11. Beyond Description - Part 2

So why do leaves change color? Is it chlorophyll breakdown or Divine artistry?

Science addresses the question of leaf color by breaking the leaf down into its component parts and processes.

The first level of analysis seeks to explain leaf color in terms of chlorophyll. Essentially we want to say that a leaf is green because chlorophyll is green. But all this does is transfer the question from the leaf to the chlorophyll. To explain chlorophyll’s coloration, we study what it does: photosynthesis. We want to say that chlorophyll is green because of how light is used in the manufacture of sugar by plants. When the chlorophyll breaks down and other pigments take over, the green fades and other colors get reflected.

Problem solved. Or is it? After all, one may yet ask why photosynthesis uses some colors and not others. The plant physiologist will acknowledge the validity of the question, but will tell you that the answer is not found in physiology but in the branch of science which underlies it – biochemistry, the study of how complex molecules carry out life’s processes.

Many volumes have been published on the molecular intricacies of photosynthesis. It is among the best documented of chemical processes. The mechanism is also quite well agreed upon by the experts. Thus it is reasonable to expect that here we could find out why leaves are green. But with all the details of the hundreds of different molecules and their chain reactions, biochemistry has still not explained one whit why only those wavelengths are usable, and therefore we have not yet answered the question of why chlorophyll is green or why leaves are green. If we can’t understand one color, two is surely beyond us, so we still do not have an explanation of why leaves change color either.

In addition to all this, there remains the mystery of visual perception altogether, which leaves unanswered how vision takes place in a light tight box of a skull where light neither penetrates nor is generated.

Another major question emerges form this whole story. The entire biochemical system involved in photosynthesis is an incredibly ordered process. Hundreds of chemical types, each comprised of a multitude of atoms, are matched and linked together with remarkable precision, and all these parts continually interact in a marvelously integrated fashion. Far from random, the entire ‘machinery’ is geared toward a single function – the transformation of light energy into chemical energy in the form of sugar.

The question is: What is organizing this system? What is keeping all these parts working together? Is it sugar? Obviously not. Is it light? Impossible.

It is unreasonable to think that any single part of the system can organize the behavior of all the other parts. For a while, many scientists thought to explain the control of cells and organs in terms of DNA. However, this view too has become passe as leading biologists continue to discover more basic life processes that are quite beyond the control of the cell nucleus.

The chemical components are by nature independent, without power over each other, and quite unaware of their role in manufacturing sugar. Hence, it must be that the controlling factor is outside the chemical system and more powerful than any of its parts, since it guides the behavior of each part. The greatness of the “mystery factor” controlling photosynthesis is emphasized when one considers that the chemistry of photosynthesis in a leaf is just one aspect of a much larger, integrated picture. The behavior of these molecules is thoroughly interwoven with the rest of the plant as well as with sunlight, air, water, soil, other plants, animals and people. After all, photosynthesis provides food for virtually all life on this planet.

From the Torah perspective the identity of the “mystery factor” is obvious. There is only one factor that can be beyond every system and yet control all the parts. But the hard-nosed reductionist keeps searching, hoping that maybe, when we take those molecules apart, the explanations to all these questions will surface. But alas, they do not.

The most basic of the exact sciences is particle physics. In fact, it is not nearly so exact as it used to be. There was a time when matter was hard, when space and time were fixed, and when there were only three basic particles: protons, neutrons and electrons. But with our refined instrumentation and experiments, many strange results have shaken our materialistic view of nature.

Now matter is just a special form of energy, space is curved and time passes at different rates in different reference frames. Matter is now made up of a multitude of unknowable particles (or waves, depending on how you look at them), including leptons, muons, gluons, mesons and quarks, having odd properties like spin, flavor and charm. Even more surprising, these “particles,” which are the basis of everything physical, have the remarkable habit of continually disappearing and coming into existence at random locations and at random times.

Has particle physics answered why leaves are green or any of our other questions? No. Furthermore, we now have the new question of how atoms can be stable (and they do seem to be) while their parts are so ephemeral. Such problems led Paul Davies, a prominent physicist who is a self-avowed atheist, to remark in a New Scientist article that “the new physics. . . seems to demand some guiding influence located, as it were, above nature, sustaining all of existence.”

It is here that science and Torah really converge. There is no difference between what Davies is saying in the name of physics and what Jews have been saying since Abraham. . . There is a Divine Providence that continually sustains and orders the entire universe, and not just at the cosmic level, or on the grand general scale. Modern physics sees supernatural guidance operating at the most minuscule subatomic level. Moreover many physicists believe in the anthropic principle which maintains that human awareness is actually the goal and reason for creating an orderly universe in the first place.

But beyond this point physics cannot probe, because no science is able to address why this awareness was desired.

Faith can.

For example, when one sees the precisely timed emergence of beautiful colors in autumn leaves, and when one considers all the microscopic and submicroscopic levels and processes that underlie this display, and that all the parts and processes are meticulously organized and integrated, and that no team of scientists could duplicate one iota of any of it. . . all this adds to the realization of the greatness and power of the One who could create, sustain, and coordinate all those zillions of parts.

Still the complexity is finite. How much greater, then, is the Almighty G‑d, before whom supernovae and atoms are equally minuscule and governed with equal skill and care. This awareness enhances our awe and appreciation of the Creator.

Modern science and traditional faith are both leading us to a Creator who cares for His creation. But it is specifically the Torah that takes the next step and explains why we were created: To reveal G-dliness in the world through our well-chosen thoughts, words and deeds, that give purpose and meaning to our own lives and the world as a whole.