Nature, Natural, Naturally
. Gabriel
Moran
Raymond Williams in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, writes that Anature is perhaps the most complex
word in the language...any full history of the uses of >nature= would be a history of a large part
of human thought.@[i] If Williams is correct, then the
first question is whether it is realistically possible to attempt an overall
clarification of the term. A book by
Arthur Lovejoy and George Boas in the 1930s listed sixty-six meanings of
nature.[ii] How can one make generalizations about the
meaning of Anature@?
The task would seem hopeless.
People continue to use the term natural so
that an effort must be made to avoid total equivocation, as well as some
ambiguities that might be dangerous. At
the least, examining the complexity of this term might be a warning to some
people that the issue is not settled. There is a widespread assumption today that,
while in recent centuries Anature@ (in its relation to Aman@) was misunderstood, the issue has
now been put right, at least in theory.
The one sure conclusion which will emerge in this chapter is that any
simple statement of the relation between the human and the natural is
deficient. Only with a paradoxical
formulation does one have a chance of comprehending this relation.
The relation between the human and the
natural is of significance in almost every field of study and every aspect of
existence. Sometimes, as in legal theory
where Anatural law@ is discussed, the meaning of Anatural@ is obviously at stake. So also Anature@ and Anatural@ show up in anthropology, sociology
and psychology. The term is not so
prominent in politics, economics or engineering but it always hovers in the
background.
Is it possible to propose one meaning
for the term natural, and if so, how does one proceed? If reaching a single meaning is unrealistic,
how does one move from sixty-six, or some other unwieldy number of meanings, to
a manageable and practical range of meanings?
Peter Coates lists five main meanings that the term nature has had in
western history.[iii] I would suggest that the main meanings can be
reduced to three: nature as an inner principle of things; nature as what is not
Aman@; nature as the name for
everything. I will argue that the first
and third meanings are compatible; the second is an historical aberration that
is still with us but should be retired.
For any old and important term, two criteria
are required to determine how best to use the term: First, the proposed meaning
must somehow include the etymology and all the major shifts in the term=s history? Second, the proposed meaning must provide a
consistent and comprehensive usage for today=s problems?
The first criterion cannot be met without
digging into the twists and turns of history.
The most that this chapter can offer is snapshots of dramatic shifts in
the term=s history. Fortunately, for 2500 years there has been a
continuous history with a relatively clear translation from one language to
another. I will select a few people,
such as Aristotle and Rousseau, and a few schools of thoughts, such as Stoicism
and feminism, to illustrate the historical shifts of meaning.
Ancient
Beginnings
Why does the term nature exist at
all? Sometimes one can give a precise
answer to who first used a word and why the word was invented. In the case of old words, rich in meaning,
the origin is usually too deeply embedded in history or pre-history to provide
clear answers. With the term nature,
however, we have some helpful historical sources that touch on the origin of
the idea.
The Greek word for nature, physis, seems to have emerged with the origins of
philosophy itself. Reflecting on the
diversity and movement in the world, the early Greek philosophers sought to
bring things into a unity and to explain change. What most struck them were living things that
are born, grow, decline and die. The
term nature seemingly was coined to identify the source of change in
things. Living things have Aself-movement,@ that is, a source of change which
itself does not change but instead gives stability to plants and animals over
time.[iv]
The first place to take a snapshot of
nature=s history is Aristotle. The term has a history of many centuries
before Aristotle but he is the first person we know of who tried to sort out
and to synthesize the disparate meanings of Anature.@
Aristotle thus becomes the conduit for much of what we know of Anature@ before him. And Aristotle is a model for how to go about
deciding on a word=s meaning. Aristotle lists six meanings that the word
had acquired by his time. From that
summary he then attempts to give Athe primary and chief sense@ of the term.[v]
Aristotle=s first meaning of natural is birth
or origin; he attempts an etymological link between nature and birth. Although his etymology may have been
inaccurate, nature and birth were associated before Aristotle and after him.[vi] The connection was solidified by Cicero=s choice of natura
(from natus) as the word to translate physis. The
English word took its lead from Latin and retained the connection to birth.
