How the Biosphere Works

Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers

Fred Spier

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000573145
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers offers a simple and novel theoretical approach to understanding the history of the biosphere, including humanity's place within it. It also helps to clarify what the possibilities and limitations are for future action. This is a subject of wide interest because today we are facing a great many environmental issues, many of which may appear unconnected. Yet all these issues are part of our biosphere. For making plans for the future and addressing our long-term survival and well-being, an integrated knowledge of our biosphere and its history is therefore indispensable.

Key Features

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• Documents what the biosphere is, and what our position as humans within it is today.

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• Describes how the biosphere has become the way it is.

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• Summarizes the novel simple theoretical model proposed in the book, and thus, how the biosphere functions.

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• Predicts what the possibilities and limitations are for future human action

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• Emphasizes how simple but careful observations can lead to far-reaching theoretical implications.

1 The Context of Discovery A Personal Survey of the Natural and Social Sciences Concerning our Biosphere's History

DOI: 10.1201/9781003275350-1

The limits of man’s knowledge in any subject possess a high interest, which is perhaps increased by its close neighborhood to the realms of imagination.

Charles Darwin, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, Vol. 3 (1839, p. 345)

It has been so easy to learn something of the Darwinian theory at second-hand, that few have cared to study it as expounded by its author. It thus happens that, while Darwin’s name and fame are more widely known than of any other man of science, the real character and importance of the work he did are as widely misunderstood.

Alfred R. Wallace, ‘The Debt of Science to Darwin.’ The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (January 1883, p. 420)

Introduction

I do not know why I wanted to grow pepper plants in the spring of 2017. I just wanted to do it. Perhaps it happened because I had become accustomed to eating spicy food in Peru during my research visits there as a cultural anthropologist many years earlier. Peruvians of many walks of life love their pepper sauces, called ajíes, indispensable side dishes to almost any main course, breakfasts and desserts excepted.

During the spring of 2017 I was bound to the house because of the care that our daughter needed. That situation forced me to become creative with whatever initiatives were possible. Cultivating pepper plants might be such a plan, not least because our daughter loves pepper sauces. As a result, growing peppers might provide entertainment and education for both of us. As long as I remember, I had wanted to grow plants. Yet in the Netherlands, there had never been a chance to start my own vegetable garden.

So, in May 2017, while the Sun was becoming sufficiently strong, inside our Amsterdam apartment I sowed pepper seeds in a large white flowerpot, placed within what the housing corporation euphemistically calls the ‘loggia,’ a room with large windows facing southwest. The seeds came from red Spanish peppers; little yellow Caribbean peppers; and green Mexican jalapeños, all bought at the Turkish grocery store around the corner. Their pods had been turned into ajíes using a traditional Peruvian recipe.

I had no idea what was going to happen, not even whether the seeds would sprout or not. I decided to let it happen while helping nature a little now and then. For instance, after having planted the seeds, the flowerpot was covered with thin transparent plastic foil to create a greenhouse effect. But other than that, I mostly wanted to see what was going to happen. Of course, it would be nice if the plants were to produce a next generation of peppers. But that was not the main goal. First of all, I wanted to observe what these plants were going to do.

Taking this more detached approach turned everything into an adventure. It did not really matter anymore whether the seeds were going to sprout or not, or how the plants would grow. Any result, even the most disappointing failure, would convey new information, from which we could learn, if interpreted correctly. And even if we could not find a good interpretation, the resulting confusion and realization of our own ignorance might also teach us good lessons. I had learned to adopt such an attitude while studying chemistry in the 1970s, experiencing many failures during my research.

I still remember the resulting frustration, for instance, in 1977 at the chemistry lab while trying to synthesize a substance called cyclical AMP that was going to be used for building artificial DNA molecules. While I was experiencing my umpteenth failure in making that molecule, my supervisor Jacques van Boom (1937–2004), an excellent chemist, saw my frustrations and told me: “What you need to do, is take that round-bottom flask and crash it into the sink. That will help you to get over it.” I never did so, but his advice still remains etched in my mind.

