One thing that I don’t think many people reaslise on a day-to-day basis is that changes happen at all scales and their effects can be felt across all scales. The macro scale affect the micro scale, and in turn, the micro scale can affect the macro scale.
For example, an entire field of wheat can be killed at the cellular or molecular level by spraying it with chemical toxins. This results in the disappearance of a visible thing on a bigger scale. The dead wheat then decomposes, a result which later manifests itself as changes in the soil chemistry. When wholly other different large-scale changes subsequently occur, replacing the field of wheat with something else, that again then affects the visible scale. These micro- and macro-scale responses and consequences can continue to alter themselves in this manner until reaching equilibrium. All events are related together and caused either directly or indirectly by each other.
These perturbations continually fluctuate and influence each other across vast differences in scale.
Furthermore, I also think that large-scale effects are always caused initially by small perturbances. What I mean by that is that every event in history is caused by a smaller, prior event. Some of us like to think that this is not the case, and that only large-scale changes can only ever be the result of even larger scale effects. But I think if you have read about chaos theory and the term “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”, then you’d probably agree with me. Say I hit something with a hammer. You might think that the hammer causes large scale changes in whatever it is that I destroy. But what made me decide to strike the hammer in the first place? Wasn’t it really caused by some of my neurons?