Aristotle=s other meanings also survive to the
present. Nature refers to what is
inherent, to what is a source of motion, to what things are made of, to the
primary being (or essence) of living things and by extension to the essence of
every thing. From these six meanings
Aristotle concludes that Anature is the primary being of those
things that have in them the source of their own movement.@[vii]
What Aristotle seems to be missing is the
collective meaning of Anature@ that became prominent later and is
sometimes thought to be the primary meaning. That is, nature as the aggregate of things, a
name for the whole world is in some eras the main meaning of Anature.@
While there is nothing necessarily wrong with this evolution of the
word, it is helpful to remember that the collective meaning was the secondary
not the primary meaning. It may still be
helpful to start by thinking of nature as the inner principle of living things
more so than as a general name.
The contrast here is not exactly between
concrete and abstract meanings. Even at
the individual level Anature@ is an abstraction, not a
perceptible reality but a philosophical concept invented as an
explanation. The Hebrew Bible, for
example, has nothing to say about Anature@; it lacks the word.[viii] The Bible of the Jews (the Christian Old
Testament) has plenty to say about plants and animals, as well as the human
relation to the world of living things.
But in contrast to Greek philosophy, the Hebrew Bible speaks in concrete
terms of flesh and blood and breath.
Jews, Christians and others have to be
careful about reading the concept of Anature@ back into the Hebrew Bible. High blown generalizations about the Jewish
attitude to nature are bound to be inaccurate.
The problem of abstraction has been compounded by the coining of the
twentieth-century neologism AJudeo-Christian,@ usually followed by the term
tradition. The phrase does not do
justice to either Jewish or Christian or tradition. It hides the differences between Jewish and
Christian traditions, as well as differences within both Jewish history and
Christian history, and the relation of their respective Bibles to later
developments.
In addition to the relation of particular
and general meanings in the use of Anature,@ the other main question throughout
the centuries has been the relation of the humans to nature. The era of Plato and Aristotle, the fourth
century B.C.E., represents one of the first great shifts in the meaning of Anature.@
The developed speculative systems of Plato and Aristotle gave a new prominence
to individual human life and to rational concepts for speculating on the human
relation to the cosmos. It was now
possible to think of the human being as in some sense an outsider to the
natural world of other living beings.
Earlier religions may have implied this outsider status but
philosophical concepts, such as being, nature, essence, form, matter and soul
forced some explicit choices.
At his trial, Socrates spoke of a soul
that would survive his death, a belief that seems to entail that the real human
being is an outsider to earth=s cycle of birth, growth, decline,
death and rebirth. Other Platonic
dialogues also suggest an eternal, immutable form as more real than the
perceived world.
Aristotle, in contrast to Plato, was a biologist,
keenly attentive to the material world around him. Despite hints that intellect is separable
from matter, Aristotle treated humans as living beings who have a nature. Human nature acts through powers that can be
trained by habits of intellectual and moral excellence. One might say that Aristotle=s first interest is neither the noun
Anature@ nor the adjective Anatural@ but the adverb Anaturally.@
Living beings act naturally when their acts flow from what they are and
action is directed toward its proper good.
For Aristotle, humans have a superior
position of power and self-reflection but they are still governed by the laws
that govern living things. Ernst Mayr is unfair to Aristotle in saying Afor theologians and philosophers
alike, man was a creature apart from the rest of life. Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant agreed in
this, no matter how much they disagreed in other aspects of their philosophies.@[ix]
Surely Aristotle and Descartes differed in their view of animals
(Descartes thought them mechanisms) and the human relation to (other)
animals. Aristotle was aware of the
paradox: that the human is neither Aa part@ of nature nor Aapart@ from nature. Aristotle=s nature remained concretely realized in each living being,
including human individuals.
A second snapshot of nature=s history is from several centuries
after Aristotle, about the time of the Christian era. A group of writers known to history as the
Stoics made a permanent impression on Anature.@
Christianity absorbed considerable amounts of Stoicism into its
ethics. And even today, or especially
today, a kind of Stoicism is evident in discussions of the environment.
