This is the first issue of Polynature a regular feature introducing various ideas from the sociology, social history and contemporary philosophy of nature, curated by Nigel Christian.
Enjoy the read!
NATURE, EVERYDAY
“Nature” is one of those “big” nouns whose meaning we rarely stop to think about in our everyday lives. Yet insofar as there can any longer be fundamentals, in art, science, the huamities and politics, “nature” is a fundamental concept. A “meta-” concept. It could realistically be argued (with due respect to, but in partial disagreement with Marx) that the history of humanity is the history of our struggle with the environment. A struggle with what is lazily known as “the natural world”. So at a time when it seems almost certain that our relationship with “nature” is changing irrevrersibly (not for the first time in our history) might it be beneficial to forget everything we knew about the word “nature”, start with a clean slate and set about re-learning the words’ meaning? Polynature on Urbanautica believes so.
To examine how “nature” is spoken of, everyday, let’s see how it’s defined by popular reference works. Dictionary.com gives «1) the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities». Here, humankind and “nature” are opposites, antonyms. This is a clear and basic definition, with no hesitation or fuziness. It states what nature is and what it is not. There’s a clear and identifiable dualism. Maybe that’s a little too convenient? Let’s check that elsewhere. Wikipedia gives: «in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention». Similar, but with a hint of doubt. This is a definition “in general” only. It makes allowances for more specific, alternative definitions. The next sentence offers some specifics; «…manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature» less confident definition, then, but with the same antonyms. The second defination at dictionary.com reiterates that “nature” is «2) the natural world as it exists without human beings or civilization».
We have two definitions in agreement. Human society, civilization, and all its (our) products are not nature. Everything else is. At the broadest level this dictionary definistion is effective. If we ever forget what nature is we have here a working definition to fall back on.
But that’s excluding a lot of stuff from “nature”! The objection is obvious and immediate. Are we really to believe that in everyday usage the word “nature” excludes ourselves as a species, all of human society and all our products, intended and not? Interpreted pedantically this definition excludes every material object, living or not, between, say, a mile below the surface of the earth and the outer reaches of the solar system, or further even than that if we count the distance our radiowaves have travelled (which conservative estimates put at 50 light years).
Dictionary definitions are by necessity abstractions from everyday language. They should only be taken as a guide. There is no single defintion of any word, and certainly not of “nature”. Dictionaries of course recognise this and always offer alternatives. Dictionary.com lists twenty definitions. Their list is incomplete and inadequate. The ways in which “nature” is understood, everyday, in common sense are myriad, hence the title of this editorial, Polynature.
An example of how many meanings of “nature” can be invoked in just one short text is the following from the photography blog of Charles N. Hedeen (the original text is here. The text accompanies a black and white photograph of a beaver dam over a large stream or small river. The photograph is titled “Construction, nature’s way” and subtitled “The beaver dam on the day I found it, 23 November, 2009”. It reads as follows:
«[This is] my constant reminder of how mankind has effectively seperated himself from nature. [W]e once were part of nature and her awesome chaotic laws. When a beaver builds a dam it only adds to the beauty of nature. [W]hen man builds a dam, or a boiler, or a wind turbine what do we add to nature? Nothing. [W]e are no longer natural creatures. The sky has some blue in it for the first time in days. Fluffy clouds are streaming in from the Southwest [U.S.A]. The beaver dam is a 5 minute drive and a 5 minute walk away. It never disappoints. It is always new».
In these one hundred words no less than thirteen statements, claims or implications about what nature is are made. There is no need to labour the point and analyse each of them here, but some are worth comment. The primary motivation for citing the passage above is simply to show that there are very many different meanings of “nature”, most of which go unquestioned in current everyday usage. However, outlining them will allow some brief introductions to topics to be covered later in the Polynature series.
To begin, lets scratch at the claim that we have “seperated” ourselves “from nature”. This is closely related to the second theory of nature expressed here; that with our industrial and post-industrial technologies we have put ourselves “outside” the rest of life on earth (“above” is also commonly used in this regard). Questions of evolutionary biology and/or Descartesian philosophy are to be found just under the surface here.
There are those who would take a hardline materialistic (“materialistic” in a pre- or non-Marxian sense) or solely evolutionary view of human life and argue that in actuality we have not “seperated” ourselves from nature at all. They may argue that a human dam is no less natural than a beaver’s dam and that even our most extensive/intrusive technologies are mere material extensions of the biologically evolved human brain. This conception of the natural world – in which there is absolutely no distinction between humanity and nature – is also to be found in dictionary.com’s menu of definistions; «5) the universe, with all its phenomena. 6) The sum total of the forces at work throughout the universe». Beyond the religious objections this view of life is difficult to dispute, but has the singular disadvantage of negating human consciousness and reducing all thought, all human history, to physics. It’s a valid claim, but in the meantime you and I will go on seeking meaning in the world, our actions and lives just the same.
Unless we wish to end the discussion there we must be accept that we are not solely biological beings. Unless we attempt to deny any variant of the “human exceptionalism” argument we must start from the position that there is a fundamental difference between ourselves and the rest of life on earth. But does this mean there must be a sharp divide between “mankind” and “nature”? This question will occupy many, if not all, future editions of Polynature, and, we hope, be answered conclusively in the negative.
