The parts of the human brain that are more or less similar to the parts of the brains of non-human vertebrates are the ones that are most "connected" with nature, so to speak. I say that in a descriptive sense, not a normative sense.

We live inside a world that has and is understood through the science of nature. — Shawn

Science is only one of the ways we understand the world.

I have been very cautious, as have other scientists, to not try and create things that could destroy or alter nature. — Shawn

I can't speak for you, but it is not true that scientists in general have tried not create things that could destroy or alter nature.

With man's insatiable need to make nature conform to his needs and even wants, what are your opinions about our current relationship with nature? Is it becoming better or worse? — Shawn

As I see it, historically we have lived in a world that was big enough to contain the results of humanity's actions. If we screwed up one place, we could just move to another. That is no longer true. Our population has gotten much bigger and our ability to affect the world has gotten much more potent and pervasive. We are at a point now where we are capable of rendering the Earth uninhabitable.

Now, I think that Tolstoy made an important point about the connection of mankind with his surroundings, being nature. Here is the quote:

‘One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.’
- Leo Tolstoy — Shawn

What did Tolstoy mean by "nature"?

what are your opinions about our current relationship with nature? Is it becoming better or worse? — Shawn

It varies by individual, but collectively - humankind is becoming increasingly worse, because there are so many of us

Perhaps the issue of human relationship to Nature is based, "loosely speaking", on the human belief that Nature is fixed, whether in its manifestation or its processes while humans are changing in their involvement with Nature.
That may not be true. Maybe humans (including their issues of mortality) are just part of Nature's current manifestation and current processes?
Just a thought.

quiet smile

With man's insatiable need to make nature conform to his needs and even wants, what are your opinions about our current relationship with nature? Is it becoming better or worse? — Shawn

We're part of nature, and co-evolve with other parts of it, such as our environment. This parthood-relationship can become better when we achieve a sustainable interplay with our environment, or worse when we fail e.g. by shortsighted, compartmentalized or just idiotic trade-offs that destroy what we're all part of.

Regarding what's perceived as true. Perception is a part of nature that's providing us with facts. Statements about those facts can be true or false.

With man's insatiable need to make nature conform to his needs and even wants, what are your opinions about our current relationship with nature? Is it becoming better or worse? — Shawn

When astronomers scan the cosmos for signs of an advanced civilisation, they're looking for signals that wouldn't appear in nature; they’re looking for the ‘non-natural’. They might either be electromagnetic transmissions (radio etc) or the spectral emissions of non-naturally-occuring substances like our hydrocarbons and industrial solvents. So it's the assumption that the signs of another intelligent species will be found precisely because they're not naturally occuring.

On the other hand, nature is nowadays idolised as representing purity or the unsullied state. This manifests as environmentalism, eco-tourism, and the respect accorded to indigenous cultures. All of which are perfectly respectable impulses. But it omits something which our cultural ancestors would have assumed important, which is that nature herself, aside from being nurturing and creative, is also implacable and destructive. So whereas for the perennial philosophers, nature was something to rise above, we, oddly, believe that being re-united with it is somehow transcendent. Which is odd, because all it really means is that the body will return to the elements (although maybe not for all the teeth fillings, hip replacements, and other non-natural elements that nowadays comprise our bodies.)

With man's insatiable need to make nature conform to his needs and even wants, what are your opinions about our current relationship with nature? Is it becoming better or worse? — Shawn

As mankind is a part of nature, not separate to it, mankind's relationship with nature is outside any judgment of better or worse.

Mankind is part of nature, not separate to it. Mankind is not separate to the surrounding world, but is an intrinsic part of the world. Mankind lives inside a world, and this world is what is called nature. Mankind is as much a part of nature as the surrounding world is part of nature.

Mankind's relationship with its surrounding world is the same relationship as one part of nature's relationship with another part of nature. When mankind tries to change its surroundings, this is no different to one part of nature trying to change another part of nature. The wind, being one part of nature, blows down a tree, being another part of nature. Mankind, being one part of nature, knocks down a tree, being another part of nature.

