Behaviour & mcroorganisms
Increasingly, we find that the microorganisms which inhabit and in fact make up the bulk of most 'complex' organisms exert far more control over our behavior than we previously realized...from our food selections to our mate selections.
Given the wide range of organisms and possible reactions identifying any particular behavior to a particular organism may or may not be possible--and there will be interactions between such organisms.
Reductionist science (holding all but one variable stationary,) has distinct limits in investigating the universe--there are far more actions which are the result of multiple variables than there are that result from single variables.
Computer simulations are beginning to make it possible to investigate the huge multiple of interactions involved in any natural process--and are, in fact, probably the only way to reasonably investigate them at this time.
Humans prefer simple answers, but many events have no single answer, much less a single simple answer
The simplest answer is to pass everything off as 'fate' or 'God's Will,' both of which translate directly to 'I don't know.'
The scientific method is not magic. It's not even complicated.
It consists of doing things, observing what happens, formulating a predictive formula and testing to see if that formula is accurate. It is no more, nor less complex than determining the proper temperature to hard-cook an egg by making many of them at slightly different temperatures and deciding which are 'best' under whatever criteria you judge them.
But as the number of variables increase, so do the number of tests. The 'right' temperature for a freshly laid chicken egg may not be the correct temperature for a 2 week old egg, or a duck or other species egg, air pressure and composition might play a part as could any other element of the environment. Testing for each of these and their combinations rapidly becomes too complex to determine experimentally by changing only one variable at a time, and requires the development of valid rules which determine how substances react under different conditions.
Not only do different microorganisms behave differently, but they behave differently when associated with other microorganisms. Or in small numbers. Or in large numbers. Or in the blood rather than the gut....and many many other variations.
