You just selected and attempted a rebuttal of three of my points, points that formed the crux of my post.
But I do agree that you are failing to make an argument.
No. There really isn’t. Look, an argument requires a conclusion to be based on facts and evidence, and you’re not offering any. (It doesn’t exist.) Your entire discussion is based on hand-waving maybes and might bes (“some possibility”, “no reason to assume there wouldn’t be”). You aren’t saying “I think this is true because I have good reasons to believe it and here are my good reasons”. You are saying “I think this is true even though I have no reason at all, but hey who knows?”.
It would qualify as an appeal to ignorance, except that we are not actually ignorant about these things. “Hey who knows?” isn’t ever a good argument, but it’s especially poor when the answer is “well, in fact, lots of people know, and what they know is that this is wrong”.
What you are describing is not possible. We understand exactly, at the scale of individual molecules, how your eye detects light, how your nose detects substances, how your skin produces your senses of pressure and heat and cold and pain, and how all these things result in signals to your brain. Nothing in that understanding allows for any mechanism by which your suggested effect could be operating. In order for what you are describing to be possible, everything we know about physics, chemistry, biochemistry, cellular biology, and physiology would have to be incorrect.
It is true that one individual photoreceptor protein in your retina will respond to one single photon. It is not true that this sends a signal to your brain. You need about 60 to 80 photons per second to hit that threshold, so, no, you are not capable of “detecting” a single photon in any meaningful sense. But that’s irrelevant, because it doesn’t address the real problems with your suggestion.
We can use AAS to detect and quantify the amount of e.g. zinc or copper or iron in a sample, but it requires destruction of the sample, chemical decomposition of the molecules containing those atoms, injection of those materials into a flame at hundreds of degrees to produce single isolated gas-phase ions of those elements, and precise analysis of the photons that are absorbed by those gas-phase ions (e.g. 213.9 nm for zinc, but not 213 and not 215) from a background of all other photon wavelengths.
But looking at a plant involves none of those conditions. A plant contains metal ions bound into proteins, often embedded in cellular membranes, trapped within the cell walls. They are not isolated ions, they are not gas phase, they are not at hundreds of degrees, and while your eye can detect a few dozen photons emitted against a background of zero photons, it cannot detect a few dozen photons absorbed from a background of white light, and it cannot detect photons with a wavelength of 214 nm.
Zinc ions, in all forms found in biological systems, are colourless. You cannot detect it with your eye, even if it were present in high enough concentration to see it (it’s not).
Which form of iron do you hope to “see”? Iron in iron sulfur proteins? In Rieske proteins? In a cytochrome b? A cytochrome c? A cytochrome f? A cytochrome P450? An amino acid hydroxylase? In ferritin? Bound up with an iron transporter protein or chelating agent? These are all different chemical forms of iron. They have different structures, and they have different absorption spectra, so they have different colours. They are each the same colour as lots of other biological materials that don’t contain iron. You cannot discriminate these different forms of iron from other materials with your eye, even if it were present in high enough concentration to see it (it’s not).
Most vitamins, or nutritional precursors to vitamins, are colourless molecules. Those that are not colourless are not visibly distinguishable from other materials, even if they were present in high enough concentration to see them (they’re usually not).
It is not possible to detect the presence of individual mirconutrients in a biological sample just by looking at it.
You are not using the word “volatile” in a sense that is chemically meaningful or relevant to my argument. Volatile does not mean “decomposes if you let it sit around long enough at an elevated temperature”. Volatile means “has a high vapour pressure”. In order for you to smell something, it needs to be a gas-phase molecule that enters your nose. For you to smell it, a substance needs to evapourate readily enough that enough molecules of reach the gas phase and make it to your nose. No micronutrient has that property. You cannot smell them, even if there’s a pile of the pure substance sitting on a plate in front of you. And again, that’s not the case for a biological sample. The molecules are inside proteins, inside organelles within the cells. They can’t just escape and float over to your nose.
It is not possible to detect the presence of individual mirconutrients in a biological sample just by smelling it.
Nope, they’re really not.
Yes, I have but that’s irrelevant because:
a) the odour you are detecting from a hot metal roof is not the metal atoms,
b) the temperature of the roof is significantly higher than the temperature of a plant, so the plant minerals would be non-volatile even if hot metal atoms were (but they aren’t)
c) the chemical and physical properties of an iron atom in steel are not the same as the chemical and physical properties of an iron atom in iron sulfur proteins, Rieske proteins, cytochromes, oxygenases, ferritin, or in an iron transporter complex, so these forms of iron would be non-volatile even if non-biological iron salts were (but they aren’t)
d) the iron proteins and complexes in a biological sample are trapped within the membranes, organelles, and cell walls, so they cannot just escape and float over to your nose even if they were volatile outside of a cell (but they aren’t).
We don’t have to assume. We know. That’s not how cells work. You cannot absorb nutrients just by touching materials that contain them. You actually have to eat apples, not just hold them in your hand. Even if I took the plant cells containing the micronutrients and injected them into your skin, or directly into your blood, you still couldn’t make use of them, because they’re trapped in the plant cells. Even if you needed zinc, and I rubbed a bioavailable zinc complex onto your skin, and that zinc made it into your cells, there is no mechanism by which your skin is able to detect it, or for those cells to send a signal to your brain.
It is not possible to detect the presence of individual mirconutrients in a biological sample just by touching it.
There is no evidence that we can perceive the the presence of individual mirconutrients in biological samples using only our senses. There is no plausible mechanism by which such perception could occur. To suggest otherwise ignores a very deep and detailed understanding of the physics, chemistry, biochemistry, cellular biology, and physiology both of the nature of these substances and of the processes by which our senses operate.
No reason to believe it happens. No way that it could.