Men who want to know about the world must learn from it in detail, said Heraclitus. And I believe that this is the basis not only of philosophy but also of science. This is how pre-Socratic people have a characteristic, which seems to me fundamental for research and reflection, they always asked about all the phenomena they observed. One of the most relevant questions was, where does life come from? And precisely, as you reflected in your post, many of those answers were in some natural phenomena. Interesting series, @sammminator.