Science and Reductionism
Scientists are very curious people, and some of them are very good at figuring things out. They figured all of this out by looking not at the things in the universe, but at how all the things interact with each other. By doing that, they uncovered the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology that were making those interactions happen.
When most people open the hood of a car, they see an engine. When a mechanic opens the hood of a car, he sees a radiator, a water pump, radiator hoses, a thermostat, a fan, belts, a battery, battery cables, an alternator, a distributor, spark plugs, spark plug wires, an air filter, a fuel filter, a fuel pump, a starter, etc., etc., and an engine. Inside the engine, hidden from view, is a crank shaft, a cam shaft, cylinders, pistons, piston rings, valves, etc., etc.. To most people, a car works because it has an engine. To a mechanic, a car works because of how all the parts of the engine interact with each other. For an engine to run properly, all the different parts of the engine don’t need to simply exist, but also to push, pull, and rotate each other correctly, and make electricity, liquids, gasses, and heat flow in certain ways, as opposed to any other ways. There are a fairly small number of ways all those parts can interact with each other to make the car work. There is a much larger number of ways for all those parts to interact with each other to make the car not work.
Planetary biology is the same thing, applied to the entire world.









