Is everything in existance linked?

Question

I'm not religious, but today, I was thinking about how amazing it is that everything seems to know everything else. Like, before bees evolved enough to see ultraviolet, how did they/their bodies know that plants have UV marks on them in the first place? How do animals know their predators so well that they can develop such effective defenses? How does Science seem to know everything about itself, when most of it is inanimate and apparently not even aware of it's own existance?

By "Science knows itself", I mean, the DNA of animals seem to know how ever single thing works. Chemical reactions, physics, everything. Like how it knows that gravity exists, so it makes the bird light. How it knows the effects venom will have on a victim, things like that. I don't understand how it can be aware of these things. It would make sense if it was conscious, but it's not.

Answer 1

You make a compelling argument that it was designed, but not for consciousness. Physics studies the matter in the universe (molecules, atoms, neutrons/protons/electrons, quarks, various subatomic particles) and the forces by which they interact. The proton and electron attract each other because they have opposite electric charge. The electron doesn't 'know' the proton is there. It just responds to the electric field around it. We know a lot about these forces, but we don't know why they exist or why they have the relative strengths they have.

Answer 2

What you are describing is the process of co-evolution. For example, bees and flowers benefit each other. Bees pollinate the flowers, flowers provide nectar and pollen to the bees.

Each tiny change in a plant that makes it more attractive to the bee is to the plant's and the bee's advantage. Every tiny change in the bees vision that makes it easier to see where the flowers are and where the pollen is helps the plant and the bee. That is how bees evolved their powers of UV sight and plants evolved their UV patterns.

In biology there are many many complex interaction of this type between dozens or hundreds of species, all adapting and evolving to work for their own advantage.

Some modern biologists look on all the plants and animals on earth, and even the atmosphere and climate of earth itself, as one huge co-evolving system. Check out the work of Lynn Margulis.

Answer 3

You could view it through an evolutionary lense. Darwinian natural selection says that bees and various animals are driven by their survival-instinct to adapt to their respective environments. This basic survival-instinct predisposes living things to seek out and find resources in their environment (in this case, UV marks) which aid in their survival.

Therefore, the bees that are best at surviving are the ones most capable of locating UV marks. They, in turn, pass on the genes equiped to seek-out similiar UV marks to descendent bees. Thus, future generations of bees inherit a larger and larger sensitivity toward UV marks.

However, I cannot suppress the sneaking suspicion that all of this this multi-faceted, multi-layered existence is curiously well-"linked".
;)

Answer 4

It probably has a lot to do with microevolution

mutations, natural selection, etc.

We are all made of the same stuff . . . Carbon forms the backbone of biology for all life on Earth so one would expect that everything within our existence is linked.

Could you rephrase the question about ". . .Science knowing everything about itself. . ."? It wasn't clear to me what you were saying/asking.

Answer 5

Apparently everything on earth is whats called "carbon based" and now with the analytical studies in DNA that are happening, scientists believe everything is somehow connected. I read somewhere if they go back far enough we are even linked to wheat.

Answer 6

Yes, everything depends on each other through ecology. at each level, there're food chain for the next level. If the food chain is broken at one level, the next level will suffer and propagates upward. So everything is linked

Answer 7

things couldn't survive unless they were created with everything they need from the vary beginning. like if the woodpecker wasn't created with its thick skull they all would have died off before they had babies.

Answer 8

Everything is linked, we are all connected somehow. It's really beautiful actually.