HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF (WHAT WE CALL) NATURE - Making Sense of Nature - page 5

a social scientist, with a broad-based training in human geography and
cognate fields, I lack a deep grounding in the various 'sciences of nature',
such as palaeontology, animal biology, human neurology, particle physics
or organic chemistry. In truth, I don't even know much about physical geog-
raphy any more (beyond the basics), having lost touch with its expanding
and diversifying research frontier once my first degree ended some 20 years
ago.
Making sense of nature is thus neither a compendium-cum-encyclopaedia,
nor does it present an overarching theory intended to explain the material
world's governing principles. Is it, then, a paean to nature? Is it a further
contribution to a now established genre of writing initiated by the likes
of William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
well over a century ago? Is it a treatise about how we value - or should
value - nature in an ethical or aesthetic sense? Or is it, perhaps, an interven-
tion in the current debate over whether or not nature is being irreversibly
destroyed, and what to do about it? This would, perhaps, be more in keeping
with the talents and interests of someone who (like me) is a stranger to the
intricacies of biophysical science but fascinated by public and policy discus-
sions about 'the human impact', 'resource scarcity', 'sustainability', 'designer
babies', 'artificial life' and 'genetic diseases'. But, again, the answer to all
these questions is 'no'. My aim is not to debate either the moral-aesthetic
value, or the current state-of-health, of the physical world (be it human or
non-human nature).
What this topic is about
It seems to me that what scientific treatises about the biophysical world
have in common with topics about environmental ethics and impas-
sioned discussions of things like the shrinking Amazon rainforest or the
perils/possibilities of human biotechnology is this: they all presume that
nature is a distinct material domain. I did as much myself in this chapter's
opening three paragraphs for the simple reason that it's conventional to do
so. It seems natural to think in these terms, does it not? In other words,
there's a widespread tendency to believe that there's a natural world existing
regardless of, and separately from, our attempts to understand it. Our ordi-
nary language is very telling in this regard. We talk about nature, focus on
nature, look at nature, do things to nature, have respect for nature, are seen
to be part of nature, are influenced by nature or subject to nature. 2 Events
like the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the tsunami that hit
Japan in the following year seem to confirm our belief that nature is some-
how a thing unto itself. It appears possessed of both distinctive attributes
and autonomous causal power s. 3 Relatedly, many argue that humans remain
fundamentally governed by natural drives and instincts, notwithstanding
their capacity to moderate both . 4