I love seeing people learn for the first time just how mind-meltingly vast and ancient the arthropods are.
Grasshoppers as a group are around 250 millions years old. To put that in perspective, the first dinosaurs showed up 230 million years ago. Grass is a relative youngster and has only been around for an estimated 66 million years.
So, yes, dinosaurs are also older than grass.
What were grasshoppers (and herbivorous dinosaurs) eating before there was grass to hop on? Get ready for a very not-exciting answer; they were just eating other older plants that were not grass. Plants first took to land around 700 million years ago.
Luckily grasshoppers are not particularly picky about what they will put in their mouth-holes. Some are perfectly happy to dine on meat when it’s available, even the meat of other grasshoppers. The evolutionary pitch for grasshoppers was basically “make a very hungry wood-chipper and then give it legs to throw itself at food”.
Nowadays most grasshopper species do have a preference for grass though, so this reaction is pretty accurate:
The scrupulous 3-dimension world we humans inhabit is in fact biological, not physical, in origin. Its limitations are determined by our specific sensory, motor and mental apparatus and abilities. It only hints at the real world, and while doing so it combines some highly erroneous observations as well. Molluscs and insects and arachnids all have a very different perspective of their environment. We would find discomfort in the world view of an octopus, as we do in the quantum world view.[1][2]
Dimension is a term laymen toss about haphazardly. Mathematicians and physicists have a more precise interpretation concerning dimension. For them, any independent parameter constitutes a separate dimension. But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, what if anything can truly be separate and independent? Those are both relative terms. Nothing that exists is really fully isolate and independent. That is one of the substratal premises from which mandalic geometry evolves: relationships invariably exist. And relationships can always change. Mandalic geometry therefore is a geometry of process - a spacetime geometry, not one of space alone.
For those who created the primal I Ching relationship was considered a fundamental aspect of reality. When they thought of dimension - - - and they did, in their own way - - - relationships were always involved. Flash-forward a few thousand years - quantum mechanics accomplishes much the same with its view of interacting particles in continual motion, ever-changing, and incessantly forging transient effective links with numerous other particles of similar and different type under the influence of various fields of force.
Kant thought that human concepts and categories determine our view of the world and its laws. He held that inborn features of our minds structure our experiences. Since, in his view, mind shapes and structures experience, at some level of representation all human experience shares certain essential operational features. Among these according to Kant are our concepts relating to space and time, integral to all human experience. The same might be said about our concepts of cause and effect.
Kant further asserts that we never have direct experience of things, referred to in his writings as the noumenal world. All we experience is the phenomenal world that is relayed to us by our senses. Kant views noumena as the thing-in-itself or true reality and phenomena as our experience or perception of that thing, filtered through our senses and reasoning. According to Kant science can be applied only to things that can be observed and studied. The entire world of noumena is beyond the scope and reach of science. As an heir to Enlightenment philosophy Kant respects the value of reason but believes the noumenal world to be beyond its scope and reach. So are we fated then never to experience the noumena directly? Not by a long shot. Kant claims the noumena to be accessible but only by intellectual intuition without the aid of reason.[3]
In the world of phenomena nothing is self-existent. Everything exists by virtue of dependence on something else. Point to something, anything at all, that refutes that view and I’ll tell you you’re out of your mind - and in the noumenal world. What, pray tell, are you doing there and how did you get there anyway? If you can clearly communicate the how I may give it a try myself.[4]
[1] The world view granted us by our inherited biologic capacities has been millions of years in the making. Indeed. But that makes it still not a whit truer than had we groped it only yesterday. Evolution seems to have sacrificed a full immersive sense of reality to grant a greater degree of interoperability essential to dealing with vicissitudes of a material world and confer durability within that domain. The quest after true apprehension we feel impelled to pursue is a siren not without danger.
“The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live.” -Nisargadatta Maharaj
[2] Regarding the origin and transformations of the word “scrupulous”:
Scrupulous and its close relative “scruple” (“an ethical consideration”) come from the Latin noun scrupulus, the diminutive of “scrupus.” “Scrupus” refers to a sharp stone, so scrupulus means “small sharp stone.” “Scrupus” retained its literal meaning but eventually also came to be used with the metaphorical meaning “a source of anxiety or uneasiness,” the way a sharp pebble in one’s shoe would be a source of pain. When the adjective “scrupulous” entered the language in the 15th century, it meant “principled.” Now it also commonly means "painstaking" or “careful.” [Source]
Sad to say, this fascinating word that so successfully wended its way through several related incarnations in a number of different Indo-European languages prior to its appearance in English, c.15th century, appears to be passing out of usage among English speakers in modern times. We will likely be left with the occasional utterance of “scruples” but “scrupulous” itself seems destined for oblivion.
Curiously, my election of the word here was not rationally motivated. As I was framing the thought expressed in the paragraph in my mind, the word just appeared out of nowhere and seemed to insist, “I belong here though you may not yet understand why. You really need a word with my complex heritage of multiple meanings here.” And so I went with it, not fully knowing why. Funny thing about it, my rational mind is quite unable now to come up with any other single word that suits as well.
[3] Kant’s epistemology recognizes three different sources of knowlege: sensory experience, reason, and intuition. He views intuition as independent of the other two and the only one of the three with direct access to the world of noumena. This may present as suspect at first, but then how do we explain things like what Einstein did a century ago? Einstein himself has hinted in his writings at the essential role of intuition and imagination in his thinking.
Clickhere for more slides on Kant’s philosophy by William Parkhurst from Introduction to Philosophy Lecture 13, source of the above slide reproduction.
[4] Our human penchant for categorization inevitably leads to dismemberment of holistic reality into an endless number of manifest objects, many of which we no longer recognize as essentially related.
“People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.” -Thích Nhất Hạnh
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Bivalves are so named for their two hard shell valves made of carbonate, linked by a soft ligament acting as a hinge. They use a strong adductor muscle to close their shell, and the relaxation of the muscle allows the springy ligament to reopen (you might be familiar with adductor muscles as the edible tasty part of a scallop). In deference to the bivalves, laptops and flip-phones are called…
This is the second part in a series how isotopes work and how they are scientifically fascinating. Part I here.
It turns out a horse is not just a horse, of course. The horse is a collection of atoms, and each of those atoms has a particular isotopic “flavor”, and the collection of isotope types in the horse tells a story. At the end of the day, scientists are simply interested in reading and…
Bivalves put a lot of energy into their shells. These hardened, hinged sheaths of carbonate are an effective defense against many predators looking to get at the squishy clam’s body encased inside. Parasitic pea crabs have evolved to free-ride on the bivalves’ hard work.
Little hermit crab Pylopagurus discoidalis living in an old ballpoint pen. Notice how its claw is rounded, perfectly shaped to form a protective seal for the round pen opening. This species is normally adapted to live in scaphopod shells, which also are elongated with a circular opening. One of the rare cases where nature can make good use of our plastic waste.
