toothed and claw’ (Darwin) which for all animals shows that nature is naturally violent and is in constant flux with an arms race, so to say, to be the strongest. Scientists say that this is how humans naturally are as well though from this definition of being natural, one could conclude that as a society we are being natural for humans, seeking power as a society, frequently through violent acts so that we can obtain the basic necessities of life, food, shelter, and water. However, this is not how Daoists interpret living naturally for humans and they do not accept the natural state of nature which Darwin puts forth. Unlike other animals Daoists believe we have become civilized and, having this in our thinking, it would be hard to return to being with out it. Being natural for Daoists is living like the animals we are, which are humans, with civilization, yet by removing the things of society that have corrupted civilization, such as technology which is unnatural. It is natural for us to maintain civilization as we are a ‘pack animal’ from the scientific standpoint which allows us to maintain interactions with each other and maintain traditions associated with out interactions. This method would maintain both a Daoist and scientific perspective.

In moving to attain a system that both Daoists and scientists would accept it is easy to maintain the movement of yinyang through a slight alteration of interpretation. Science sees gradual change over time, such as evolution. Daoists can see this as an uphill returning like fan in the yinyang cycle creating a spiral shape rather than a circle. This causes a constant returning yet at the same time we are allowed to move forward for science, or backwards in the returning to nature. These cycles are very long periods of time and science has accepted that there are long cycles such as global temperature flux, showing how global warming, to an extent, is a natural process, following the yinyang cycle. Daoists see this as natural but a portion of global warming is not natural and is caused by our society and can be fixed by returning to nature. This would allow us to be part of the natural flux, such as the natural temperature flux, which is in a way, a patterned chaos.

There are many examples of patterned chaos which are in our society, frequently being excellent examples of the yinyang cycle which, as being described above, is accepted by both scientists and Daoists. For example, walking is a patterned chaos as one steps off balance and then falls forward, catching oneself with the other leg. By seeing how there is balance and unbalance we see how naturally there are fluxuations in nature which moves forward by the start of an unbalance. It could then be concluded, with the unbalance we currently have in our society that this is the beginning of moving towards a returning to yinyang.

With all of the differences of scientists and Daoists there are still things that they can each mutually benefit from by working together. Assuming that there is movement and we are in a cycle of returning, both Daoists and scientists can use their own methods to move in the direction they require living a flourishing life with out conflict. The different methods may be essentially the difference between Daoists and scientists but if they both continue on their own paths, their discoveries and insights into society and culture can benefit both of them to widen their views and find a flourishing life for all.

Works Cited

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1964.

Reid, Daniel. The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing. Boston, Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1995.

Ear Muscles

All of us have the ability to wiggle our ears, although some us aren’t very good at it. What purpose does the human body have in being able to wiggle the ears? Rabbits and dogs have these same ear muscles and are able to move just their ears without moving their whole head. Was this ability once useful to our ancestors in the evolutionary timeline or did god design them just get give our kids a giggle out of wiggly bits?

Subclaveus Muscle

Some people have a muscle extending from their rib to their collarbone. Not everybody has this muscle and some people only have it only on one side. This muscle would give us an advantage if we walked around on all fours like monkeys. Perhaps a throwback to our early ancestor? Perhaps the reason not everyone has these muscles is evolutions way of phasing them out?

The Appendix

The latest research suggests that when we ate a diet of mainly vegetables we used our appendix to help us to digest cellulose. Now that our diet contains more than simple vegetation the appendix serves no purpose and it simply stopped functioning. The appendix is open at one end but closed at the other and often gets blocked, swells and can burst causing death. The only way to prevent fatal illness is to have it removed.

Hair

Armpit hair, pubic hair, nasal hair, head hair, hair on your big toe, hair on your legs, hair, hair everywhere and no point to any of it. OK the hair on your head makes you look nice and some women like a man with facial hair. Nobody likes a woman with facial hair and many people of both sexes engage in regular hair removal. The only hair that might be useful is bushy eyebrow hair as it helps keep sweat out of your eyes. Maybe a monobrow will be all that is left of human hair in the future?