The Stoics were one of the groups to move Anature@ in the direction of becoming
co-extensive with the cosmos. At the
same time, philosophical thinking had become more conscious that the humans= possession of reason gave them a
perspective different from others. The
world was made for gods and men - those who possessed reason - according to the
Stoic Chrsippus (280-207 B.C.E.). But clearly the men are in a position of
subordination.[x] Nature is all enveloping; if men claim to be
independent they will only increase their suffering and eventually death will
prove who is stronger.
The Stoics began recognition of what
became the faculty of free will, but they advocated acceptance of nature as the
only wise course to follow. A wonderful
allegory, attributed to either Zeno or Chrsippus,
captures the relation of humans and nature.
AIf a dog is tied, as it were, to a
wagon, then if the dog wishes to follow, it will both be pulled and follow,
acting by its own choice together with necessity; but if it does not wish to
follow, it will in any case be compelled.
The same applies to human beings....@[xi]
The practical consequences of this
philosophy are evident in the writings of the Stoic, Epictetus. The author, a Greek speaking Roman slave,
advises human acceptance of whatever nature demands, including death. AIf you kiss your child or wife, say that you are kissing a
human being; for when it dies you will not be upset....What upsets people is
not things themselves but their judgments about things. For example, death is nothing dreadful (or
else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates) but instead the judgment
about death that it is dreadful - that is dreadful....Just as a target
is not set up to be missed, in the same way nothing bad by nature happens in
the world.[xii]
The language of Aman and nature@ appears with Stoicism but the
earlier language of living natures, including human nature, does not
disappear. Not until the seventeenth
century does the language of man and nature become standard fare.
AMan and nature@ did not become the language of Christianity because Stoicism=s metaphysical picture was
unacceptable. Christianity starts from
the idea of a creator of living beings and, at the center of those beings is the human being as
the priest of all creation. To early
Christianity, Plato seemed to be the perfect match. A school known as neoplatonism shaped much of the theology of the West.
Neoplatonic
thought, like early Greek philosophy, saw an organic unity to the world. Humans are not apart from the other
natures. All natures participate in a
world soul, even though human reason is recognized as a superior power. Human reason is a participant in reason which
itself participates in a much greater reality.
What especially distinguishes neoplatonism is
a push beyond being
to the ultimate source called the One. Neoplatonism has often been interpreted as a disparagement
of the material world because matter is at the bottom of a ladder. But there is no corresponding ladder upward;
humans find salvation not by despising and fleeing this world but by a journey
inward.[xiii]
Neoplatonism=s distinction between beings and the One provided the
framework for Thomas Aquinas=s distinction between the essence or
nature of a thing and its act of to be.
Human nature exists by participation in Ato be.@
Nature or natures are given a positive place but their act of being is
received.
The human being has a human nature which
determines what it is, but who the person is goes beyond what a
person is. Each person is unique not
from its nature but because of its act of being. Human life is not subordinated to a law of
nature. Ethical questions have to
respect the limits of nature while going beyond the fixed forms of nature.
Neoplatonic
thought was the framework within which the rediscovery of Aristotle occurred in
the middle ages.
Aristotle=s physics and biology kept neoplatonism from losing touch
with the empirical world. Thomas Aquinas
managed to unite the two traditions but the end of the Renaissance brought out
a conflict between a desiccated Aristotelianism on
one side and a neoplatonic philosophy allied with
magic on the other side.
The Roots
of Modern Nature
Modern scholarship traces the beginnings
of modern science to the twelfth century when Christian thinkers developed a
distinction between the natural and the supernatural.[xiv] The significance of this language was that it
asserted the intelligibility of natural things and the human ability to
exercise control by the use of rational methods.
Contemporary critics of Christianity often
have little understanding of the distinction between natural and
supernatural. The meaning of Anature@ is therefore lost if one assumes
that it is being opposed to man or history or culture.
For Thomas
Aquinas, the nature does not exist on its own; nature
is the intelligible form of living beings, including the human. The natural within a supernatural world
indicated human limitation.
The seventeenth century brought about the
greatest shift since Aristotle in the meaning of nature. There was a continuity
with the science and the Apractical arts@ of the middle ages, but also a
discontinuity hidden under the term Anature.@
The common belief that science and religion were at war in the
seventeenth century is inaccurate. AThe new physicist wanted nothing so much as a philosophy of
nature that harmonized with mainstream Christianity, the better to combat the
socio-religious threat of magic.@[xv]
The theologians were only too happy to join with the scientists. Both groups were fighting a magic, partly
derived from neoplatonism,
in which nature was a force within living things. The mathematical sciences and Christian
theology combined to reduce Anature@ to objective data.
