ok so sorry if this sounds like a nonsensical rambling to you, i’ve just had an enlightenment
so for a while now i’ve known about the aristotelian 4 elements worldview that says that the world is composed of consecutive layers laying on top of each other.
there’s at least two variants of it: for the living and for the dead world. i.e. when you have living beings in the world or not. when there are living beings, the four layers are (from bottom to top): rocks, plants, animals, spirits (i.e. ideas / politics). each layer needs the lower one to feed itself, i.e. animals feed off plants. meanwhile they give resources to the upper layer to get their services, i.e. plants get their fruit eaten but get their seeds carried around.
for the dead, there’s four layers: rocks, water, air, energy (i.e. fire / sunlight). for example, the water corresponds to the plants because in every pond, algae start to grow etc.
now, what has bothered me is that rocks appear in both listings, which is weird. i think that the dirt is alive kinda solves this, because rocks (dead) and rocks (living) are not the same anymore. one is settled with microorganisms, the other one is not.
eh, idk whether that makes sense to you. have a nice day.
In this framework, there are rocks of the living world and rocks of the dead world…. I think. If I understood that properly. As others have pointed out, this kind of 4 element framing isn’t very realistic or useful, but that’s beside the point. Let’s just work with within the confines of the concept to see where it takes us.
I would argue that the rocks of the living world don’t necessarily have to be alive. They just have to support the layer above, i.e plants.
Realistically though, plants don’t require a solid foundation at all. Hydroponic farming exists too, you know. Plants can grow on rocks that have been autoclaved, but usually they grow on natural soil that is full of living things.
yeah … i’m still not fully convinced. the model has its uses but also its weaknesses. a good use case is that it demonstrates both evolutionary history and short-term history.
like in evolution, microorganisms (that probably fed of rock) were the first living beings with a high likelihood (RNA world hypothesis). this is represented by the bottom layer in the model. then developed plants/cyanobacteria that could utilize sunlight (great oxidation event). only after that it was possible for complex life, including multicellular animals, to develop, which feed off the copious amounts of biomass that the plants produce. so the short-term dependency of animals on plants is in fact reflected in evolutionary history, where (complex) animals could also only develop after plants.
it is no accident that eukaryotes developed after cyanobacteria. also all complex (multicellular) life is based on eukaryotes.
and only then were rites and spirituality (or just call it brain) in animals developed.
When you view that concept as a timeline, it fits pretty well.
Microbes can utilise rocks to make life, but that doesn’t really make the rocks alive. There’s a layer of primitive life sustained by dead rocks, or elements leached off them. Hydrothermal vents are a good example of that.
even with hydroponics the plants need minerals
Not just any random minerals. Specific elements need to be dissolved in the water in order to be utilised as nutrients. Originally, they may have been in a solid form, but only ions are allowed into the cells.