Nutrient Quotes (8 quotes)
A plant is a living thing that absorbs in microscopic amounts over its surface what it needs for growth. It spreads therefore an exterior whereas the animal develops, through its mouth, an interior. The definition is vague but it gives the reason why the limb of a tree ends in leaves, not fingers, and it helps to explain how in the long run of evolution a monkey came to sit on the tree and a cow to ruminate in its shade.
According to the historian D. B. McIntyre (1963), James Hutton, often known as the father of geology, said in a lecture before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in the 1790s that he thought of the Earth as a superorganism and that its proper study would be by physiology. Hutton went on to make the analogy between the circulation of the blood, discovered by Harvey, and the circulation of the nutrient elements of the Earth and of the way that sunlight distills water from the oceans so that it may later fall as rain and so refresh the earth.
Aluminum has been called the sustainability nutrient of the world, and for good reason. Consider that 75% of all the aluminum made since 1886 is still in use. So from a sustainability standpoint alone, yes, [Charles] Hall really did become that benefactor to humanity—big time.
I propose to provide proof... that just as always an alcoholic ferment, the yeast of beer, is found where sugar is converted into alcohol and carbonic acid, so always a special ferment, a lactic yeast, is found where sugar is transformed into lactic acid. And, furthermore, when any plastic nitrogenated substance is able to transform sugar into that acid, the reason is that it is a suitable nutrient for the growth of the [lactic] ferment.
I recognize that to view the Earth as if it were alive is just a convenient, but different, way of organizing the facts of the Earth. I am, of course, prejudiced in favour of Gaia and have filled my life for the past 25 years with the thought that the Earth might be in certain ways be alive—not as the ancients saw her, a sentient goddess with purpose and foresight—more like a tree. A tree that exists, never moving except to sway in the wind, yet endlessly conversing with the sunlight and the soil. Using sunlight and water and nutrients to grow and change. But all done so imperceptibly that, to me, the old oak tree on the green is the same as it was when I was a child.
It is said that such inedible animals as star-fish take up about 80 per cent of the nutrients in the North Sea.
Most manufacturers take resources out of the ground and convert them to products that are designed to be thrown away or incinerated within months. We call these “cradle to grave” product flows. Our answer to that is “cradle to cradle” design. Everything is reused—either returned to the soil as nontoxic “biological nutrients” that will biodegrade safely, or returned to industry as “technical nutrients” that can be infinitely recycled.
The fibrous material and muscle were thus digested in the same way as the coagulated egg albumen, namely, by free acid in combination with another substance active in very small amounts. Since the latter really carries on the digestion of the most important animal nutrient materials, one might with justice apply to it the name pepsin.