Such initial confusion and realization of ignorance are inevitable when one sets out to experience, or investigate, unknown situations. That has happened to me many times in life, for instance, during my solitary backpacking travels overland across Europe, Africa, and India as well as during my academic research, first as a biochemist and later as a cultural anthropologist and social historian. In fact, I remember such feelings from much earlier in life, when I wanted to question so much that was taught at school. Yet back then, I never got a chance to even pose such questions, because that was not part of the Dutch school routine in those days.

It is understandable that teachers have limited time to answer questions from their pupils. But that may mean that our youngsters, often eager to learn, may be left with confusing thoughts and feelings. Let me give only one such an example. While going to primary school in the city of Eindhoven, situated in the Southern Netherlands, at around ten years of age, it struck me that virtually all the national history they taught us – even today still called ‘patriotic history’ – dealt, in fact, mostly with the more prominent Western Netherlands where Dutch independence had begun. But what had happened in the meantime in the Eindhoven area where we were living? Had nothing of any importance occurred there? And if so, who determined what was deemed important and what was not, and by which criteria?

All of that produced a great deal of confusion and awareness of ignorance inside of me, and it took me many decades to find satisfactory answers to those questions. In retrospect, teaching national history in such a way turned young people like me, who were living outside the supposed national core area, into outsiders. In doing so, a result was produced opposite to the one intended by national politicians, namely, shaping a shared national identity which helped all Dutch people to feel good about themselves and their past.¹

Yet from such initial confusion and realization of ignorance, if questioned and pursued, fresh, and sometimes better, perceptions of reality may emerge. That requires a great deal of mental work. But almost invariably, such investigations produce positive effects, in this case my current personal summary of the city of Eindhoven’s history, which can be found in Appendix 1 at the end of this book.

Pursuing my personal questions over a great many years has made me aware of the fact that most of us, including myself, live in a world, including its past, of which we know very little, even though we tend to navigate through life as if our daily surroundings are familiar. Doing so is part of our personal survival strategies. If we started questioning everything surrounding us, we would not be able to function very well anymore.

Such an awareness had struck me hard in May of 1986 after returning to the Netherlands from my first research visit to Andean Peru, where I had become familiar with local farmers’ lives. Many of these people had become dear to me. Yet they lived their lives much like farmers had done in medieval Europe. It had been a major cultural challenge for me to become familiar with such a world.

But after I had become accustomed to their way of life, it actually seemed more ‘normal’ to me than my own life in the Netherlands, not least because those Andean farmers lived much closer to ‘nature’ than any urban people. In their lives, one experiences much more clearly where the food comes from, or how to build a house, because these people produce and make all of that themselves. In those closely knit communities, people are born, live, and die as part of local societies that are directly dependent on the surrounding natural environment.

As part of that, I remember very well a conversation in May 1986, near the end of my first research visit, with Paulino Tumpay, who had become a good friend of mine. I told him how scared I had been in the beginning, because I did not know what to expect, including whether I would be able to deal with Andean life. “Well, you see now,” he replied, “everything is normal here.”

I agreed. While, for instance, the women cooked their meals on very simple clay-baked stoves fired by locally-grown wood in what by Dutch standards would be considered very primitive kitchens, they were all very much people like you and me. Actually, it had often become extraordinarily pleasant to share life with them and be part of their daily routines, in which no one was excluded, while they generally treated me kindly. The rural Andeans would never leave me or any others alone, because that was considered socially undesirable.

1 Only in December 2020 did I find on the internet that the armies of Prince William of Orange (1533-1584) –leader of the Northwestern Dutch uprising and still mentioned in Dutch school history as the ‘Father of the Fatherland’– had committed considerable atrocities around the area where I grew up, most notably perhaps in the cities of Hertogenbosch and Roermond. Up until today, the authors of the national school curriculum may have considered it therefore better to avoid such controversies by not including that area’s history at all during that particular period in time. Describing William of Orange as “Father of the Fatherland” was probably established in popular use by nineteenth and twentieth century Dutch historians seeking to reconstruct a proud history of the emerging Dutch nation-state.

