Let us for a moment think of an aspirin; you will immediately recall the mark in the middle. This mark is designed to help those who take a half dose. Every product that we see around us, even if not as simple as the aspirin, is of a certain design, from the vehicles we use to go to work, to TV remote controls.
Design, in brief, means a harmonious assembling of various parts in an orderly form designed for a common goal. Going by this definition, one has no difficulty in guessing that a car is a design. This is because there is a certain goal, which is to transport people and cargo. In realisation of this goal, various parts such as the engine, tires and body are planned and assembled in a factory.
However, what about living creatures? Can a bird and the mechanics of its flight be a design as well? Before giving an answer, let us repeat the evaluation we did in the example of the car. The goal, in this case, is to fly. For this purpose, hollow, light-weight bones and the strong breast muscles that move these bones are utilised together with feathers capable of suspension in the air. Wings are formed aerodynamically, and the metabolism is in tune with the bird's need for high levels of energy. It is obvious that the bird is a product of a certain design.
If we leave aside the bird and examine other forms of life, we encounter the same truth. In every creature, there are examples of extremely well-conceived design. If we continue further on this quest, we discover that we ourselves are also a part of this design. Your hands that hold these pages are functional as no robot hands could ever be. Your eyes that read these lines are making vision possible with such focus that the best camera on earth simply cannot achieve.
Hence one arrives at this important conclusion; all creatures in nature, including us, are of a design.
Bombardier Betle and Chemical Weapon
The name of the animal you see in the picture is the "Bombardier Beetle". The defence method of this beetle is not like that of other animals. In moments of danger, a mixture of two chemicals (hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone) that is previously stored in a storage chamber is transferred to an explosion chamber. With the accelerative effect of a special catalyst (peroxidase) secreted from the walls of the "explosion chamber", the mixture turns into a horrible chemical weapon at 100°C. Scalded by the boiling chemical substance squirted with pressure, the enemy panics and gives up the hunt.
A COLOURFUL WORLD
Have you ever thought what it would be like to live in a world without colour? Free yourself for a moment from your experience, forget all that you've learned and start using your imagination. Try to visualise your body, the people around you, the seas, the sky, trees, flowers, in short everything in black. Imagine that there is no colour around you. Try to think how you would feel if people, cats, dogs, birds, butterflies, and fruits had no colour at all. You would never want to live in such a world, would you?
Most people may never have thought about what a colourful world they are living in or wondered how such a diversity of colour has come to exist on earth. They may never have given a thought to how a world without colour would be. This is because everyone who sees was born into a world full of colour. However, a model of a black and white, colourless world is not impossible. On the contrary, the really amazing thing is our living in a bright, colourful world. (In the following chapters, we will discuss in detail why the existence of a colourful world is so amazing)
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A colourless world would normally be thought of as having only black, white and shades of grey. However, black, white and shades of grey are also colours. In this respect, it is difficult to imagine colourlessness. To describe colourlessness, one always feels the need to mention a colour. With statements such as "it was colourless, completely dark", "there was no colour in her face; it was completely white" people try to describe colourlessness. In fact, these are not the descriptions of colourlessness, but of a world of black and white.
Try, just for a second, to imagine that all of a sudden, everything loses its colour. In such a situation, everything would mix with everything else and it would become impossible to distinguish one object from another. It would become impossible to see, for example, an orange, red strawberries or colourful flowers on a brown wooden table, for neither would the colour of the orange be orange, nor that of the table brown, nor that of the strawberries red. For a person, it would be quite annoying to live, even for a short time, in such a colourless world, which is even difficult to describe.
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Colour has a crucial role in man's communication with the outside world, in the proper functioning of his memory, and in his brain's fulfilment of its learning functions. This is because humans can develop appropriate connections between events and places, people and objects only through their external appearances and colours. Neither hearing nor touch alone suffice to define objects. For humans, the external world only means something when it is seen as a whole with its colours.
Identifying objects and our surroundings are not the only benefits from the diversity of colours. The perfect harmony of colour in nature gives the human soul great pleasure. In order to see this harmony and derive pleasure from every detail of it, man has been equipped with a pair of eyes, which have a very special design. In the world of animate beings, human eyes are the most functional and can perceive colours in their smallest details, so much so that the human eye is sensitive to millions of colours. 1 Evidently, the visual apparatus in humans that works so perfectly has been specially designed to see a world full of colour.
