Bible and Science

Rediscovery of Human Hands

Charles Bell, a British surgeon, said, “We must confess that it is in this that we have the consummation of all perfection as an instrument.” Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, regarded this as a visible part of brain, and Jacob Bronowski, a British mathematician, biologist, and historian of science, highly praised this as the “cutting edge of the mind.” What on earth is this? This is the human hand. Actually, as the hand is very close to us as a part of our body, it is not getting much attention. However, if we just put on mittens, it is inconvenient to use the fingers for most activities and then we feel the importance of the hand. The world with no…

Atmospheric Pressure, the Weight of Air

“I think it’s going to rain, ’cause my knees hurt.” Whenever my grandmother said her knees hurt, it rained without exception. When cloudy days continue, some people say they feel down or their bodies ache. It is not just their imagination. When somebody says, “I’m a little under the weather,” his body is actually responding to weather changes. When atmospheric pressure, weighing on our bodies, becomes low, the pressure inside the knee joint becomes high relatively, which causes pain in the knees. Moreover, when atmospheric pressure is low, it becomes cloudy and the sky becomes darker. As a result, people get less sunlight comparatively. Then, serotonin, a chemical produced in your brain that makes you feel happier and calmer, decreases,…

Amazing Perception of Plants

In Korea, you can sometimes see the expression, “The National Assembly in a vegetative state,” on the newspaper. It is a sarcastic expression indicating the National Assembly which causes a high social cost without doing its duty. A patient who is in coma and whose brain does not function is also described as “being in a vegetative state.” Like this, something or someone that has lost the ability of performing functions is likened to a vegetable. Then do plants really have no ability to perceive anything as we assume? Mimosa pudica which is also called “sensitive plant” challenges our prejudice. Mimosa pudica’s leaves quickly fold when touched; it seems that they react to being touched. The secret of its movement…

The Umbilical Cord and Placenta Which Connect Mom and Baby

The umbilical cord and placenta which were once considered unsanitary and were treated as infectious waste are now receiving much attention in the medical world. The reason behind this is that they have discovered abundant stem cells in them that can transform into various types of tissue. Particularly, cord blood, which is blood from the umbilical cord, contains blood-forming stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells that form bones, muscles, and organs; it is currently being studied for treatment of diseases, and some techniques have already been commercialized. In 2000, a six-year-old girl named Molly living in the United States was suffering a fatal genetic disorder called Fanconi anemia. The only possible treatment was a stem cell transplant, but they could…

Photosynthesis, Natural Solar Energy Generation System

The Sun produces a tremendous amount of energy, and emits most of the energy into space in the form of light. Only 2.2 billionth of the sunlight that the Sun emits to all directions reaches Earth. 30% of it reflects back to space, and only 70% of it is absorbed into Earth. Still, the total amount of energy that the people of the world use for a year is equivalent to the solar energy that enters Earth only for one hour. All living creatures need energy for survival, but the light energy cannot be used directly. It has to be transformed to the form of organic matter. Except some microorganisms, however, it is only plants that can store the light…

Life Starts from Life

There was a lonely girl who liked painting and whose only joy was observing insects. The girl found a solid object on a tree branch, which looked like a stone or a seed. She observed the changes of that object for the whole season and drew them. When the spring came, the object flew away into the sky with light wings. It was a pupa that molted and became a butterfly. This girl who observed the magic-like metamorphosis for the first time was Merian, a German painter and the first female entomologist of the 17th century. Now we know that a gross-looking caterpillar that comes from an egg will turn into a beautiful butterfly in a little while, but people…

Collective Intelligence, Wisdom Learned from Insects

An ant colony marches in an orderly manner, carrying crumbs. A line of ants quickly connects the starting and ending points as if they know the precise route. The sweets which are dozens of times bigger than the ants disappear in a flash in the movement of the swarm of ants moving in perfect order. However, when you watch an ant moving alone, it moves in all directions desultorily, awkwardly avoiding whatever is blocking its way; it doesn’t look that smart. However, when these ants gather together, they collect food at once. It is amazing. Ant, an excellent mathematician The intellectual ability that is gained through cooperating or competing is called collective intelligence, which exerts tremendous power far beyond the…

