optilibrium

nature strives to achieve equilibrium, to settle into a balance: insect populations rise, frog populations also rise - because of increased food supply - until insect populations start to drop, and which point frog populations drop... and this pattern can be seen throughout ecosystems and food chains...

the only exception to this is humanity... i remember reading a study on human interractions with nature in a hunter / gatherer society, which suggested that as humans moved into an area, they disrupted the equilibrium - populations levels, behaviours, food sources, etc... all these would be disrupted, but would eventually settle into a new, different balance (taking the human presence into account)... then the hunter / gatherers would move on, so they didn't exhaust their food source, and once more the ecosystem would be thrown into chaos, until it adapted once more to the removal of humans...

so equlibrium is very important in nature - and left to its own resources, it has simple checks and balances that ensure a balance is maintained... even within organisms this principle can be seen - the so-called "negative feedback system" in humans is an excellent example of nature providing its own balance: receptors pick up information in the internal environment, and pass this on to a "control centre" [sic], which in turn sends output information to effectors, which carry out a particular function... this continues until the receptors register that the internal environment has returned to a "controlled condition" or equilibrium, at which point the control centre stops sending output information to the effectors... now, apart from an anarchist's objection to the terminology ("control centre" to me would be more appropriately named, "data analyser", hehehe), i think this is an excellent example of how nature maintains equilibrium within an environ.

but there is another principle that i see at work in nature, and this is the principle of the "optimal" - be it optimal conditions or optimal ratios... for instance - yeast and bacteria function best at an optimal temperature... when you're brewing beer (depending on the type of yeast you use, and the type of beer you're making), keeping the liquid at about 23 degrees celsius seems to produce a really good tasting beer, in a decent amount of time - too hot and the beer tastes a bit rough, too cold and it takes twice as long... bacteria, such as those used for making yoghurt, like to work at slightly warmer temperatures: around 37 degrees celsius, i think... again, too cold and they become sluggish, too hot and they die...

placing cells in a solution with lower solute concentration than within the cells will cause the solvent to rush out of the cell, so that equal levels of concentration can be maintained - subsequently the cell shrinks... placed in a solvent with higher solute concentration, the cells will explode... and of course, somewhere in between is the optimal concentration level, which means the fluid rushing out of the cell is matched by that rushing in... this is also an example of nature trying to maintain equilibrium - in this case, between the inner and outer environments...

so we can see these two principles, equilibrium and the optimal, at work side by side in nature, a combination i will hereafter refer to as "optilibrium"... but i think they can be applied to all aspects of life - and i will explain this in greater detail tomorrow...