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FLOWING BALANCE |
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By R. Le Lievre
"Altogether, we should be clear that the whole domain of agriculture represents an individuality, a living organism (Steiner, 1924, p34)."
"The entities occurring in Nature (minerals, plants, animals) are frequently studied as though they stood there all alone... Nowadays, one generally considers a single plant by itself. Then from the single plant, one proceeds to consider a plant-species by itself; and other plant-species beside it. So it is all prettily pigeon-holed into species and genera, and all the rest that we are then supposed to know. Yet in Nature it is not so at all. In Nature- and, indeed, throughout the universal being all things are in mutual interaction; the one is always influencing the other (Steiner, 1924, p125).”
Through interaction with the environment living organisms continually maintain and renew themselves, using energy and matter from the environment for this purpose. Matter and energy continually flow through living organisms, but the organism maintains a stable form. This is the paradox of the living system: the co-existence of structure and change, continual flow and structural stability.
To highlight the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of change and stability, the Russian scientist and Nobel laureate, Ilya Prigogine coined the term dissipative structures. Not all dissipative structures are living systems ( a flame, whirlpool, cyclone), although all living systems are dissipative structures.
The simplest living system we know is the cell. A typical plant cell consists of a cell membrane which encloses the cell fluid. The fluid contains the chemical elements out of which the cell builds its structures. Suspended in the cell fluid is the cell nucleus and a number of organelles, which are analogous to body organs. Like the cell as a whole, the nucleus and organelles are surrounded by semi-permeable membranes that select what comes in and what goes out.
Some of the organelles contain their own genetic material and replicate independently of the replication of the cell, while living in symbiosis with the cell. Chloroplast are an organelle found only in green plants and are an example of an organelle that contains its own genetic material and self-reproduces. Chloroplast are the centers for photosynthesis, transforming solar energy, carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen.
The cell membrane is the boundary of the cell, formed by some of the cell’s components, which encloses the network of metabolic processes and thus limits their extension. At the same time, the membrane participates in the network by selecting the raw materials for the production processes ( the cell’s food) through special filters and by dissipating waste into the outside environment. Thus the cell’s network creates its own boundary, which defines the cell as a distinct system while being an active part of the network.
To give a rough idea of cellular organization, the description of the cell’s components would have to be quite elaborate, and the complexity would increase with a description of how these cell components are interlinked in a vast network, involving thousands of metabolic processes. Yet this is the simplest living system we know!
Since all components of the cellular network are produced by other components in the network, the entire system is organizationally closed, while being open with regard to the flow of energy and matter. This organizational closure implies that a living system is self-organizing in the sense that its order and behaviour are not imposed by the environment but are established by the system itself. To say the system is autonomous does not imply that it is isolated from its environment.
The term “open systems” is applied to living structures to emphasize their dependence on continual flows of energy and resources. Ecologists picture ecosystems in terms of flow diagrams, mapping out pathways of energy and matter in various food webs. Being open systems, all organisms in an ecosystem produce wastes, but what is waste for one species is food for another, so that wastes are continually recycled and the ecosystem as a whole generally remains without waste.
Green plants play a vital role in the flow through all ecological cycles. Their roots take in water and mineral salts from the earth, and the resulting juices rise up to the leaves, where they combine with carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air to form sugars and other organic compounds.(These include cellulose, the main structural element of cell walls.) In this process, known as photosynthesis, solar energy is converted into chemical energy and bound in organic substances, while oxygen is released into the air to be taken up again by other organisms, in the process of respiration.
By blending water and minerals from below with sunlight and CO2 from above, green plants link the earth with the sky. We tend to believe that plants grow out of the soil, but in fact most of their substance comes from the air. The bulk of the cellulose and other organic compounds produced through photosynthesis consist of heavy carbon and oxygen atoms, which plants take directly from the air in the form of CO2. Thus the weight of a wooden log comes entirely from the air. When we burn a log in the fireplace, oxygen and carbon combine once more into CO2 , and in the light and heat of the fire we recover part of the solar energy that went into making the wood.
As plants are eaten by animals, which in turn are eaten by other animals, the plants’ nutrients are passed on through the food web, while energy is dissipated as heat through respiration and as waste through excretion. The wastes as well as dead animals and plants, are decomposed by various organisms (insects and bacteria), which break them down into basic nutrients, to be taken once more by green plants. In this way nutrients and other basic elements continually cycle through the ecosystem, while energy is dissipated at each stage. The only waste generated by the ecosystem as a whole is the heat energy of respiration, which is radiated into the atmosphere and is replenished continually by the sun through photosynthesis.