DNA, the Blueprint of Life

“Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.” On June 26, 2000, an initial draft of the human genome was released. The then U.S. President Clinton left the statement above while announcing the completion of the initial draft of the human genome project which had been the biggest issue in the field of science for the last decade of the 20th century. Let’s look into the mystery of the human genes which even brought awe to many people. Gene, the key of mystery Genome is a compound word of gene and chromosome, indicating all genetic information that…

Apoptosis, Wisdom of Emptying

Autumn is a season of tinged leaves. The trees that boasted about their green leaves in midsummer and made dense forests change the color of their leaves one by one. Tinged leaves present the final magnificent view with all their strength and become fallen leaves. The falling leaves may look lonely, but the trees are preparing the cold winter when they cannot get enough water and nutrients by dropping the leaves. It’s also preparation for the upcoming spring because the leaves make space available for new sprouts. An action that is similar to the leaves falling in the autumn is also taking place inside our bodies. It is the programmed death of the cell, called apoptosis. Apoptosis is derived from…

Atomic Combination

The world is filled with matters. Just one quick look around us is enough to see how natural things such as water, air, and rocks, as well as artificial things such as plastic and vinyl are all made of matters. What will happen if we keep breaking matters into smaller pieces? If you divide them to the point that they cannot be divided anymore, it is called atom—the basic unit of matter. A pure substance of one kind of atom is called an element. About 110 elements have been discovered, and about 90 of them are found in nature. On top of that, those that can be commonly found are only about 40. The mystery of chemical bonding In one…

Ecological Balance Maintained by the Invisible Hand

A baby king penguin was under attack by a southern giant petrel. This is a scene from a documentary that brought suspense and broke the hearts of many viewers. When the giant petrel, which had been looking for an opportunity, attacked the baby king penguins, one of the baby king penguins ran up to the cameraman as if it was asking for help. Trembling with fear, it held the camera stand with its wings and begged him. But the camera crew couldn’t do anything but keep watching the situation, because as observers they couldn’t go against the ecosystem, the great law of nature. The giant petrel attacked baby penguins for a reason: they had their young waiting in their nest.…

Metamorphosis, the Beginning of a New Life

“Now you are merely underwater nymphs. When you become adults, you will have beautiful transparent wings so you can fly freely in the sky. With the wings you can freely fly, traveling from flower to flower.” The frog in the story tells the nymphs about the beautiful world that he saw while traveling. However, the nymphs don’t believe what the frog said about the outer world, because they have only lived in the pond ever since they were born. Then one day, one of the nymphs undergoes a transformation. The dragonfly nymph climbs up a plant stem out of the water and splits its skin. Just like the frog said, it has been transformed into a dragonfly that can fly…

What a Strand of Hair Tells Us

Recently, the Center for Quantum Nanoscience of the Institute for Basic Science [IBS] swept the podium in related fields by inventing an atomic-scale storage medium. We are entering the 21st century nano age passing through the 20th century micro age. The tiny and fine storage area, a discovery after a century of research, has already been planted on our heads. It is hair. Hair starts growing even before birth. Seven weeks after conception, hair follicles1 are observed in the skin tissue. Around 10–13 weeks of pregnancy, the hair starts growing from the scalp, and around 20 weeks, eyebrows and eyelashes appear, and the fetus is covered by lanugo, a fine downy hair. Between 33 and 37 weeks, most of the…

Eyes, the Window that Holds the World Within

The novel Blindness written by José Saramago, a Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, begins as a man suddenly goes blind while driving one ordinary afternoon. Soon after, his wife who nursed him, the patients of the clinic where the man came to receive treatment, and the eye doctor who treated him go blind. The unexplained blindness spreads like an epidemic, and society collapses rapidly. It is a novel that realistically depicts the power of vision just like the saying, “In the land of the blind, the one eyed-man is king.” We often forget the importance of vision. However, it doesn’t take much to understand how much we depend on sight—you just need to cover your eyes. Humans receive so much…

