Scientists and Researchers, In Praise and celebration of

We have a youngish (four years) and very lively light-orange and white cat in the household. (Her name is Yuengling, the pale ale cat. The white-trimmed black cat is called Guinness.) She is quick and alert and full of vim. She has recently been found to have a heart murmur. And she has also been showing us, of recent months, that she likes coffee.

I wonder if the two-- heart issues and liking coffee-- are related? I know for sure my morning coffee is a pleasure. I am both physically and emotionally addicted. I like the taste and I really like the sense of energy that follows, and the easing of some of my morning creakiness.

Some scientific studies say coffee is bad for us, others say it's good for us. Just yesterday Bernie told me of one that found that women who drink coffee are less likely to have a stroke. Well!!! I love self-justification.

I am no scientist, sadly. I did not know, when my life was taking shape, that that was a path I would enjoy hugely, and so followed other emotions and took another path, and there is a Robert Frost poem that explains all about a life full of roads not taken. But I am a consumer of scientific research results, a reader of the synopsis of findings, articles in Scientific American and New Scientist that are written for the interested lay reader. And I'm ever interested.

David Brooks has a new book out, The Social Animal. I've been hearing about it from many sources. I gather it's about how beneath our rational consciousness we are emotional creatures. It shows that the way we physically experience our lives depends on the largely still undefined-by-us workings of the brain and the rest of our physical body. That our chemistry, our experiences, our emotions govern our conscious, rational mind.

In an article in the March 7, 2011 issue of Newsweek, James Atlas quotes Brooks as saying, "The scientists I've spent the last three years talking to are truth seekers... They've helped me see how the power of deep ideas changes the way you think. It was part of my idea to go down, down, down, to look at moral and spiritual creativity, the deepest issues.... Philosophy and theology are telling us less than they used to. Scientists and researchers are leaping in where these disciplines atrophy-- they're all drilling down into an explanation of what man is." (47)

In this morning's sunshine I carry with me all sorts of ideas and questions. In most simple, unscientific ways, I observe the horses and the flock of white gulls like a paragraph on the greening meadow, the pine tree wiggling it's branches to adjust to the invisible air flow. Before I sat down here, I was briefly outdoors in the cool morning, and I knew I was happy in the moment. I take a breath here and now and come to one basic answer: I know that I am alive with the rest of the natural world.

Much more than that, I do not really know. I will observe and experience my very little slice of the world, and listen to researchers and scientists.

P.S. What about that earthquake in Japan, and the probability of one coming soon to a landscape near us? Are we listening to the scientists?