Connectedness in nature ("the and")

Of course, the world of nature is a world of connectedness. Soil (along with sunlight and water) nurtures plants and trees, animals eat plants and each other, their droppings in turn nurture the soil, and in death they further nurture the soil and the bacteria that reside there.  In that small way, we continue to live after death, continuing to nurture and participate in the process of life.  Similarly, in a manner of speaking, our current place in the world is simply a continuation of evolutionary processes that began millions of years ago, beginning with the birth of single celled creatures, and continuing through the development of intelligent animals, our parents and voila.  We are simply participants in something that began long long ago and will continue long after we are gone.  In that very limited sense,  the Indian belief in reincarnation can be said to have a scientific basis.
In sum, we are connected, both physically and temporally, to the world around us, to the world that was and the world that will be.  The "and" is ever present in all its glory.
The process of analytical thinking consists, in large part, in breaking things down into their component parts and examining these components.   Thus, analytical thinking, and possibly all thinking, involves a destruction of the connectedness that exists in nature.   We destroy them so we can see them.  As the most wonderful part of being human is having the ability to see.  In school, unfortunately, it is easy to lose sight of this big picture. It takes a great teacher to bring it into focus.