Coccyx

The coccyx is located at the base of the spine and appears to be what is left of a tail. You might not need it any more but if you bruise it, fall on it or damage it in any way you really will wish you hadn’t got it. During embryonic development we do actually form a tail but it eventually shrinks as the vertebrae reduces. Sometimes a baby will be born with a tail and have to undergo surgery to have it removed.

Extra Neck Rib or Thirteenth Rib

I knew someone with an extra neck rib. It serves no purpose but can cut off blood supply to the arms and hands and can cause nerve problems. Some people have an extra rib at the bottom that serves no purpose. Chimps and Gorrillas have thirteen as standard but only around eight percent of humans have the extra.

Junk DNA

We have a whole load of DNA that seems to serve no actual purpose. Well OK it may serve a purpose but at present it seems that it’s leftover DNA that we no longer need but still hangs around. The scientific jury is still out on this one.

A Note on Vestigial Organs

A vestigial organ is one that has been left behind. This does not neccesarily mean that these organs do not serve a function just that they do not serve their original purpose. Some of the things mentioned above are described as vestigial organs and some have argued that as they serve a purpose now they were most probably designed that way. Others have the view that their original purpose can be traced back to an earlier period in human development.

So which is it? God’s mind or evolutionary process or both? You decide.

The Conceptual View of Nature

To assume that nature has a direct relationship with the depth of a human being’s soul goes back all the way to Socrates when he was on trial for heresy and corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens.  Socrates states to the court that “they shouldn’t be concerned with their families, careers, and political responsibilities when they ought to be worried about the “welfare of their souls.”

This philosophical view of nature can still be found today. It implies “a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the latter being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind.”

Geology of Nature

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Matter and Energy

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With the various uses of the word “nature”, many assume that the general term is associated with the environment and the animals that inhabit it. I believe it is a relation of the things that exist and whom can change their immediate sense of being. Such beings exist in Science in accordance with matter and energy and the Earth, meaning the weather and the geology of the universe. The values of these Scientific constants have been carefully measured, but the reason for their specific values remains a mystery.

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Many scientists, who study nature in more precise and structured ways, also share the conviction that nature is beautiful; the French mathematician, Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) said:

“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty which strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and of appearance; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp.”

“The Happening”

When I viewed the movie “The Happening”, I was perplexed that a random occurrence of nature could affect the entire state of this earth. It was as though the trees and the wind were watching our every move, calculating when we would make a change.

The same happenings are occurring in Outer space. There are no boundaries that separate the Earth’s atmosphere and space, as “the atmosphere gradually attenuates with increasing altitude.”

The moral of this philosophical rant is that we should be aware of our natural surroundings. This is not an effort to go green but, a scientific reaction to the world itself and the nature that surrounds us all.

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Some alchemy was practiced in China and India before the birth of Christ. But it developed into a major system in Egypt during the next 300 years. The Greek-speaking scholars of Alexandria used it in trying to explain how Egyptian artisans made things. Greek-Egyptian alchemy spread through Syria and Persia to the Arabs. It spread to Western Europe during the 1100’s and 1200’s.

Alchemists drew their theories of matter from the ancient Greeks. They believed that all matter was made up of a single, formless substance. Alchemists thought this substance became the four elements–earth, air, fire, and water–when combined with hot or cold and wet or dry. They thought they could change one substance into another merely by changing the balance of these elements, a process called transmutation. This theory led them to try producing gold from other metals. In the early 1500’s, Swiss scientist Paracelsus tried to substitute sulfur, mercury, and salt for earth, air, fire, and water. Alchemists also searched for the philosopher’s stone (a magical substance that was supposedly able to make the transmutation process easier).

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Gold’s lasting quality led many persons to believe that they would find the secret of long life or even immortality if they could discover how to make gold from lesser substances. The Chinese once believed that eating from golden dishes prolonged life.

Alchemy was associated with many religious beliefs. It was believed that the techniques used to make gold were symbolically related to death, corruption, regeneration, and resurrection. Alchemy and astrology became closely related because of the belief that each heavenly body represented and controlled a certain metal. Some thought the sun represented gold; the moon, silver; Mars, iron; Venus, copper; Jupiter, tin; Saturn, lead; and Mercury, the metal mercury, also called quicksilver. Alchemists believed that the positions of these bodies influenced the success or failure of their work.

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