Mankind's relationship with its surrounding world is outside any judgment of morality, any judgement of better or worse. One part of nature trying to change another part of nature is part of the natural process, and therefore outside any judgment of morality. If the wind blows over a tree, is not relevant to ask if this is for the better or worse, as this is part of the natural process. It follows that mankind, as one part of nature, in trying to change another part of nature, the surrounding world, is also outside any judgement of morality, any judgment of better or worse.

Therefore, as mankind is a part of nature, not separate to it, mankind's relationship with nature is outside any judgment of better or worse.

Mankind is part of nature, not separate to it. — RussellA

I question that, Russell. If you were parachuted into a completely natural environment with no artifacts and minimal clothing, I suggest you would find survival extremely difficult (depending of course on the specific nature of the environment, rainforest probably being easier to survive than tundra or desert.) But our 'separateness' from nature seems perfectly obvious to me - we live in buildings, insulated by clothing, travelling in vehicles, none of which are naturally-occuring. So I think yours is rather a rose-coloured view in this respect :-)

It's similar to the age-old debate about the etymology of the word physis. Essentially, it boils down to the following dichotomy: does it mean nature, or does it mean nurture? Maybe it means both. Who says that artifice is exclusive to humans? Perhaps nurturing is the same concept as artifice.

If 'artefact' means 'something made' then only h.sapiens can really manage that, courtesy of the famous opposable thumbs (although that is common to apes also). That passage I quoted the other day from Norman Fischer about the origin of ownership, tools and language, and with it, the sense of self - surely that's relevant. And stone tools were being manufactured long before homo became sapiens. So it goes back a long way, perhaps even a million years. But the more h.sapiens becomes reliant on tool use, clothing, possessions, and so on, to that extent they're already becoming separated from nature to some degree. And then with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and large-scale manufacturing, this takes on a whole new dimension doesn't it?

In a way, @RussellA's post illustrates what I said in the post above: the tendency of moderns to idolise nature as representing purity or wholeness. Sans God, it is the nearest we can imagine to those qualities.

↪Arcane Sandwich
If 'artefact' means 'something made' then only h.sapiens can really manage that, courtesy of the famous opposable thumbs (although that is common to apes also). That passage I quoted the other day from Norman Fischer about the origin of ownership, tools and language, and with it, the sense of self - surely that's relevant. — Wayfarer

It is, but I'm not sure that he's right about that. Primatologists would disagree, for example. And there's evidence of mollusks arranging decorations (the famous "Octopus gardens"). Some species of birds, such as ravens, seem to understand the concept of "useful inorganic objects", etc.

And stone tools were being manufactured long before homo became sapiens. So it goes back a long way, perhaps even a million years. But the more h.sapiens becomes reliant on tool use, clothing, possessions, and so on, to that extent they're already becoming separated from nature to some degree. And then with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and large-scale manufacturing, this takes on a whole new dimension doesn't it? — Wayfarer

Yes, it does. In that sense, you're 99% right, I would say.

If you were parachuted into a completely natural environment with no artifacts and minimal clothing, I suggest you would find survival extremely difficult (depending of course on the specific nature of the environment, rainforest probably being easier to survive than tundra or desert.) But our 'separateness' from nature seems perfectly obvious to me - we live in buildings, insulated by clothing, travelling in vehicles, none of which are naturally-occuring. — Wayfarer

I'm never really sure what counts as nature in these discussions. I would tend to count buildings and machines as a part of nature too, since we made them and they are expressions of human interaction with our environment, just like a bird's nest or beaver's dam. I know some people prefer to see human activity as a disruption of nature and that nature is that which is without human influence. Of course the idea of nature is a human conceptual construction in the first place so there's that..

