It’s all about chemistry

Well, chemistry plus the external influences of light - the whole spectrum, not just the visible bit - and electro-magnetic radiation.

The world, that is. And everything going on in and around it.

But the language we use to describe what is happening around us is all wrong. And that is boxing in our way of thinking, and perhaps our ability to correctly perceive and discover.

As sentient beings, it’s hard for us to avoid thinking of and describing living things, inanimate objects and even processes in terms that closely mirror our own behaviours.

But the reality is that almost everything going on around us is not occurring because a being or a bacterium or a cell makes a conscious choice to do so.

It happens because molecules bouncing around the place happen to bounce into other molecules in such a way as to trigger a chemical reaction - a bonding, a separation, or a recombination. Whatever the process, the outcome is new molecules. And if there are enough such reactions, then interesting things happen.

But that’s not how we describe it.
Take a virus like Ebola, for instance. We talk about how Ebola is an ‘aggressive’ virus that ‘attacks’ the strong and weak alike, ‘reproducing rapidly and killing its host’ and ‘spreading’ easily to create epidemics. Evocative words indeed, creating an impression of a malevolent and sentient lifeform with the sole purpose of hunting out and slaughtering helpless victims.

But a virus is not even alive. It is merely an assemblage of molecules, including a partial DNA or RNA string. Rather than ‘spreading’, it is transferred from one living being to another either through direct contact or airborne. In a living host there is an abundance of molecules with which the virus will easily react. And the product of those reactions is more duplicates of the original virus molecules. The duplication leads to a classic exponential growth scenario - bad news for the host.

But at no point was the Ebola thinking to itself ‘Yum - this guy’s been a super meal, but now he’s carked it, it’s time I spread my babies over to that new person. Today this African village, tomorrow the world. Muhahahah!’

And so it is with so many other things. The single-cell amoeba doesn’t knowingly hunt other cells, but if it happens to bump into one, odds are it will absorb it, divide and make another cute little amoeba. The sunflower doesn’t knowingly turn to follow the sun. And even within our own bodies, we are just a great big mass of chemical reactions chugging away. Our white blood cells aren’t patrolling our bodies hunting out alien intruders. They are simply contained in a medium with which they have nothing to react. Only when there’s something that doesn’t belong will any white blood cells that happen along and bump into the alien matter set off a reaction that leaves a relatively inert material, which then gets carried off and filtered out by the kidneys or other relevant organs.

So maybe our scientists and writers need a rethink about the terminology they use. Because words can shape our thoughts and there’s a chance that incorrect words could be misdirecting thinking.

UPDATE: just a couple fo days after writing this post, the following appeared in the Canberra Times:

This is a classic example of the issue. To imply that plants could 'punish' 'cheating' wasps is just silly.