Scientists took over the phrase Anatural revelation@ that had emerged in the middle ages
as the younger sister of Asupernatural revelation.@
Gradually, this underling edged out the supernatural. Even among the theologians, except those who
moved in the direction of biblical literalism, the main and practical source of
knowledge was the natural revelation.
Natural revelation turned out to be a bad
bargain for theology when the only natural revelation became the unveiling of
nature itself. Nature acquired most of
the attributes that had been assigned to God (self-sufficiency, prime mover,
eternal). In the seventeenth century,
motion was thought to be supplied from outside matter; the need for a mover was
the premise from which the existence of God was proved. But when the eighteenth century decided that
nature contains motion within itself, it became possible to speak of God or
Nature interchangeably (Deus sive Natura) which led to the choice of either God or Nature
(Deus aut Natura). By that time Nature held the stronger hand.
The supreme place of nature or Nature in
eighteenth century thought had overtones of Stoicism. Nature was to be revered as mother of us
all, an attitude that is evident in the nature mysticism of modern romantic
movements. However, the main current of
modern science stood against a reverence for nature as the great mother.
In the Stoic parable a small dog is tied
to a large cart and has only the choice of trotting along with the cart or
being dragged by the cart. By the
seventeenth century, the dog (AMan@) had grown up and thought it could
now drag the cart. Whereas first-century
Stoics advised acceptance of nature=s ways, the seventeenth century invented the language of Aman conquering nature.@
The person who most clearly brings together the
two strands of modern thought, reverence for nature and power over nature, is
Francis Bacon (1561-1626).
Bacon was as influential as any one
individual for shaping the meaning of nature during the seventeenth to
twentieth centuries. Abstract man was
set in contrast to abstract nature. The
verbs that Bacon used to describe the relation were Acommand@ and Aconquer.@[xvi]
Far from thinking that conquest is arrogant, Bacon describes the needed attitude as one of
humility. His governing metaphor was Aa bridal chamber@ or Aa nuptial couch for the mind and the
universe.@[xvii]
Many contemporary feminists are appalled by this metaphor but, for
Bacon, the scientist is a gallant suitor who must use chastity, respect and
restraint. Bacon condemns those who
value knowledge in itself; Athis is to use as a mistress for
pleasure what ought to be a spouse for fruit.@[xviii]
The danger in Bacon=s use of Aman@ is that under the cover of abstract
man=s power over abstract nature, some
men have power over other men, men have power over women and the humans have
exploitative power over other living species.
The chaste and reverent attitude toward nature which Bacon professed was
overwhelmed by the instrumental attitude of seeing nature as an object for
control and profit. Nature, as C.S.
Lewis would later write, is Athe name for what we have, to some
extent, conquered.@[xix]
For an understanding of Francis Bacon one
must be aware of the theological framework he was assuming, something
contemporary commentators usually miss.[xx]
For Bacon, man=s religious duty is to read the Book
of Nature and restore human control over nature. As in so many authors since the twelfth
century, Bacon posits three stages to history.[xxi] In the first stage, nature was free and
develops herself in her ordinary course.
In the second stage, nature is affected by the insubordination of
matter; man and nature are at odds with each other. In the third stage, nature
will be molded by art and human ministry.[xxii]
Far from thinking that Christianity had brought
about dominion over nature, Bacon was critical of the failure in the past to exercise that
power. Like Rousseau, Kant, Schiller and
other later writers, Bacon foresaw a third age in which nature and art come
together in harmony. The title page of The
Great Instauration has the prayer Amay he graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true
vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures.@[xxiii]
For today=s reader, the term apocalypse may
suggest violence, but
apocalypse simply meant revelation. This
apocalyptic vision is intended to support Bacon=s marriage metaphor: the search for
a harmonious union of man and nature as the fulfillment of history.
