“All around us, as far as the eye can see, the universe holds together, and only one way of considering it is really possible, that is, to take it as a whole, in one piece.” ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

    We are all familiar with the saying “you can't see the forest for the trees,” yet, that is often the way many people look at things, often including the scientific community. Of course there is nothing wrong with studying the function and make-up of the eye ball, for example, but if you study it alone and ignore the optic nerve and the brain, you will never really understand what the eyeball does. Likewise, the individual trees in the forest may provide some information, but much more is learned by studying how the tree functions as part of the forest, how the forest functions as part of the planet, and how the planet functions as part of the cosmos. I have heard the Great Barrier Reef of Australia reffured to as the largest life form on the planet, but it is really made up of millions, or more likely billions, of individual coral polyps and the shells left behind by their ancestors. Studying just a coral polyp is useful, but it won't really tell you what effect the barrier reef has on the ocean. You have to study the reef as a whole.

    To understand the universe, we can't study tiny pieces and expect to understand the whole. That is because a large part of the whole is not found in the individual pieces, but in how they interact with each other and relate to each other. Also, you really can't understand the universe by studying just the matter and ignoring the energy. Energy is as much a part of the whole as the matter is, in fact, modern theories of quantum physics tells us that matter is just slow moving energy. And finally, and most important of all, you cannot understand the physical universe if you completely ignore the spiritual one from which it originated and to which it will one day return.