“I can observe how a crack grows by studying cracks within a rock outcrop from thinnest to widest. Like a foot in the door, wind-blown dust drops into these cracks and prevents them from closing. A dusty crack retains more moisture than a bare crack, so when the moisture freezes in winter, the dusty crack will be pried a bit more by ice crystals … dust particles drop deeper into the crack, making space for more wind-blown dust. More dust holds more moisture, which wedges the rock still farther apart, which allows more dust to settle in. Bold plants colonize this dust and send their root hairs prying into the microscopic forerunners of cracks.
This process involves a back and forth spiraling between cause and effect … Does the accumulated dust cause the crack or does the crack cause the accumulated dust? Both, in a spiral of tiny changes.
… Just as an edge dissolves into a gradient when I focus on it so cause and effect dissolve into a spiral when I study them … When I think of change in terms of a simple cause with an effect, I tend to think that large effects require large causes. But when I see cause and effect as a spiral, I understand that large effects can be produced by a very small spiral looping over and over again. Spirals lead me to look smaller. As I open my mind to the significance of smaller changes. I find more and more spirals … The World is full of spirals containing unknown power.”
Paul Krafel – Seeing Nature