Mike’s Prairie Numbers

I am mostly interested in these questions of plant germination because they’re interesting – a tautology if there ever was one. I have great respect for the scientific method – call it basically a careful recording of occurrences of things over time. But where science hasn’t gotten around to looking - and examples are numerous – some people have still more loosely employed this method, possibly then noticing some things that a more rigorous study would overlook. Consider Edward Abbey’s descriptions of the desert.

Given the slipperiness of human memory and our easily biased perceptions, there’s a lot to be said for rigor, particularly when we really want to understand how things work. But it seems today, except where money is to be made (think Monsanto), it isn’t much applied. And neither is a more simply observant approach, I fear.

I think of the new generations of organic farmers, with seemingly less attention to collecting hard (quantified) data that they might use and also without the intricate details about beneficial practices that careful farmers used to pass down from old farmer to young farmer. The new breed has books, I guess. I electrified part of my house using one. No fires yet. But nature is far, far more complex than house wiring. Perhaps I’m well off the mark - after all, I have not done a careful survey of farmers’ practices. But there seems to be an awful lot of sloppy thinking in the world of growing and eating food that is more natural or organic.

The Land Institute is a notable exception to this trend, in my opinion.

Where you could benefit as you study your prairie, I suspect, is getting more connected to other people who are interested in prairies and these plants and who are also applying some rigor. But this is also important: although you have some practical objectives, they haven’t submerged your fundamental desire to understand and respect the natural world for what it is.

Where have you gone, Donald Rumsfeld, when we finally get to an area where you begin to make sense?

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. 

There is little that I enjoy more than catching a glimpse of something that I didn’t even realize I knew nothing about. A good question in the hand is worth a thousand answers in the bush. Except, of course, for actually getting something done now.

And here’s Wendell Berry in ‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front.’

Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers.

On the other hand, you can show no greater respect to Nature than observing her ways carefully and recording what she is doing. If that practice leads us reverently into the unknown, so be it.

Except for first securing my fundamental respect, rarely, I find, is there only one right way to look at things. But how is it that so many people have lost even their interest in Nature?