Wherever we see life, from bacteria to large-scale ecosystems, we observe networks with components that interact with one another in such a way that the entire network regulates and organizes itself. The central characteristic of a living system is that it undergoes continual structural changes while preserving its pattern of organization. The components of the network continually produce and transform one another. Every living organism continually renews itself, cells breaking down and building up structures, tissues and organs replacing their cells in continual cycles. In spite of this ongoing change, the organism maintains its overall identity, or pattern of organization, and does so autonomously through self- organization.
Although living systems are autonomous, in that they are self-organizing, no living system is independent. Independence is a political abstraction. It has no place in Life. Exchange characterizes Life: respiration is the symptom of Life. As living organisms we will continue to exist only so long as the next breath is received. The atmosphere is more vital to our organism than our big toe, for we may continue to exist without our big toe, but we cannot exist without the next breath.
"Again and again I say, everything, EVERYTHING, is interconnected (Steiner)."
"In the late 20th century, physicists began to realize that the relationships and interactions among creatures, cells and photons were as important to an understanding of the whole they formed as is an analysis of their parts- the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. A human being, for example, is not just an individual. Each one of us is actually a community of organisms... And just as we are an aggregate number of organs, all life forms within the biosphere can be thought of as making up a kind of super-organism... Collectively, the individuals within a species, as well as the numerous species and the many different ecosystems on the earth itself, have the properties of a self -regulating entity (Suzuki, 1999, p17)."
"From much that you have made your own of spiritual science it will have become clear to you that our entire earth, which we as whole humanity inhabit, is a kind of great living being, and that we ourselves are included as members within this great living being. Just as it is a truth, though a superficial one, that humanity is a single whole.
"In various lectures I have spoken about particular living phenomena of this being, our earth. In the most manifold ways is the life of the earth expressed. Such things in a broad way call our attention to the connections between the mighty organism of the earth and its separate members, its particular inhabitants (Steiner, 1918)."
CONCLUSION
Post modern science has recognized the phenomenon of self- organization, although speculation about the principle inclines to be constrained by empiricism. What has become obvious is that intelligence is not simply a product of the human brain, but rather, is inherent in living systems – in Nature. The sheer complexity of a single cell, a single organism; an ecosystem; the planetary system! Every organism, every cell of every organism, manifests an inherent intelligence in the phenomenon of its self-organization.
"Where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and co-ordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a unity: it has rallied confusion into co-operation: it has made the sum one harmonious coherence: for the Idea is a unity and what it moulds must come to unity as far as multiplicity may.
"We turn to move down again in continuous division: we see unity fissuring, as it reaches out into universality, and yet embracing all in one system so that with all its differentiation and conflict it is one multiple living thing- an organism in which each member executes the function of its own nature while having its being in the One Life.
"The souls are in harmony with each other and so, too, are their acts and effects; but it is harmony in the sense of a resultant unity built out of contraries. All things, as they rise from Unity, come back to Unity by a sheer need of nature; differences unfold themselves, contraries are produced, but all is drawn into one organic system by the unity at its source (Plotinus, 1991, p 181)."
REFERENCES:
Maturana,H.and Varela,F (1992) The Tree of Knowledge. Boston : Shambala
Plotinus. (1991) The Enneads. Tr. Stephen Mackenna. London : Penguin Classics,
Prigogine,I. & Stengers, I. (1984) Order Out Of Chaos, N.Y. Bantam
Steiner,Rudolf (1993). The Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture. . PA: Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association, Inc.
Steiner, Rudolf. (1918) Passages from two lectures given in Berlin , 30th March and 1st April, 1918
Suzuki, David & Dressel, Holly. (1999) Naked Ape To Superspecies. Toronto : Stoddart Pub. Co.
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Global Interdependence
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By Dr Nicklaus Remer
Over the last 100 to 200 years the earth has suffered large losses of humus on the areas used for farming. In fact the continents had lost much of their forests centuries before this. The clearfelling of forests by one-sided agricultural civilizations has increased the spread of deserts through unbalanced agricultural use. The connection between fertile farmlands and thriving forests is still too often neglected.
