I collected these samples on the walk yesterday.
First, a piece of bark with lichen.
I find these very pleasing.
Next, a piece of past its best fungus.
Seriously vomit inducing.
Now, soil. It's so... variable...
And, yes, there is a creature in the bottom right one.
Here's where it gets tricky: I can't focus fast enough to get the creature before it runs away and when it runs away, I can't work out which way to move the sample to follow it. Consequently, you may need travel sickness medication after watching this.
Lisa the Bug Queen thinks that this one is 'some sort of beetle larvae. Initial thoughts would be one of the Staphylinid beetles – they’re predatory and therefore are very fast moving when they’re searching for food. It’s a HUGE family with over 1100 species in it ranging from 1-24mm in size!'
Then I spotted an even smaller creature!
This one was less camera shy.
CC and the Bug Queen both think this is likely to be a soil mite.
Even so, I never really don't know what I am looking at and to be honest, that's fine. Unlike Linnaeus I don't think that classification is the foundation for all knowledge. Some knowledge, I think, may be based on synthesis and some on experience.Besides which, knowledge may not be everything. Maybe understanding isn't always the same as knowing. Maybe feeling is a knowing that cannot be articulated and certainly not classified.
Values, certainly, cannot be classified. Or sequenced. We err if we believe that putting a label on something is what matters most.
It's a bit like lists: some people make a list then feel that, great, they've achieved something and that lessens the urgency to actually do something big. Likewise, I think we can say, yup, I've identified that and fail entirely to really, truly SEE the thing itself. The label may just distance us from relationship, experience and the kind of knowledge that is based in the real world rather than just in the neuronal archives of our minds.
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