The world used to be simple. You merely noticed in passing that you got wet by brushing against the drops of dew while meandering through the meadow. But from the time people undertook to explain this one drop of dew scientifically, they trapped themselves in the endless hell of the intellect.
Water molecules are made up of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. People once thought that the smallest particles in the world were atoms, but then they found out that there was a nucleus inside the atom. Now they have discovered that within the nucleus there are even tinier particle. Among these nuclear particles, there are hundreds of different varieties and no one knows where the examination of this minute world will end.
It is said that the way electrons orbit at ultrahigh speeds within the atom is exactly like the flight of comets within the galaxy. To the atomic physicist the world of elementary particles is a world as vast as the universe itself. Yet, it has been shown that in addition to the immediate galaxy in which we live there are countless other galaxies. In the eyes of the cosmologist, then, our entire galaxy becomes infinitesimally small.
The fact is that people who think a drop of water is simple or that a rock is fixed and inert are happy, ignorant fools, and the scientists who know that the drop of water is a great universe and the rock is an active world of elementary particles streaming about like rockets, are clever fools. Looked at simply, this world is real and at hand. Seen as complex, the world becomes frighteningly abstract and distant.
The scientists who rejoiced when rocks were brought back from the moon have less grasp of the moon than the children who sing out, “How old are you, Mr. Moon?” Basho (A famous Japanese haiku poet (1644-1694).) could apprehend the wonder of nature by watching the reflection of the full moon in the tranquillity of a pond. All the scientists did when they went off into space and stomped around in their space boots was to tarnish a bit of the moon’s splendour for millions of lovers and children on the earth.
Lines form The book One-Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka, 1978
