“There is a tremendous sense of excitement that there is something really interesting going on and we want to know what that is,” says Professor Don Cowan, director of the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. “It is a desire to understand the system. What is going there? What is happening?”
How about this: "Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas using systematic observation, controlled experiment, and Bayesian inference" :-)
The notion that these circles are the result of large-scale self-organization on the part of the grasses (and maybe other creatures) is an intriguing one. I have a very speculative novel that plays around with the idea of evolution operating on all scales: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-ebook/dp/...
While Newtonian physics was the go-to explanatory metaphor for several centuries, it's plausible that in the 21st century we'll start to see metaphorical evolutionary explanations become more common. If we can encourage that habit in ourselves and others it may help us see more creative, non-linear solutions to our problems, rather than the simple Newtonian action/reaction, force/motion model.
Can't think of a better summary of science!