The Mission of Species

Unlike humans, who obligate one another to pay for connecting to and using clusters of servers housed somewhere far away (the cloud), grass is under no obligation to pay the clouds for rain. The natural economy trades in the 92 cosmic elements¹, such as carbon and hydrogen, that are actually used to build new “selves.” Nature employs a regenerative system of direct exchange, with no inedible paper, metal, or data acting as intermediaries. The market of the natural economy is designed so that the diversity of its participants increases the cycling of materials and all participants prosper; in other words, so that the ecosystem is invigorated.

”Energy, Work, Species, Diversity” and the Reason Life Exists

Humans cannot live by sunbathing, but plants can. Plants take the irregular, disordered, entropic radiant energy arriving from the star we call the Sun and, by rearranging the angles of that divergent radiant energy, convert it into a syntropic, regular, ordered pattern of molecular structure: hydrocarbon molecules. If plants could not photosynthesize, they themselves could not grow, the carbon cycle would vanish, and organic matter, that is, substances containing carbon, would scarcely exist.

We living beings are organisms, not mere assemblages of parts, and this comes from our having order as geometric patterns that include time. The polyhedral features of beautiful molecular structures pass through a journey across a tremendous continuum of scales to form us. Cosmic design rules such as symmetry and fractality apply to us as well.

Plants grow toward the cosmos. They spread their leaves toward the cosmos and, receiving light from the cosmos, produce the source of life. They carry the important mission of nourishing life. The carbon compounds that plants supply become the materials with which other plants assemble themselves. Animals and fungi, likewise, assemble themselves from materials in which stellar energy has been materialized. And the entropic energy that arrives without pause is converted, through the ordering work of living beings’ molecular structures on the surface of planet Earth, into the diversity of ecosystems. The more work is done, the more energy there is, and the more work there is. The increased work is shared within the ecosystem. Some work remains that cannot be shared. Someone evolves to take it on. Species increase, and diversity is strengthened. Through this repetition, energy increases, work increases, species increase, and diversity increases. As long as diversity keeps expanding, the work of life keeps increasing. This means the whole of planet Earth prospers. Through the law of increasing entropy, the interrelationship of energy, work, species, and diversity leads to the prosperity of the Earth. The work of life is, in other words, the very reason life exists.

The Physiological Optimum Acts as a Repulsive Force Against the Ecological Optimum

For example, the current direction of agriculture, growing a single kind of organism on a massive scale, runs counter to this physical mechanism by which nature prospers. Whether plant or animal, the practice of multiplying a single thing on a massive scale and consuming it damages the harmonious, sufficient cycling of energy taking place on the Earth’s surface. It destroys the linked chain of conversions: energy into matter, matter into living beings, living beings into ecosystems, and ecosystems into the energy-cycling system of the star system.

Agriculture is a way of obtaining the energy humans need to live. If so, humanity’s current understanding that practicing agriculture means “growing a single crop on a massive scale” is a cosmic contradiction. Like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, it leads us to destroy with our own hands a cyclical system that would supply energy naturally even if left alone. What we do to obtain energy is helping to throw away most of the stellar energy pouring down on the Earth. We may be laughed at as unrealistic, but with current methods, there might well be more energy on Earth if we stopped farming altogether. That would not necessarily mean more food for us humans. But depending on how it is done, the food problem can be solved. All it takes is doing it the supernatural way².

The radiant energy of stars and the plants that convert it into matter usable by all living things; the fungi that decompose organic matter into inorganic matter and make it reusable; the viruses that carry genes and bring about evolution; the animals that eat plants, cultivate fungi, and carry viruses. When all living things play their roles in mutual, complementary ways, diversity is strengthened and the ecosystem as a whole expands. Through the services of the expanded ecosystem, energy reaches every living thing and each secures its place in the universe. The end result of “a single thing on a massive scale” is that it ultimately takes away the place of humans, who are, after all, just one species among many. The physiological optimum, which aims at the prosperity of one specific, limited species, acts as a repulsive force against the ecological optimum.

Primary Industry Turned Secondary

Primary industries such as agriculture, fisheries, and livestock farming depend on the surplus energy of the “zeroth industry”³ produced by natural ecosystems. People in ancient times devised trades for producing, in a reproducible way, the food they needed to live. Their resources and fuels were, in most cases, plants and animals provided by nature, and they carried out their respective work (mostly the work of primary industry) within the limits of the natural ecosystem’s capacity to regenerate.

Manufacturing is a secondary industry, structured to depend on the surplus energy from the zeroth industry through the primary industry. The energy available on planet Earth depends entirely on the radiant energy of the star we call the Sun. Long before humans appeared, rich ecosystems stored vast quantities of the zeroth industry’s by-products inside the Earth. The fossil fuels we dig up from deep underground, like buried treasure, are what was stored as usable matter by the energy-cycling structures of the Earth’s past natural ecosystems. Manufacturing exists by drawing on these energy savings accumulated inside the Earth to run machines and operate factories.