Scent Contains Memories: The Mystery of Sense of Smell

Sometimes, the wonderful smell of fermented soybean paste stew summons up the memory of my hometown where the sunset glow spread out over the evening sky, and of my mother who used to cook me dinner in the blink of an eye with her coarse hands. Like this, everyone probably has experienced that a piece of memory suddenly came up due to a certain familiar scent. Moreover, the memories are quite detailed and even bring back the emotions contained in them. Smell acts as an intense medium of memory. What secret is hidden in the sense of smell? How we smell A delicious smell that stimulates the tip of the nose makes the mouth water. The reality of various smells…

Searching for Eternal, Unchanging Standards

One Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Kim went grocery shopping with her family. As the temperature was below 2℃, they brought winter jackets with them and got inside the car. The GPS indicated that it would take about 20 minutes to drive to the supermarket that was about 5 km [3.1 mi] away. First of all, she went to buy shoes for her husband. He tried on shoes (275 ㎜ and 280 ㎜) and chose ones in the larger size. In the grocery store, they bought beef (600 g) for dinner, and two bottles of milk (1 L) on discount, and a box of apples (5 ㎏) as well. Temperature, distance, weight, and all different sizes … We are surrounded by countless…

Mirror Neuron That Reflects “Myself”

Why is it that we often draw when we do rock-paper-scissors? Why do we instantaneously and unconsciously decide to play the same shape? About this matter, the neuroscience research team at University College London in U.K. announced a result of a fun experiment. They asked the participants to do rock-paper-scissors for several rounds, and in every game, either one or both players were blindfolded. When both were blindfolded, the proportion of draws was 33%, which is in accord with the mathematical proportion. However, it went higher to 36% when only one of them was blindfolded; it was because the participant who could see imitated the other who was blindfolded. Such a thing happens in our daily lives, too. When someone…

The Kingdom of Ants Built through Teamwork and Sacrifice

There are insects that we easily see when we look down while walking down the street. They are ants; they are found not only in streets, but also near tree barks, in playgrounds, and unfortunately in houses, too. Some people take them lightly, because they are small insects that are easily spotted all around us, but little do they know that ants have been living on earth from time immemorial—since the Cretaceous, the last period of the Mesozoic era. While callipogon relictus and dung beetles—distant relatives of ants—are endangered1, ants have become so prosperous that the total number of ants on earth is estimated to be ten quadrillion. There are about 15,000 species of ants, with about 5,000 species recorded…

Wind, the Invisible Force

Wind is invisible. However, we can definitely feel the presence of the wind. It is because the movement of the wind can be seen indirectly through swaying leaves, fluttering hair, and a spinning pinwheel. The power of the formless wind has even changed the history of mankind. In the sixteenth century, England, losing in a battle, won an unprecedented victory over Spain called Invincible Armada. The strong winds and currents that blew right at the perfect time worked in favor of the English taking down the Spanish ships. Wind is invisible but has a big impact on our lives, even affecting the rise and fall of a nation. What is wind? Wind, the movement of air Simply put, wind is…

Secrets Contained in Mom’s Voice

A video about a baby, who was born profoundly deaf, hearing her mom’s voice for the first time and being almost moved to tears, went viral. Hearing her mom’s soft voice for the first time with the help of special hearing aids, the baby smiled and also pouted almost in tears. Does she remember her mom’s voice that she heard in the womb? Fetuses can hear Until the end of the 19th century, people thought fetuses don’t have a hearing ability. However, in 1925, it was proven that fetuses cana hear as Albrecht Peiper, a German doctor, discovered that fetuses respond to a car horn. By week 4 of pregnancy, the parts where ears are going to be formed begin…