FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Turbo]

Taking interest in biology, human nature, and the brain, I'd like to add to this thread (if it has not gotten too old).

I can easily see how collecting builds psychological real estate, but another fascinating component is the fact that minerals seem to be cross-culturally interesting. As a biologist, my theory is that human interest in art and aesthetics (which will include minerals) has adaptive roots.

One proposed beginning of human fascination with bright and rich colors is the need for early hominids to be able to identify ripe fruit. This may partly explain the seemingly innate human interest in minerals, which can share with fruit vibrant coloration as well as properties like clustering, symmetry, and reflectivity.

I also think that there is an adaptive basis for the seemingly innate human interest in symmetrical and geometric forms. I propose that this interest arose from an environmental demand on animal life to identify its own natural symmetries, so as to identify its own kinds, distinguish life from non-life, and identify numerous plant and animal resources that have unique symmetries. So, to me, initial hominid interest in color and form was all about making biologically relevant distinctions. For example what patterning and coloration indicates friend or foe, food or poison, healthy or unhealthy mate, ripe or unripe, etc.

What minerals have, particularly those with distinct crystal structures and gem-like qualities, is symmetry, color, and reflectivity. They are the only objects of the inanimate world that have features of the living world! Perhaps our interest in minerals is a generalization of our innate interest in life's form and beauty. This makes sense since we often describe minerals in terms of life. Crystals grow rather than precipitate or deposit, we often liken them to flowers, and many cultures have assigned to crystals powers relevant to human life, particularly in achieving balance, vigor, and health. The crystal, in essence, has become the only one the dead rocks that carries "life energy" or quality.

[jimB]

I collect them because I like them !

[Les Presmyk]

I am with JimB.

[Jason]

I collect gems and minerals because it astounds me and fascinates me that nature can produce such fine things....some folks collect paintings and art..done by MAN..easy..anyone can paint a picture but to have nature do something so unique and beautiful it really baffles the mind..there is not supossed to be geometry and clean crisp lines in nature ..nature is supossed to be muddled with no fine lines but it does it every day with crystals and minerals...we are all like fine art collectors/connoisseurs but the difference is we all get/buy from the same artist..nature

[jorge santos garcia]

By the contrary, in nature nothing appears by chance, even though it may seem. Since nature is not somebody's artistic creation, it's laws and rules of formation, arrangment, growth and development are very rigid, based on mathematics (and subsidiary on fisics, chemistry, geometry) and the repetition of forms (simetry, fractals, etc)

If the basis of everything is the atom and it has a rigid geometry, there is no room for anachronistic experimentation or chaos.

The spiral shells shape follows a mathematic rule called logarithmic spiral and his growth follows a mathematic rule called gnomotic growth. The way leaves came out of the branchs follows the same growth pattern. There's a 'rule' for the beauty called the 'Fibonacci number' which explains the proportions of things we usually consider beautiful (even the human faces) and also explain the reproductive rates of animals (it was discovered trying to explain rabitts reproductive rates).

Mathematics in everywhere in nature. Chaos and disorder are the result of human intervention on nature.

Jorge

[Jim]

I think the idea that there is no randomness in nature is quite debatable. More debatable is the idea that everything is balanced.

Per Bak (1996; Bak, Tang, & Wiesenfeld, 1987) formulated the notion of self-organized criticality in physical applications, and the literature increasingly shows important applications of criticality approaches in medicine, biology, meteorology, economics, and psychology (West & Deering, 1995).

Self-organized criticality views nature as perpetually out of balance, although temporarily organized in a stable state where change is possible according to well-defined statistical laws. In other words, the basic notion implied by most theories that equilibria are the norm throughout nature is rejected. Instead, Bak proposes that systems with many components are actually in a disequilibrium such that relatively minor disturbances may lead to avalanches of events. Such events occur in time “at all scales,” i.e., what occurs over the span of one minute replicates itself over the span of months or years.

I thought these ideas would add to the discussion.