The writer who perhaps offers the best
litmus test for today=s difficulty in grasping the meaning
of nature is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
Living more than a century after Bacon=s abstract nature and in the midst
of the eighteenth-century=s glorification of nature, Rousseau
carries an earlier view of nature into the modern world.
For Rousseau, the opposite of nature is Asociety,@ a word whose meaning he helped to
shape. His educational treatise, Emile,
which opens with a well known description of the clash of Aman and nature,@ is easy to misread. Rousseau is not referring to the relation of
human and nonhuman; he is not praising nature in contrast to the ways of
humans. Nature refers to the inner life
of the individual man (and woman). This
human nature=s destiny is as a reasoning being
whose life is governed by ethical and religious convictions.
Rousseau published Emile in the
same year as his better known work Social Contract(1762). But the usual interpretation of Emile, as a hands-off attitude for the development of an
autonomous individual, makes it an apolitical book rather than an education for
political transformation.[xxiv] Summaries of Emile usually indicate
that the reader did not get beyond the first two pages or at most the first two
of five books. With that to go on, the
reader is almost certain to misread what Anature@ means for Rousseau and what kind of
education he is recommending.
Human
nature requires instruction. After age
twelve, which Rousseau calls the age of reason, the
boy is subjected to regular lessons on politics, ethics, sex and religion,
preparing him to be husband and father in the family that is to be a microcosm
of political revolution.
The usual interpretation of Emile
leaves inexplicable how Rousseau became the inspiration for the rationalistic
philosophy that followed from him. When
Karl Barth went looking for the origins of modern
Protestant theology he found Ait is from Rousseau onward and
originating from Rousseau that the thing called theological rationalism, in the
full sense of the term, exists.@[xxv]
Some of Rousseau=s catchy phrases and images
contribute to the misunderstanding of his complex meaning of nature. He is famous for referring to a Astate of nature@ a phrase that leads to the
assumption that he is educating Emile to live in a state outside civilized
life.[xxvi] However, Rousseau writes that Athe man who speaks of the >state of nature= speaks of a state which no longer
exists, which may never have existed, and which probably never will exist.@[xxvii]
Rousseau staunchly opposed the Christian doctrine of original sin but he
was faced with explaining how a pure human nature gets entangled in the messes
it does. Rousseau keeps the idea of an Edenic state of nature before a psychological fall into
society=s corruption.
The root of this moral failure, trying to
live according to society=s expectations, lies in the flight from death. Unless humans control their fear of dying
they love a false version of their selves and so make themselves
miserable. At the end of book three,
Emile is to have learned that death is a necessity of nature. ATo live free and to depend little on
human beings is the best way of learning how to die.@[xxviii]
This attitude of accepting death is
possible because in book four we read AI no longer sense that I am anything but the work and
instrument of the great Being who wants what is good, who does it and who will
do what is good for me....@[xxix]
His attitude to death is that AI aspire to the moment when freed from the shackles of the
body, I shall be me without contradiction or division.@[xxx]
Rousseau could not solve his problem of (human) nature without recourse
to religious beliefs. He found those
beliefs in Atrue Christianity.@ This true Christianity or Anatural religion@ turns out to be eighteenth-century
Deism.[xxxi]
Contemporary Geography of Meaning
Besides the history of the term, one has to
attend to its contemporary uses, what I have referred to as the geography of
its meaning. The
history and the geography of meaning meet in the present. It can be somewhat arbitrary where to draw a
line between (past) history and present use.
The present meaning of a term refers to a time that is more than this
month or this year or this decade. In
the case of Anature,@ we seem to be undergoing a drastic
change that started four or five decades ago.
The best way to identify the meaning of a
term in its present use is to ask what the meaning excludes, that is, nature as
opposed to what. There are dozens of
candidates for this position but I will comment on three of the most common:
artificiality, culture, nurture.
What are we to make of artificiality these
days? When today=s advertisers claim that the bread,
the beer or the ice cream is Aall natural,@ the claim entails a denial of
anything Aartificial@ in the ingredients of the food.
This assumption that natural is good and artificial is bad represents a
dramatic shift over the last half century.