I'm never really sure what counts as nature in these discussions. — Tom Storm

Like I said:

When astronomers scan the cosmos for signs of an advanced civilisation, they're looking for signals that wouldn't appear in nature; they’re looking for the ‘non-natural’. They might either be electromagnetic transmissions (radio etc) or the spectral emissions of non-naturally-occuring substances like our hydrocarbons and industrial solvents. So it's the assumption that the signs of another intelligent species will be found precisely because they're not naturally occuring. — Wayfarer

If nature refers to the ecosystem prior to or outside of human manufacture or artifacts, then I can't see how that is an especially problematic definition.

I think that’s a common view, but I also think that's a way to determine whether particular conscious creatures are present. I personally question the notion that if something is man made it is not “natural “.

So ‘natural’ means ‘anything whatever’. Meaning, it has no definition.

I think it’s a problematic word, yes. Does supernatural mean anything? Is the supernatural unnatural?

Heidegger's critique of calculating reason.

We are in the age of the calculating technique in which nature is manipulated or at least has the power to do so. Man's eagerness to dominate in order to control and predict.

The calculating reason turns everything into an "available resource" losing the opening to the mystery of being according to Heidegger.

Heidegger a conservationist?

Heidegger was talking about a passive attitude towards the sending of being. Let us say that this is doing justice to nature.


I do not agree. A pure and passive experience of being is being under the view of immediacy. But how could there be justice without law? One cannot stay passive, one must make laws that protect nature, and why not, even more science so that violence does not repeat itself.

At this point, "natural" and "nature" has become hackneyed and practically meaningless by being used and misused for so many purposes. No news to you.

Still, it seems like there is an over-arching system of matter and energy, or "nature", which existed before us and without us, even as "it" was bringing us into existence. We can build a bridge using raw materials provided by "nature" which we process into concrete and steel. If we follow the rules which describe how nature's materials work, the bridge will last--though nature set's about destroying everything we make--not willfully, of course, but because the "forces of nature" such as rust never sleep.

Plastic is a bit more problematic. Nature made petroleum but we made plastics, many of which nature has not previously dealt with, and which will last and trouble various species for a long time--or forever, perhaps, and maybe it should not be considered "natural".

If Nature is TRUE because it is unchanging and eternal, then perhaps plastic is also TRUE. Yuck!

Nature made petroleum but we made plastics, many of which nature has not previously dealt with, and which will last and trouble various species for a long time--or forever, perhaps, and maybe it should not be considered "natural". — BC

Definitely not!

I think it’s a problematic word, yes. Does supernatural mean anything? Is the supernatural unnatural? — Tom Storm

there's rather a good article on Aeon, just popped up, by Peter Harrison, who's books have been mentioned here from time to time, The Birth of Naturalism. (Not quite finished it myself yet, but a very thorough piece of work.)

As for me, I can perceive a distinction. Again I hark back to the Buddhist term for the Buddhas, 'lokuttara', meaning 'world-transcending'. In Tibetan iconographic representations of the 'wheel of life' - the various worlds, hellish, heavenly and human among them - the Buddhas are depicted as being on the outside of the circle, so to speak (as well as often being inside at the same time, i.e. transcendent yet immanent). But the essential thrust is that the Buddhas are no longer subject to the natural cycle of birth-and-death and are in that sense outside of or beyond it - beyond the world of becoming, hence, 'lokuttara'.

But then you find something similar in Christianity

Every progress in evolution is dearly paid for; miscarried attempts, merciless struggle everywhere. The more detailed our knowledge of nature becomes, the more we see, together with the element of generosity and progression which radiates from being, the law of degradation, the powers of destruction and death, the implacable voracity which are also inherent in the world of matter. And when it comes to man, surrounded and invaded as he is by a host of warping forces, psychology and anthropology are but an account of the fact that, while being essentially superior to them, he is at the same time the most unfortunate of animals. So it is that when its vision of the world is enlightened by science, the intellect which religious faith perfects realises still better that nature, however good in its own order, does not suffice, and that if the deepest hopes of mankind are not destined to turn to mockery, it is because a God-given energy better than nature is at work in us. — Jacques Maritain

Therefore, as mankind is a part of nature, not separate to it, mankind's relationship with nature is outside any judgment of better or worse. — RussellA

I question that, Russell. If you were parachuted into a completely natural environment with no artifacts and minimal clothing, I suggest you would find survival extremely difficult (depending of course on the specific nature of the environment, rainforest probably being easier to survive than tundra or desert.) But our 'separateness' from nature seems perfectly obvious to me - we live in buildings, insulated by clothing, travelling in vehicles, none of which are naturally-occuring. — Wayfarer

Just because history has brought you, me and Russell to a 'place' where we are alienated from [our] nature, doesn't mean we are, by nature so alienated.