Virtually everyone would agree with the idea that people collect because "they like them." But that does not answer the basic question, which is "Why do we like collecting minerals?" Collecting anything probably has roots in evolutionary advantages, but I see psychology largely answering the more specifically why we collect minerals -- especially in today's era. Just my two cents.

Cheers,

[Les Presmyk]

Nature's state of equilibrium is that it is dynamic and always changing. In the short term, mankind can strain and might even be able to effect nature. In geologic time, we are only fooling ourselves, or it is the epitome of ego, to think that whatever we can do somehow outweighs what happens naturally. During the history of the earth, there have been several cataclysmic events that have caused 90% to 95% of the existing life to be eliminated. Yet, life, although different, returned each time. We might be able to change the environment to make it unliveable for some of the plants and animals today, but the dinosaurs of 100 million years ago would find it refreshing.

The order and beauty of minerals is what intrigues me. That with all of the forces at play, all minerals can be classified within six crystal groups and the chemistry can be defined. This is true whether an azurite is from any one of the continents except for Antartica. However, within that chemical compound and crystal symmetry, many different forms can occur.

[jorge santos garcia]

This new subject is very interesting to me, unfortunately my English knowledge do not allows me to go thorough a deep technical discussion., would need a lot of time to search for the right words, don't like mispell errors or wrong ideas being passing by.

But let me just say two things. I was talking about the rules that are the basis of nature laws - snail shell may be a little bigger or small but its growth is perfectly defined by mathematical laws and genetic code. The same happens with cristals (without genetic code efect, of course). They growth pattern doesn't depend of the individual.

At nature's large scale and that means all the interrelationships that occurs between biotic and abiotic components, of course mathematical laws doesn't apply. Nature tends to balance, which sometimes is broken by nature himself, but then it searchs for a new balance. However, humans are disrupting nature for some million years. Things we have for granted are result of human activities. Animals that we may think always lived near us may be the result of human activities (here in Portugal, the deers were introduced by the romans, 2.000 years ago, if you ask to the most of the portuguese they say deer always lived here). Landscap is also transformed by man for such a long time (the mediterranean forest - 'la dehesa' in Spain or the 'montado' in Portugal, usually considered a natural forest are the result of hundreds of years of human agricultural and domestic grazing) that people see it as 'natural'. These are two small examples of the way humans can affect nature's balance. We could go on with the human effect on nitrogen cycle, the water cycle, the deforestation, and so on. They may not always be as bad as we think, but means that we are the ones who have a quick effect on natures balance, without giving him time to recover and get a new equilibrium. The results of our action, good or bad, will be felt at long term (or maybe not so long).

Why we collect? We like beauty and want to have it. We like beautiful faces, eyes, bodys, cars, clothes, paintings, we even do surgery to get better look or to pretend we are still a (beautiful) twenty years old boy/girl. We have the capacity of desire and the will for possess things we find beautiful. And minerals are really amazing - their perfection, shapes, colours, associations.

Jorge

[Les Presmyk]

Jorge,

Your english is fine and with your last note, you clarified a number of things for me. I will stand by my comment that in geologic time, we are not a factor. There are now areas of the Sahara Desert that are sustaining growth that 200 years ago was just sand, not as a result of cultivation but because of shifts in the weather patterns. While we may have changed the appearance of areas, that is not necessarily a bad thing. We are the one animal who has the capacity to change its environment. All of this comes at a cost but 10 milliion years from now, it is anybody's guess as to what we will be and what the earth will look like. There were alternating warmings and ice ages long before man was around.

[Jason]

Jorge i think you are looking to deep into my first point..true, math can be applied to most things but at our current level it's only theory..not even our most powerful super computers can use mathmatics to predict the weather a week in advance accurately..with crystals and minerals you can readily see the order and geometry associated with them..you look at a leaf or a tree and you can't see any geometry or order..one snail shell can and will look totally different from the next, where as crystals and minerals can all be grouped in the same class and all have the same structure and one beryl crystal looks the same or close to the next beryl crystal..it's one of the few things[crystals/minerals] that seemingly produces straight lines(generally speaking) in nature