Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
You know its passing through.
There are two things, apart from the poetic merits that Christina Rossetti has given in her charming little poem, that I would like to build upon. The first is the principle of causality, one that is acknowledged and affirmed by all human beings except a few hard-headed empirical philosophers. Wherever there is an effect, there must be a cause that produced that effect. My thumb is sore because of the inerrant swing of my hammer. My eyes blink because a light flashed in my eyes. The whole universe is held together in a complex system of effects and causes. It is one of impeccable order. The adventure of science could not begin without the affirmation that effects are produced by causes.
Thus, the trembling of the leaves is caused by the wind.
The second point is that a cause can be affirmed even though it cannot be seen. I know exactly what caused my thumb to hurt and my eyes to blink. My existence, on the other hand, has a series of causes that trail off in the direction of the infinite. My parents were involved, but so, too, were their parents, and on and on. What is the ultimate cause of the universe? Does the “big bang” theory offer a satisfactory explanation? We know that certain causes are real even though they are shrouded in mystery and do not appear before our senses. Both philosophy and science begin in wonder. Their starting points are affirmed by the senses, but as they move to higher and higher causes, they stand in awe of more lofty causes that remain undisclosed. Wonder is knowing that there is a cause but not knowing exactly what it is. In this sense, scientists and philosophers are also detectives. The wind is real even though it remains unseen.
The entire philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is built up from the premise that we can know causes through their effects. In a more specific way, nature allows us to move in the direction of super-nature. In his Summa Contra Gentiles, the Angelic Doctor writes: “Our intellect in knowing anything is extended to infinity. This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be in vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge” (I, 43). The great astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws governing planetary motion, reflected this view of Aquinas when he declared, “O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee.”
The simple notion that the wind causes the leaves to tremble is a lesson in cause and effect for kindergarten children. Modern science offers far more intricate examples. Consider the number of cells in the human body. In an article entitled “An estimation of the number of cells in the human body,” (Annals of Human Biology, Nov. 2013), a group of scientists from three different European countries came to the conclusion that there are approximately, 3.72 x 1013 (37.2 trillion or 37, 200, 000, 000, 000). Some scientists have put the figure at 100 trillion. Whatever the real number may be, it is stupendously large.
In addition to the staggering number of cells in the adult human, an even more mind-boggling fact is that they are all coordinated with each other to form a unified organism. The healthy liver has approximately 240 billion cells. This is far more complex than leaves trembling in the wind. Yet, the complexity, intricacy, delicacy, excellence, and synchrony of these cells is but an introduction to even more spectacular modes of organization. For example, each cell contains a copy of DNA. If we could somehow stretch out the exceeding thin DNA strand, it would measure 6 feet in length. All the DNA in the human body laid end to end would be 222 trillion feet, or further than the distance between the Sun and Pluto. And to realize that this concatenation of cells evolved from a single cell! Here is a complex and intricately molded effect—the cellular organization of the human body–which points to a Designer of most extraordinary capability.
Neither Aquinas nor Kepler knew anything about body cells or cellular structure. Nonetheless, they were sufficiently impressed by the order they observed to affirm an ultimate cause that must be intellectual in nature. We wonder what the highest causes may be. However, the more we advance toward that cause, our wonder passes into admiration and then reverence. The second stanza of Rossetti’s poem suggests this:
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
We bow our heads before the infinite majesty of God. He is the eternal Being who has left his signature everywhere for us to discover and decipher. The more we know, the more we know that the order he has established everywhere, including the 3.72 trillion copies of DNA in each human body, is a path from here to eternity.
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, CT, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad and Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart are available through Amazon.com.
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