"Experimenters studied a single grass plant, winter rye. They let it grow in a greenhouse for four months; then they spirited away the soil . . . and counted and measured all the root hairs. In four months the plant had set forth 378 miles of roots – that’s about three miles a day – in 14 million distinct roots. This is mighty impressive, but when they get down to the root hairs, I boggle completely. In those same four months, the rye plant created 14 billion root hairs. . . In a single cubic inch of soil, the length of the root hairs totaled 6,000 miles."

-- Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

It’s generally accepted that humans are pretty smart cookies, especially when compared to lemmings or rabbits. In the past couple of centuries, homo sapiens have made leaps and bounds when it comes to understanding the universe. What started with Newton’s laws and his invention of calculus grew into a revolution that extends to today: the human genome project, wireless internet, and the nuclear bomb all spring to mind.

Human knowledge expands exponentially these days, and the result is that we’re spoiled. Now, if it can’t be proven in a lab, we won’t believe it. There’s no way we would believe that rye grass grows 6,378 miles worth of root systems in a single cubic inch if a team of scientists hadn’t sat down and measured it. Now we can believe it; but can we comprehend it? Like Annie Dillard’s, our minds are boggled.

There’s nothing comfortable about a good boggling. We are thoroughly rational beings, and by knowing things we feel like we can maintain some measure of control. Control is comfortable; the things that are beyond our comprehension are not. And as the old saying goes, "The more you know, the more you know you don’t know."