We are conceited apes. Sure, the story about Eden is a myth; but an insightful one. If there is a human fall, it is our fall from nature; our infatuation with knowledge, the this and that of our own constructions, and our concomitant turning away from life, or nature, or so called God's creation, where, as Russell rightly observes, there is no judgement, no better, no worse; only 'is-ing'

We are conceited apes. — ENOAH

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? — Charles Darwin, private correspondence

Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? — Charles Darwin, private correspondence

Right. A monkey is free from the burden of trust and convictions. We are enslaved by these fantasies.

Sure. I'm not proposing we go back. We can't. And it's far too late. And I'm not suggesting our 'fantasies' aren't often beautiful, functional etc. Just that they are ultimately fantasies, and we are ultimately nature.

sorry, response above.

A monkey is free from the burden of trust and convictions. We are enslaved by these fantasies. — ENOAH

As I’ve said, I see the modern idolisation of nature as a kind of nostalgia, where nature is beautiful and nurturing and pure and innocent. Love of nature is supposed to take us back to that state of innocence or purity. To say we’re ’ultimately nature’ is to try to return to that state of primordial purity. And that’s what is a fantasy. The reality of the human condition is far from that.

To say we’re ’ultimately nature’ is to try to return to that state of primordial purity. And that’s what is a fantasy. The reality of the human condition is far from that. — Wayfarer

Paradoxically, I agree. To say we're ultimately nature is an idealization.

And I fully agree that the human condition is far from that.

But I still believe the reality is we are simply nature, and all else is the plasticization of nature, or as you noted, [not petroleum but] dead dinosaurs.

If you were parachuted into a completely natural environment with no artifacts and minimal clothing, I suggest you would find survival extremely difficult — Wayfarer

True, but doesn't mean that mankind is not a part of nature.

I agree that if I was parachuted into a different natural environment, such as the Sahara, I would probably die. But if a whale was parachuted into a different natural environment, such as Provence, it would also probably die.

That something is a part of nature does not mean that that something is able to survive outside its natural environment.

If a tree, one part of nature, found itself in a volcano, another part of nature, the tree couldn't survive.

That mankind is not able to survive in a different natural environment does not mean that mankind is not a part of nature.
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But our 'separateness' from nature seems perfectly obvious to me - we live in buildings, insulated by clothing, travelling in vehicles, none of which are naturally-occuring. — Wayfarer

This is a circular argument. If mankind is a part of nature, then anything mankind does, such as building houses, is a part of nature.

In which case ‘natural’ has no meaning, because it doesn’t differentiate anything.

Three examples:

1. Light: Sunlight (natural) vs. LED bulbs (artificial)
2. Intelligence: Human cognition (natural) vs. AI algorithms (artificial)
3. Sweeteners: Honey (natural) vs. Aspartame (artificial)

In which case ‘natural’ has no meaning, because it doesn’t differentiate anything. — Wayfarer

The fact that a word may have more than one meaning does not make the word meaningless

Most words have more than one meaning. For example, "heavy" can mean "having great weight" or "difficult to bear". The fact that a word has more than one meaning doesn't make the word meaningless.

On the one hand, as mankind is a part of nature, one meaning of "natural" could be everything that mankind makes, including LED bulbs. On the other hand, the meaning of "natural" could be restricted to those things that are not made by mankind, such as sunlight, and differentiated from those things that are made by mankind such as LED bulbs, which can be named as "artificial".

The word "natural" is not made meaningless because it has more than one meaning.