reflections on nature
Posted: July 24th, 2009 | Author: Owen | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »I have grown comfortable using the word ‘nature’ very frequently in my writing, in spite of the fact that to some extent I believe it to be overburdened with unwanted connotations and ambiguity. It is one of those words that is familiar, but upon closer examination proves difficult to define. My own tacit understanding of what ‘nature’ signifies is something along the lines of “the collective phenomena and regulating forces of the physical world.” Yet, throughout history there have been radically different notions of what nature is. Even today one only need to consider such phrases as “human nature” “against nature” or “natural ingredients” to see that ‘nature’ has as much to do with social norms and values as the kind of phenomena it is meant to signify. In the realm of human behavior especially, ‘natural’ or ‘un-natural’ is generally used as a moral judgment rather than a statement of biological or psychological fact. It is my purpose in this piece to question and clarify my initial definition, and hopefully in the process make some observations of greater significance beyond the parsing of words.
‘Nature’ can also be defined by what it is not, i.e. the opposite of human-made or artificial. Although I do not take this to be this is not a false dichotomy, some trouble does occur when one tries to draw a line between nature and artifice. The natural sciences are by definition concerned with nature; physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology all seem like pretty clear-cut examples of the study of nature. The study of the human body, brain and psychology are concerned with the nature of human beings. But how about architecture, history, poetry, and mathematics? In so far as they are activities associated with the behavior of social animals – namely Homo sapiens – they too seem to be part of nature. Indeed cities seen from space take on an organic complexity. Poetry has evolving forms and structures and can reveal the deeply woven complexity of meaning and language. In a similar respect mathematics can be seen as a way of understanding the underlying structures and possibilities of logic available to the mind (though because of the special role it plays in our understanding of nature, I will return to it later). Even the mind itself and the content of its thoughts, since it arises in nature (from the physical brain) can be seen as part of it. So everything is nature, right?
In a sense this statement is true. However, it would be just as easy to arrive at the opposite conclusion: namely that everything is artificial. The natural sciences, mathematics and reasoning are first and foremost activities of the mind. Even perception to some extent is conditioned by language and conceptual categories. However, I think the fact that both formulations appear to be legitimate on first blush belies a deeper truth. It is the perspective from which one approaches something that determines its classification as natural or artificial. More specifically, to approach something from the point of view that it is “other” or determined by forces beyond one’s mind or human minds in general seems to imply that it is natural. In the modern era this has come to mean adopting an objective or even empirical perspective. If something can be considered from a detatched objective point of view then it is part of nature. This would also imply a distinction between the objects towards which consciousness is directed as natural, and the products of consciousness as artificial. Is it fair then to say that poetry is an artificial construct, but is natural in so far as it may be classified and studied with respect to social, psychological, or linguistic considerations?
Nature, as understood by the empirical sciences, is regulated by laws and causality. If one takes the mind’s ability to discover such patterns and laws to be a free and creative act this leads to the rather odd conclusion that nature is deterministic and artifice is free. It seems like it should be just the opposite. After all what could be more archetypically artificial than the cold mechanism of a formal system of immutable rules? However, I’m not sure it’s proper to conflate our understanding of nature as regulated by mathematical law with nature itself. Although, if nature were not regulated by some kind of law or causal principle wouldn’t such correspondence be vanishingly unlikely if not impossible? Is the very notion of causality an artificial construct of the mind to be force upon nature? To make things worse, is the notion of an ‘event’ a conceptual construct as well? Nature may just as easily proceed as continuum rather than a series of discrete finite interactions. Or is the use of concepts like ‘events’ and ‘causality’ a natural adaptation itself, used by humans and animals alike?
The nature described by the laws of physics appears immutable, even as humanity’s understanding of the laws that regulate nature have changed over time. This poses an interesting question: the third law of motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) held true before it was formulated by Newton, but could it really be said to be a law of nature until it was recognized as such. Such a precise formulation was not relevant or necessary to the culture up until that time. Certain predispositions and facts about a culture’s physical and conceptual tools and way of life may lead it to search for certain patterns in (its conception of) nature rather than others. But doesn’t that which it searches remain the same regardless of how it is understood or formulated?
On the other hand, because nature is understood as regulated by law, the specific content to which the law is applied appears to be interchangeable. The third law of motion applies just as well to billiard balls as rocket ships and planets. Similarly, the formalist mathematician David Hilbert went so far as to say that geometry could as easily be about chairs, tables and beer steins as line, planes, and points, so long as their defined relationships remained the same. It is the fact that natural relationships are applied universally and independently of their object that allows for the diversity observed in nature. Even something seemingly un-natural like bioengineering works because it does not break the laws of what is necessary create and maintain life.
Before I conclude, I must acknowledge a problem that I have thus far been trying to avoid: that of freedom vs. determinism. I have indeed outlined a somewhat paradoxical situation where the mind emerges from the physically determined brain bearing with it the concept of causality that leads to the theory that nature is deterministic in the first place. I think much of the ambiguity surrounding which human activities may be natural or artificial arises from this debate over which parts of the mind are free (if any) and which are determined. Honestly I don’t loose much sleep over the matter, but it does mirror nicely my concluding formulation of nature.
Nature is that which is perceived as determined and conditioned by immutable laws, even as those laws are historically bound and contingent upon human consciousness. Because of their contingency upon historically based consciousness, I hesitate to include the laws of nature in my definition. Yet, that there is movement within nature that can be understood through laws seems undeniable. Nature exists through its laws even as it is the source of them. The ability of the mind to reliably grasp patterns and rules in nature may be as much due to its creative ability as the fact that it has arisen from and bears the markings of nature in the form of its thought.
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