HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF (WHAT WE CALL) NATURE - Making Sense of Nature - page 4

But, of course, nature is not only 'out there'. We consider ourselves to
be part of nature, in two senses. Not only are we affected by and able to
alter wider ecosystems; in addition we are, physiologically speaking, natural
entities ourselves - in literary critic Paul Outka's (2011: 31) memorable for-
mulation, 'a part of the earth that [has] learned to talk'. Homo sapiens is one
of several hominid species that evolved, like all other organisms, through
a very long-term process of 'natural selection'. Notwithstanding our impor-
tant differences from other primates and the wider world of living creatures,
we're all members of an extended biological family. This family derives from
some unknown parent who emerged from the primeval slime many millions
of years ago. More recently, we can trace our species origins to eastern and
southern Africa.
Our physical and psychological nature is clearly important in defining
what is possible for us. Large-brained bipeds with complex nervous and cir-
culatory systems, we all require oxygen and water but can digest any number
of different foodstuffs. Our linguistic skills are equalled by no other mam-
mal, and we possess an uncommon capacity to remake our surroundings to
suit our purposes. Like all other life forms, we age and eventually die - in
some cases because of genetic ailments such as progeria. In short, we may
not be reducible to our natural qualities, but neither can we ignore them.
As the famous ethologist Konrad Lorenz once said, 'an enormous animal
inheritance remains in man [ sic ] to this day' (1952: 152). We are, as some
geneticists are wont to remind us, '98 per cent chimpanzee' and therefore
'the fifth ape' inhabiting planet Earth. 1
Making sense of nature is, then, about a manifestly important subject. How-
ever, it may seem that I've bitten off far more than I (and you) can possibly
chew. After all, according to one meaning of the term, nature is pretty much
everything . It is, in the no-nonsense words of science writer Colin Tudge,
'very big, and very various indeed' (2006: 29). How can one possibly write
a topic about everything? The answer, of course, is that one cannot. Any
attempt to describe and explain nature in a comprehensive and detailed
way would have to be collaborative. The expertise of numerous specialists
(e.g. zoologists, ecologists and geologists) would necessarily have to be com-
bined. This would take years. It would yield a multivolume compendium so
forbiddingly large that no one could possibly read it from start to finish
without forgetting large parts of what they'd learnt along the way.
This said, Charles Darwin famously presented an overarching theory of
life in a single volume: his germinal topic The origin of species (1859). He
did so by presenting factual material about diverse species selectively, in the
service of what he famously called 'one long argument'. So too have two
of Darwin's modern-day popularisers, the distinguished biologists Richard
Dawkins and Steve Jones. So, is Making sense of nature an attempt to sum-
marise (or extend) the state-of-the-art in current 'big thinking' about life
on Earth? No is the short answer. And, even if I wanted to write such
a topic, others are far, far better equipped to do the job than I am. As