But during the same time, the genetic engineering of foods has continued
to expand, which suggests some inconsistency in the value of the natural, as
opposed to the artificial. Is the
irradiation of food natural while the addition of chemicals is not
natural? Raymond Williams notes that Anature is what man has not made,
though if he made it long enough ago - a hedgerow or a desert - it will usually
be included as >natural.=@[xxxii] The simple clear contrast of
natural and artificial thus has many shady edges. All artificiality is not opposed to nature;
artifice is what human beings do. But
some artificiality does violence to human or nonhuman natures.
A second and more ambiguous contrast these
days is one that is made between nature and culture. Peter Coates begins his history of nature by
referring to Aan elemental juxtaposition of nature
and culture.@[xxxiii] He goes so far as to say that Awithout a concept of culture as the
works of humankind, there can be no concept of nature.@[xxxiv]
The problem here is that this meaning of culture is quite recent and
remains highly ambiguous. Although in
past centuries Acultural@ would have been in some tension
with Anatural,@ it was by no means its simple
opposite. ACultural@ began as an agricultural metaphor
and even in some uses today it reflects an intimate relation to the
natural. The meaning of Anatural@ depends not only on the word to
which it is set in opposition, but also to the era and the social context when
such a contrast is made.
A third opposite to Anature@ is Anurture,@ a pairing that goes back about a
century and a half but shows no sign of disappearing. Dispassionate commentators on this pair of
words regularly say that it is not an either/or choice. Is it not obvious that
both nature and nurture are important in human life?. While everyone might agree with that
proposition it does not stop passionate advocacy on one side or the other
The reason why this debate never seems to
go anywhere except in circles is the extraordinary ambiguity in what are
assumed to be the names of two sides.
The Anature@ in the debate is human nature but
the common meaning of nature as forces opposed to the human keeps creeping
in. On the other side, Anurture@ can quite logically be thought to
be intrinsic to human nature (though not to most natures). However, Anurture@ sometimes includes the human
employment of environment (one of the meanings of Anature@).
That is, just about anything can show up on either side of this confused
debate.[xxxv]
There has been some serious struggle with
the meaning of Anature@ in two most prominent movements in the
latter half of the twentieth century: feminism and environmentalism. The movements have sometimes run parallel, at other times they converge or overlap. A feminist complaint about Aman and nature@ was obviously to be expected after
the general linguistic change in the use of Aman.@
With only the two categories of man and nature, women had most often
been implicitly on the side of nature, that is, part of the world that needed
taming. But one should note it is the
relation that needs changing, which is not accomplished simply by replacing Aman@ with Ahuman.@
When one moves away from abstract man and
abstract nature, there is no way to state the relation between men and women as
a single relation. The natures of men
and women are in question, as well as the natures of each living thing and the
cycle of life. The issue of women being
oppressed or excluded is inseparable from the environmental or ecological
question.
Many authors today continue to speak of
man and nature, especially when the topic is a grand historical, scientific or
philosophical generality. No one should
rewrite past literature to eliminate Aman@ or assume that the use of Aman@ was always oppressive. Nevertheless, the language of man and nature
deserves to be completely retired; it is incapable of addressing today=s problems. The language of Ahumans and nature@ may be an improvement, but if it is
assumed to be a solution, it can further obscure the deeper problems.
A different tack is taken by some writers
in ecology who think that Aman@ should be absorbed into nature.[xxxvi] That would be a comprehensive solution but
one that cannot be consistently stated. If nature is all, then any human
project, other than rapid elimination, is in the wrong direction. There may be a few Stoics today who believe
in submission to Nature but university professors hardly fit the profile. If in the past, man was said to be Aoutside@ nature, the picture cannot be
righted by a simple reversal that would put man Ainside@ nature. Nature embracing man may seem to be an irenic
picture but it is one that raises more problems than it solves.
Jane Jacobs, in the forward to a book on
urban design, writes: AThe basic premise is that human
beings exist wholly within nature as part of natural order in every respect....Readers
unwilling or unable to breach a barrier they imagine separates human kind and
its works from the rest of nature will be unable to hear what this book is
saying.@[xxxvii]
Jacobs should not assume that readers who disagree with her cannot
breach a barrier they imagine separates humankind and nature.. Someone might argue that while humankind is
not separate from the rest of nature, Jacobs=s own work on urban design shows
that neither are humans Awholly within nature as part of
natural order in every respect.@
In some respects humans exist in a natural order, in other respects
humans change that order.
