Who first fried cheese? and other questions

Who first fried cheese? Who began domesticating the wolf? Who figured out how to make cheese—or let cheese be made? Who was the first man to shave? Who figured out potatoes?

The hungry. The brilliant. The bold.

Other questions

How do electromagnetic waves propagate without a medium? How did our ancestors make it across the Atlantic without puking their guts out? Do animals make choices?

Old ponderings

I wrote the following years ago but think the questioning is worth posting now, despite the shortcomings in the argumentation.

Dendritic patterns, trees branching, rivers gathering, brain cells organizing, they're all going toward or away some prime mover. In the case of trees, they branch toward the sun. Rivers branch together as a function of gravity. These fractals are "naturally" occurring, but consider the analogous structure their form might have to variables outside the context of their form itself. Observe a river branching from infinitely many water sources toward one ocean, observe intently and track every tributary and measure the weatherability of the soil, and you will never come up with a theory of gravity. You will come up with a theory of downstream and that all water flows downstream. You will not intuit the force of gravitation. Similarly, observe a tree branching out in fractal flow. Observe intently and track every leaf and branch. You will never come up with a sense of the star that is Earth's sun. You will not intuit the presence of a single star radiating light onto the daylight existence of the tree.

Yet our theories maintain that rivers flow according to the force of gravity and that trees branch in order to maximize their receipt of sunlight.

Can this mean that our appreciation for other fractal patterns is lacking some outside understanding either driving or attracting the pattern constituents to their form? What lies outside our appreciation of chaos theory that might accommodate such a sense of a more whole understanding of how apparently chaotic systems behave? What can answer why they behave so?

That is, to say that there is some greater fractal topography to the universe leaves the question open as to what provides a "prime mover" for such patterns. What essential force is left out? What belies the surface of fractal topography?

What is the sun? What is the Earth's core?

Must this link science and philosophy?