As forests and fertile lands vanish, the steady progress of desert formation accelerates. This phenomenon could start a new dawn in the consciousness of humanity. It could illuminate the global interdependence of many factors which contribute to the fertility of the earth in the different continents.
German and particularly Russian scientists started to realize this during the last century. They examined and admired the formation of black earth in the long-grass steppes of southern Russia. It was recognized that the mixed plant cover of the black soils has been crucial to the generation of this type of soil. This plant cover consists of loosely interwoven and shoot producing grasses, legumes, composites and other herbs. In order for this carpet of plants to survive and propagate, insects have to fertilize the flowering plants and stimulate them with their formic acid secretions and exhalations. Under the surface of the soil many types of insects and worms are needed in order to transform the fallen plant remains into durable crumbly humus.
Here the soil scientist faces a global connectedness between soil, plant and animal. It brings to mind the following classic account of an example of behavioural research, dating back to Dr. R.A. Bier. He observed how the blue jay re-seeds areas of thinned out stands of trees in a manner that corresponds to the nature of the forest. This bird takes as many as 15 acorns into his crop and uses his sharp beak to plant them in rows in just the right spots under the loose surface layer. One can even dump large bags of acorns, the blue jay will diligently spread these large quantities and plant them in suitable spots.
Dr R. Bier spent many years observing the blue jays. He came to understand that the blue jay acts according to the spirit of the forest and thus is not active by himself as an individual being but as part of the forests soul, responding to a higher reason.
In the meantime zoology has found many further examples of living creatures working together, ruled by a higher principle. This is best seen in the insect states. In the lives of bees and ants we see differentiated types and subdivisions into different duties, all subject to a higher intelligence which reaches far beyond the individual animal.
The examination of the aqueous microfauna brought about further progress. The paradox of plankton in regards to small water crabs, the daphnias, was observed. When food is in short supply these animals do not fight over the prey but assume different sizes and, thus differentiated, concentrate on plankton of specific size. Here the guiding principle of development is not Darwin ’s “ Battle for Survival” but an orderly separation of niches, a world suffused with reason. The community of different species is subject to a mind which transcends the specific species.
All that reigns above the ground with such wisdom, can also suffuse the microflora and microfauna below ground. Here the organic debris of the carpet of plants can be ingeniously changed into durable crumbly forms of humus by hundreds of types of insects and worms and thousands of fungi and bacteria. The earthworm plays a leading role in the global interplay within the soil. The earthworm is endowed with highest wisdom. It is a wisdom he does not claim for himself. Does he not merely serve as food for others and to fertilize the soil?
When the nitrogen rich alkali-saturated humus acids connect with the siliceous fine granules of the soil, the genuine durability of these particles is assured. Thus starts an endless, manifold opportunity for interchange between roots, humus and soil. This interchange enables the plant to develop the greatest growth with the smallest consumption of mineral substance. When the soil was successfully prepared in this way, the peasant, walking across his ready field, sensed something akin to music in the ground.
The health of our plant life is not determined by a fixed percentage of specific minerals but by the constancy of the proportion between acid and alkali forming agents. It is already thirty years ago that this was pointed out by the great American scientist Firman Bear. Harmonious manuring practices depend, among other things, on soil life which delivers balanced proportions of carbonic acid and nitric acid to the plant. These two substances are crucial to the formation of carbohydrate and protein. The plant can handle all other substances very economically. Genuine humus conditions must therefore be created.
Breathing is the prerequisite for permanent fertility of the soil. This process of breathing is the basis for the development of a skin in the organism of the soil. The uppermost layer of soil must be kept alive enough to regulate the breathing of the soil. Breathing consists of an interchange of gas, light and warmth following the laws of life.
These observations are able to serve a basic change of overly narrow concepts held until now. When it comes to fertility of the earth, recipes are not enough. Without a grasp of the nature of domestic animals and of the plant it is not possible to have the right ideas. This understanding alone allows people to not act blindly, following a recipe, but intuitively and independently, out of connectedness to the work. We become culturally creative. We combine knowledge of the world and of self and gain self confidence in true knowledge of humanity and world wisdom. Man must take the incentives to work from the spirit and must ever add to his own education.
Extract: Chapter One
Remer, N. (1996) Organic Manure. NY Mercury Press
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Contents |
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1. Flowing Balance
2.Global Interdependence
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