How different was life after coming back to the Netherlands. Hardly anyone was interested in what I had experienced, while virtually everybody expected me to behave the ‘normal’ Dutch way. However, the Dutch urban way of life was no longer ‘normal’ for me, because I suddenly saw so much about Dutch life and its history that I had not seen before, while no one else around me appeared to be seeing any of that. As a result, it looked to me as if everybody in Holland whom I knew was acting like cultural robots without any awareness of the larger world. My good friend Tineke Luhrman, who shared some of those experiences in both Andean Peru and Ecuador, summarized this situation as follows: “If one has looked around in another people’s dollhouse, one realizes that one lives in a dollhouse oneself, too.”

So, suddenly there was a great deal of confusion and awareness of ignorance when, and where, I had expected it the least. Part of that included my realization of how little I actually knew about the Dutch ways of life and their history. My study of Andean history, while using a socio-scientific theory that worked very well, had taught me to look in novel ways that were rather different from any Dutch history that I knew. Yet my fresh ways of perceiving things were much more fruitful and insightful, or so I felt, at least for understanding the Andean ways of life and their history. But as a result, suddenly I did not understand my ‘own’ society anymore.

It has taken me decades to come to terms with all those thoughts and feelings, not least because Dutch social and academic life did not offer any room for such reflections, even among the Dutch cultural anthropologists whom I met at that time. As a result, I found myself very much locked into my own mental world. In fact, I am still working on integrating all those experiences into my personal life while investigating them further. Growing pepper plants in 2017 may well have been part of that effort.

To my delight, most of the seeds sprouted within a week and then started to grow. Because those tiny little plants were doing so well, very soon the plastic foil was no longer necessary. It was fascinating to watch what happened. The tiny sprouts expended their first efforts on growing a root to stabilize themselves in the soil and extract nutrients from it, while also racing to stretch out a little stem and unfold its first leave: its first solar panel. All of that was, of course, essential for survival. Without capturing solar energy, the little sprout would die very soon, as its seed contained only very little stored energy. And while roots do not extract energy from the soil, in addition to anchoring the plant they collect water and minerals that are needed for constructing and maintaining its complexity.

In doing all these things, a sprouting seed takes a considerable risk, because it expends all its stored energy and matter in the shortest possible time on turning itself into a little plant able to capture energy and matter. However, if the circumstances are not sufficiently right, for instance if there is not enough sunlight, water, or suitable soil, the young saplings will die very quickly. And because in nature the circumstances are often not sufficiently right, those plants need to produce a great many seeds to ensure their survival. If not, they will go extinct.

None of those observations is new, of course. But contemplating all of that made me realize that our pepper plants were doing what all of life has been doing during its entire existence on this planet, namely, seeking to survive. That is the principal goal of life. For pepper plants, producing seeds is not the main goal. It is simply a way of surviving the lean season when the plant itself is not sufficiently able to survive. Furthermore, making seeds promotes genetic diversity, which enhances their survival chances.

In other words, pepper plants are seeking to survive by using their own particular ‘survival strategy’ as it has evolved over long periods of time into its current form. To be sure, both a plant’s ‘survival strategy’ and its evolution are not conscious processes. Such a survival strategy has become the way it is through the process of natural selection first outlined by Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). In their theory, the struggle for life – so, the struggle for survival – plays a major role. Survival strategies can therefore be seen as the particular ways in which living beings wage the struggle for life. Curiously, to my knowledge, within biology this term has not yet systematically been used as a general analytical term.

Inspired by Darwin’s famous book On the Origin of Species (1859), in 1864 the British academic Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) coined the term ‘survival of the fittest,’ which was later also adopted by Darwin. Yet within our big history course, the US biologist Frederick Schram (1943–) kept emphasizing that it would be better to speak of the ‘survival of the fit enough.’ That made perfect sense to me. For those who are not familiar with big history, this large-scale approach to history offers an overview of all of the past, from the beginning of the universe until life on Earth t...