In science we often use the term "field." Fields are domains of influence — they impose order within the physical world. In physics we speak of electro-magnetic fields, nuclear fields, and gravitational fields. Most of you will remember scattering iron filings upon a piece of paper and then putting a magnet underneath. The iron filings then organize into a clear pattern that reflects the magnetic field. But there exist additional fields associated with living systems. They have been given various names such as biological fields, mental fields, and social fields.

These more mysterious fields have been studied extensively in various living creatures. For example, millions of insects such as the compass termites from Australia form into a super-organization, develop complex, enormous and unique structures without "physical blueprints." Hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies take off on a migration of thousands of miles that ends up with the great-great-grandchildren returning to the same location in Mexico — that's 5 or 6 generations removed. There has been a hundred years of research on homing pigeons. It has shown that memory of the journey out, familiar landmarks, the sun, smell, and magnetic fields can't explain their ability to return over long distances. Research studies with starlings have shown that a new migration cycle can be established in one generation. Therefore the process is not hard wired, not genetically fixed, not instinctual, and hence, doesn't require a chance genetic mutation. These represent examples of field effects in living systems, where a field organizes collective behavior.

On 9/11 Americans received an emergency call — the terrorists' destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and at the Pentagon. As a child I remember the field change in the country after Pearl Harbor -- the sudden shift from diverseness and isolation to national unity and resolve. Only now I was in Moab, a small town in southeastern Utah, when the terrorist attack occurred. Yet I felt a similar shift in the social field — small American flags were mounted in holes drilled into trees, large flags hung from construction cranes, and at a local restaurant Americans spontaneously started singing God Bless America to a group of French visitors. We were reactivating our American belief in life, liberty, and justice — reestablishing a field that I had experienced sixty years ago.