Nature

The word nature stems from the Latin natura, whose meaning ranges from "birth" to "the order of things." In English, nature comprises all plants, animals, and ecosystems, as well as the biological and nonbiological materials and processes of our planet. This range of meaning narrows if we consider the use of the word natural. Something is natural if it is not artificial, if it pertains to or comes from the natural world. When we speak of bears, mountains, or evolution and say, "they are natural," we mean they are neither human nor created by humans. Thus the concept of nature is often restricted to beings, things, or processes which are not human in origin.

Conceptual and empirical inquiries into nature loosely center on eight questions. The first question is a scientific one, which simply asks what constitutes nature: What are its essential properties and how shall we classify them? The second seeks purpose in nature, asking whether the earth is a designed home for humankind or an accident of cosmic history. A third question explores the effect of the natural environment on human physiology, psychology and culture, examining whether nature determines who we are or constrains what we can do. A fourth examines the metaphors used to understand nature: Is nature an organism subject to death or a machine of fungible parts? The fifth question studies how nature changes: Is it dynamic, changing as a result of internal processes, or static, changing in response to external human disturbances? A sixth surveys how people have transformed the natural world, and the seventh queries whether human beings and their societies are part of or separate from nature. The final question investigates whether nature has a structure of intrinsic moral values: Does nature have values or a good of its own, and if so, should human beings respect these values or promote this good?

We lack unambiguous answers to these questions, though the questions are important in themselves, for they help us clarify our assumptions about nature. Humans, for example, have emerged from the evolutionary processes of nature. Thus our thoughts and actions are certainly natural, yet our societies and technologies are unique in the natural world, and the scope of our impact on nature is without precedent in other species . It seems that while we are part of nature biologically, we are separate from the rest of nature in our social and technological characteristics, and to declare humanity natural or non-natural is unhelpful. The best alternative may be to accept the ambiguity of our relationship to nature, conceiving of humankind as relatively natural and non-natural depending on the time, place, and activity.

See also Bioregionalism; Deep ecology; Ecosophy; Environmental attitudes/values; Environmental ethics; Environmentalism; Humanism; Speciesism

[William S. Lynn ]

RESOURCES

BOOKS

Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of Nature. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1945.

Glacken, C. J. Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought From Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Lyon, T. J., ed. This Incomparable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

Lyon, T. J., and P. Stine, eds. On Nature's Terms. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 1992.

Nash, R. F. The Rights of Nature. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1989.

Williams, R. "Nature." In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.