The energy of the people who work there is supplied by primary industry. But with the advance of science and technology, that primary industry has, in modern times, become increasingly industrialized. In other words, it has been optimized at the level of chemical molecules to such an extent that it is easier to understand it as a secondary industry. At the cutting edge of modern agriculture, some food no longer requires the “soil” essential to life and has become an industrial product made in factories. Living things raised in growing environments far removed from their original ecology, or rather, artificially made (some literally “edited”) foods, are mass-produced and supplied to dining tables all over the world. This is causing many, and major, side effects on natural ecosystems.

Everyone’s Own “Sustainable”

Primary industry turned secondary is so energy-inefficient that, if fossil fuels were edible, it might be better to eat them directly. Unlike the primary industry of the days when we simply drew our sustenance from natural ecosystems, it is not a sustainable way of doing things. So people around the world have hurriedly begun thinking about “what kind of state is sustainable”⁴, but, like this article, each is offering their own interpretation from their own point of view. Some aim for a “sustainable state” through new technologies: “Switch to electric cars,” “Invent technology to suck up excess carbon dioxide,” “Cover every available space with solar panels.” Others condemn the habits of living creatures: “Don’t let cows burp,” “Celebrities shouldn’t fly private jets.” Still others try to change how farming is done: “Spread tough, low-maintenance genetically modified crops,” “Stop growing rice, because paddy fields emit methane,” “AI-managed plant factories are pesticide-free and eco-friendly.” “Bring your own shopping bag,” “Switch to paper straws”… the list goes on and on. Everyone has their own idea of a “sustainable state.”

Our view at Polymath Research is just one of these, but few proposals satisfy the condition “sustainable for us humans, and sustainable for all living things other than us, and sustainable for civilized society, and able to restore the global environment permanently.” The condition “sustainable for a single individual, a single company, or a single industry” is not part of it, so most proposals fall out right there.

To make plants and animals grow faster and bigger by mechanical means, vast amounts of fossil fuels are used and artificial chemicals that act against nature are put into circulation. The result of humanity’s efforts to accomplish, all by itself, the work that natural ecosystems once accomplished through harmony is showing up as climate change on a global scale. The bill has come due for believing that human ingenuity alone, without the help of nature’s power, could produce anything and everything. We humans still firmly believe, as if under hypnosis, that if we analyze everything in terms of molecular biology and reproduce it chemically, we can get whatever results we want, as if by magic. As a result, soil has become something we make, the sea has become something we make, and food has become something we make. We humans are treating nature with greater arrogance than ever before, as if anything we want, plant or animal, were something we could create ourselves. We are intoxicated with our own “intelligence.”

Helping Ecosystems Grow

We humans are absent-minded. Absorbed in using the by-products of past natural ecosystem services, we fail to see the blessings that present natural ecosystems give us. Like Godzilla marching through a city, we are destroying every ecosystem beneath our feet.

For the Earth, a sphere of land, soil is the source of life. It is the place where many living things die, decompose, and become new life. With the help of the sea, rain falls and the wind blows; in summer the sun pours down its brilliant light, and in winter the snow piles up. On this soil we grow as part of nature.

We are under no obligation to pay the soil, the sea, or anything in nature that keeps us alive. We simply offer our thanks and give nothing back in return. What matters most is to give our whole heart. Giving our whole heart to nature, I believe, means creating and expanding ecosystems. We see helping ecosystems grow, including restoring the ecosystems we have destroyed, as the only contribution we humans can make, as part of all life and as representatives of all living things.

We Ourselves Grow Together with Many Living Things

Tilling the fields. This custom, more than ten thousand years old, has devastated the underground ecosystems in the soil. Along with the sacrifice of countless soil microorganisms, humanity has experienced famines and plagues. Having medically suppressed the disasters of invisible changes underground, how will we humans respond to visible climate change? Just as science, by chance, discovered penicillin produced by soil bacteria “in the soil” and overcame dreadful diseases with a miracle drug, will we find a miracle cure for dreadful extreme weather “in the atmosphere”? Should we stake the future of all the living things that the Earth has carefully nurtured over 4.6 billion years on such a miraculous stroke of serendipity? Wouldn’t that be far too foolish?

The era of “Tilling is shameful, but it works” (a play on the title of the TV drama Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu, “Running Away Is Shameful, but It Works”) must soon come to an end. We don’t know how often common sense gets updated, but if we revise our view of nature through a new common sense, a world of “Not tilling is natural, and it works” is just around the corner.

Helping the natural ecosystems that include us grow also means helping ourselves grow together with many other living things. With this in mind, we at Polymath Research intend to pursue a project to spread farms where ecosystems, not single crops, are grown, which we call “Symbiotic Farms,” across the globe.

Please feel free to share your opinions and thoughts. Collaborators are always welcome.

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Footnotes

1. 92 elements have been found in nature. This does not include artificial ones. ↩

2. Supernatural Growth Theory is a theory that can be applied to growing environments other than those of humans. By assisting the workings of nature, it can achieve far higher productivity at far lower cost than science, which tries to replace the workings of nature. All that is needed is to discover the principles of the universe and apply them. ↩

3. This is Polymath Research’s own industry classification. As of June 2024, no such category exists in modern industrial classification. ↩

4. For example, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ↩