The ecological question is not whether
humans should Atamper with nature.@
Human activity has an effect on human nature and other natures. The question is what kinds of human actions
might be doing damage to important ecological systems. Because human knowledge is always limited,
what seems to be progress in one part of the world may be causing horrendous
problems in another geographical or temporal part of the world. Jules Baggini has
great fun in ridiculing people who want to rely on what is natural and, for
example, are concerned about genetically modified food. With food and other necessary human resources
it is a legitimate question to ask what is compatible with human nature: the
health of humans both short term and long term, as well as what is compatible
with natures in the human environment.[xxxviii]
Summary
It is apparent from both the historical
survey and from the full range of today=s problems that the relation of human(s) and nature(s)
cannot be stated as a simple choice of inside or outside. Neither is the language of part and whole
adequate. In some sense, humans can be
said to be Awithin@ nature, if nature is taken to be
the sum total of things. But from the
time of pre-socratic philosophy to the present, Anature@ is in some sense Awithin@ the human. Certainly human nature is within humans and
so is the very idea of nature.
An
abstract meaning of nature needs to be regularly grounded in particular beings,
human and nonhuman. What needs examining
today is not Aman and nature@ or Ahumans and nature@ but the relation of men and men,
women and women, men and women, adults and children, humans and nonhuman
animals, humans and other living beings, and the ecological systems of living
beings (including men and women) in a physical environment.
Then when we try to generalize about the
human relation to nature we will look for alternatives to in/out,
conquer/conform to, above/below. We
might, for example, say that human activity should respect the natural order
while not necessarily conforming to it; that human actions should work with the
rhythms and contours of nature, both human and nonhuman.
The etymological root of Anature,@ what is given by birth, is still
present in the word=s use today. The natural world is one in which organisms
are born, grow, decline and die. Humans
cannot avoid Ainterfering@ in the processes of birth, development and
death. That interference is true of their own cycle of birth and death, as well
as the cycles of birth and death all around them. This intrusion ought to assume that human
knowledge is always scanty (even about humans) and that harm is likely if the
intrusion is violent.
Short of all humans becoming Jain monks,
humans will remain the great killers; they cannot breathe, wash, eat or walk
across the grass without killing. The
world of natural things involves killing but that is not a licence
for humans to kill whatever they wish and to kill in any manner. The first principle of ethics should be Ado violence to no one.@
It is an ideal that humans should strive for but realize they can never
fulfill, a fact that makes apology and forgiveness integral to ethics.
The phrase Anatural law@ goes back as far as the
Romans. For the Stoics it may have been
an accurate description of their ethics. The law of nature determined that AMan@ was called to submit to ANature.@
In the Christian middle ages the natural was
related to the supernatural, both within the human and in the whole of
creation. Grace (or the supernatural)
was said to build on nature; human actions were in this supernaturally ordered
world. While the natural, as the
substrate of the supernatural, should not be violated or dismissed, the life of persons
in community is not dictated by the natural order of things.
In the last three centuries, natural law
advocates have generally fought a losing battle against a variety of positions
that have emphasized human freedom and creativity. Discussion of natural law received a boost
at the time of the Nuremberg trials.
Surely there is something wrong with executing millions of people even
if a nation=s laws do not forbid it. International and environmental events since
that time have continued to raise the question of natural law but without
persuading many people of its validity.
What is needed is a conversation between
peoples of East and West, North and South, a conversation that might learn from
earlier philosophy and religion as well as today=s science. There might be achievable agreements on what
not to do to nature(s) even if there is no agreement on one law or a set of
laws called natural.
It would be helpful if the word Aunnatural@ were saved for those actions that
directly violate a thing=s nature or an ecological
system. Attaching electrodes to someone=s gums or genitals is an unnatural
act; it does violence to a human=s nature. Some of the
ways in which the life of an individual are being extended in today=s hospitals may be unnatural, a
violent intrusion into the process of dying when there is no realistic hope of
the person returning to life in a human community. One can also say that acts such as polluting
a river, which once seemed harmless, may rank as unnatural acts.
