Cosmos

Last week Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician, meteorologist and pioneer of chaos theory died. He was the inventor of the “butterfly effect”, the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could cause tornadoes in Texas. This order-to-chaos interests me, and it has been coined with the term chaordic. Today in my collection of humor mail from a friend, I received a modern day realplayer video of the butterfly effect. (I will, with help of my wiki gnome, Tegan, find a way to attach this video to this site or I can email it to you. Contact: bobsyouruncle@nonviolentworm.org). Besides being funny it makes the same point as the original theory, how something very small can have a major impact. This thought came to me today as I was planting some very small salad green seeds in a mound in the garden. The soil the seed is planted in, water, and light all can play roles in how the salad greens grow.

Some of my catholic (universal) friends are into cosmology, the study of the origin of earth and life. They look at cosmology from a religious viewpoint. This subject has always fascinated me since my discovery as a youth of the French Jesuit scientist and mystic Pierre Teihard De Chardin.

The evolution of the universe and life as viewed by science and religions seems to be converging. The lowly creature of the worm seems to play a role in this evolution. The most common worm, the earthworm, evolved on earth 120 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs. Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, wrote extensively about worms and found that worms turn over the top six inches (15 cm) of topsoil every 20 years. Certainly the worm does not fit the profile of “survival of the fittest”, a misreading of evolution. However, worms are adaptable which seems to be key to their long history and key role in evolution.

I wonder if my catholic friends studying cosmology have looked at the central role of the worm in the evolution of the earth, the planet from which we view the cosmos.

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