Next, note that in the above quotation, the beaver dam is taken as representative of “nature” as a whole. The dam is not said to be «the beaver’s construction» but «nature’s construction». Any animal, bird or landscape can be made to substitute for all of “nature” in this way, and routinely is, both in everyday life and in artistic practice. We take a walk through a field, we’re “walking in nature”. We take a camping holiday we’re going “back to nature”, we picnic against a mountain view and we’re “soaking up nature” and so on.
This everyday habit of invoking the “nature as untouched by humanity” definition – the opposite of the materialistic notion that denies any human exceptionalism – is so strong in us that we persist with it despite our senses and our actions. It may be that the field we’re walking in is planted with corn. Corn is so highly bred as to be rightly considered a technology in all senses except immediate appearence. It could be that the campsite we pitch our tents at has flushing toilets. Sanitation is one of the oldest technologies we have. It’s Roman at the latest. Any landscape or location with technology is human -altered, and so non- “natural”, but still we don’t alter our language.
This is in fact the case here. The photographed beaver dam is made the symbol of “nature” despite needing only a «5 minute drive and 5 minute walk» to reach. The highway and vehicles that travel it pass so close to the dam that they’re no doubt a constant danger to the beaver that constructed it. The beaver does not live free of humanity. What if one day a visitor shoots a gun rather than a camera? Conversely, it’s likely that humanity’s removal of the bears, coyotes and wolves that prey on beavers is a significant factor in the beaver’s habitation of the stream. The dam is built as protection against predators that humanity has largely decimated and now tightly population-controls! It’s not a “natural” construction at all.
If pressed a little to justify our everyday use of the term “nature” most of us would recognise that our experience of “nature” is not of a pure nature. This makes the persistence of the dictionary definition of nature as everything beyond human influence even more puzzling. Nevertheless, the feeling that we can benefit psychologically from being in proximity to plants and animals and running water – the dam “never disappoints” as a leisure experience – remains genuine and widespread, if not universal.
Next claim; that nature has “laws”. Regarding this, two main results from the fields of the sociology and history of science need to be outlined very briefly. The idea of natural “laws” has two main origins: religion and science.
“Natural laws” are a secularisation of “God’s laws” and as such are already understood very differently from their historical precedents. Christian “laws” are laid down by God. If the “laws” of nature change over time – and Polynature’s conviction that they do is a premise of the series - they’re not laws but human constructs, social products that are constantly remade.
Secondly “natural laws” are the product of science (or, more accurately, the product of institutions that have been socially/culturally granted the authority to produce truth-claims). Each society produces scientific facts in different ways, with different intentions and with different effects from every other. In turn, within each society there are multiple interpretations of the facts science produces. What we take as natural “laws” today are different from those that our ancestors did. This is an inadequately brief summary of the field of the sociology of science, but related topics with more detailed discussion and careful argument will be a continuing theme of this editorial series.
Yet another “meaning of nature” to be found in the example here is suggested by the implicit claim that humanity is male (“mankind” / “himself” ), and that its antonym, “nature”, is female (nature is refered to as “her”). This is just one of many linguistic dualisms – each expressive of social and cultural divisions – that parallel the nature/humanity dualism that the dictionary definition of “nature” insists on. Feminist social and political theory has had much to say on the widespread “mother nature” myth, and authors in the area have taken a variety of positions on it. One of the key concepts in postmodern theory (and remember that Frederick Jameson famously declared postmodernity to be «what we have when nature is gone for good»), Donna J. Haraway’s “cyborg”, was developed in partial reaction against the affirmation of the “mother earth” theory by some ecofeminists. Certainly, the debate on the “gender of nature”, has fundamental sociological implications, especially in regard to environmentalist discourse.
The series of editorials will not be focused on linguistics, but sociology (and/or the humanites generally). It is therefore concerned primarily with the ways in which people act in, and on the world, especially what is popularly known as the “natural world”, individually, collectively and as a global society. As the series intends to demonstate, the ways we approach, idealise, idolise, manipulate and manage our environments are as multiple, varied and often as contradictory as our definitions of the word “nature”. Our disagreements about what are appropriate or inappropriate ways of interacting with the “natural” world have always been one source of the realm of thought known as politics. This is more the case then ever today.
In our world debates about humanity’s impact on the environment and our ability or otherwise to alter the strength and course of that impact are raging instensly, to the point that they are conducted in quasi- or fully religious terms. And so discussion about the definition of “nature” is far from being mere semantics. The breadth of the range of our definitions of “nature” is symptomatic of the complexity and significance of the worldwide debates that are now underway about how best to manage “the natural world”. The origin, development and contemporary state of the whole discourse of the “management of nature” will be a central theme of this editorial. Polynature will argue that it is not at all trivial that we (can) still hold to a single defintion of “nature” as “all that is untocuhed by humanity”. Polynature will be concerned with identifying the historical sources of this implausible definition and the sociolgical nutrients which sustain it to this day.
by Nigel Christian
© All text copyright remains with the author.