In contrast, some things once thought to
be unnatural can now be seen as a variation in human nature. That especially applies to sexual activity. Humans, like other animals, naturally
reproduce through sexual union. But
human nature has always allowed a playful side to sexual activity. Humans have been imaginative and creative in
using sexual organs, much to the shock of neighbors who have not encountered
that action. Throughout Western history
the term unnatural was attached to same-sex practices. Today the practice of homosexuality is
generally accepted as a variation in human activity that does not violate
(human) nature.
Dying is one of the activities of natural
things. A human being, shaped by a human nature, is a natural being that
dies. But humans are not merely
natural. Who they are
is distinctly personal, which is in tension with the natural order both
within and outside their bodies. Human
death is personal and communal. Human death is a biological event but it is not
wholly describable in biological terms.
Politics, art, science and religion are a refusal to accept the
biological limits of personal life.
Kubler-Ross=s insistence that death is natural
assumes a very limited choice.
The
alternatives are either to accept death as biologically necessary or else to be
hooked to a machine that will not allow death its place. The choice is between the biological and the
technological. But if human nature
includes both the biological and the capacity for the technological, then the
choice which is offered today is not the only one possible. There may be other ways to resist the
dehumanizing of death than by talking about natural death.
[i]. Raymond Williams, Keywords, 184, 186.
[ii]. Arthur Lovejoy and George Boas, 447-56.
[iii]. Peter Coates, Nature..., 3: His five are: physical place more or less unmodified by people; collective phenomena of the world or universe; essence of things; inspiration and guide for people; conceptual opposite of culture
[iv]. R.G. Collingwood, Nature
[v]. Aristotle, Metaphysics,
[vi]. According to David Ross, Aristotle=s mistakes the origin of the word
[vii]. Aristotle, Metaphysics
[viii]. The word first appears in medieval Hebrew
[ix]. Ernst Mayr, 24.
[x]. For quotation from Chrsippus, Coates, Nature, 27.
[xi]. Sharples, Studies, 77; Hippolytus, Philosophy 21.
[xii]. Epictetus, Enchiridion, #13, #5, #27.
[xiii]. Neoplatonism
[xiv]. Chenu, 12th c and
[xvi]. New Organon 118-19.
[xvii].Great Instauration, 14.
[xviii].Advance, Book 1, p 35 in Everyman ed
[xix]. C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 82.
[xx]. Leiss as exception, 48-71.
[xxi]. Joachim
[xxii]. New Organon, 273.
[xxiii]. Great Instauration, 29.
[xxiv]. Jane Martin is one of few commentators who emphasizes the political implications of Emile
[xxv]. Karl Barth, Protestant Theology, 233.
[xxvi]. Rousseau expressly denies this is his intent, Emile, ?
[xxvii]. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, Preface, 169; also Nietzsche in Ansell-Pearson, 50
[xxviii]. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 208.
[xxix]. Ibid., 292.
[xxx].Ibid., 293.
[xxxi]. Ibid., 294.
[xxxii]. Raymond Williams, 188.
[xxxiii]. Peter Coates, Nature, 1.
[xxxiv]. Peter Coates, Nature, 6
[xxxv]. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2001, wades into this debate with the supreme confidence that he has the scientific information to settle the debate. Unfortunately, he never asks whether the terms of the debate make sense, starting with the title and the subtitle of the book which are in conflict. A Ablank slate,@ far from being a denial of human nature is a very clear idea of human nature. The slate may be empty but the more important fact is that it is a slate.
[xxxvi]. For example, Taylor, Respect for Nature,
[xxxvii]. Jane Jacobs, Nature of Economies, Preface.
[xxxviii].Jules Baggini, Making Sense(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 182: AWhen communities rely on >natural= sources, they expose themselves to disease. At the very least, they need unnatural apparatus, such as pumps, to access clean water supplies. Anyone who suggests we would do better to go back to nature for our water supply is frankly nuts.@ At the end of the chapter, he notes that the argument over genetically modified foods includes the question of human health but that is a scientific question not a philosophical one (194). I would suggest that whether scientific or philosophical, that is the main question being raised about Aunnatural@ foods.