Well, back at it again with too long off in between. This is going to be a rant post rather than a plant post but I’m sure we can all handle. Well, not exactly a rant more of a rave.
Anyway, had two friend from Hawaii come and visit last week. Was really good to see them. I met them on the big island and ended up staying with them for about three weeks. It was great to see them in Darwin and have a bit of an ethnobotany holidy.
But before that could take place I had to fix my car. The 84 landcruiser I bought got a crack in the radiator and the engine cooked. I was too poor to pay the mechanics and needed the car for the trip so I got a manual and some tools and took it all apart and put it all back together with new working pieces. Took me a whole week and I was covered in grease and petro-chemicals but I fixed it and its running like a dream. It made me think alot about how lots of things are analogous but we only understand one however if we can relate the system we understand to another it makes sense. I understand (supposedly) how plants work and now how cars work and there are more similarities than you would think. Both need power, both need to be cooled properly, both need the right inputs to get the correct outputs. It reminded me of something I read somewhere about how much the mechanics of nature contributes and influences our perception of how nature works. Enables us to get an understanding about the mechanics of the natural world. But as always, our understanding is only as good as our models and so we view the natural world in an industrial mechanical sense and miss the sight of the less mechanical workings of the world. The industrial model is still useful but it is incomplete. Because we didn’t make the natural world, we can’t comprehend it like a system we built.
Well, I’ve wasted the day so the report on the holiday and such will have to wait.
PG
