The old organists view of nature and society was very prominent in the middle ages and the Reneissance(i know…i can’t spell). Where nature was seen as a living organism and society as one being in which the heart was the ruler the feet were the peasents etc… But through the philisophical views of Bacon, Descartes, Newton, and many others man took on a Mechanistic view, a view in which nature was a but mere Clock, which could be taked apart, used, and put back together again. This mechanistic view led to great advances in science and social matters(Hobbes). We still seem to retain this mechanistic view and a lot of ecologists blame it for the state of Nature at the present moment, polluted, over used and in a general state of decay. So i guess i have a three pronged question:
1.Is Nature in such a dismal state as enviormentalists and ecologists say it is?
2. Is the mechanstic world view still the applicable on, or is it outdated?
3. Is there another philosophical world view we can take, that would be able to referbish Nature?
I guess it’s official…everyone hates me…and my question…even Skwerl won’t respond…how sad is that…
Take it easy, Halber. It is the weekend, after all.
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No if dismal means Nature will not survive. Yes if dismal means Nature will not tolerate Man’s abuse much longer.
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It seems to me that there are only two ways to look at it. Either we’re organic or mechanistic. Clearly in this format, we are mechanistic still.
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Yes, but in my opinion it’s already been presented and rejected. It is impossible to refurbish Nature as long as:
a. the world population continues to grow exponentially and
b. capitalism is the reigning economic mindset.
It’s my opinion that Nature will put humans in check at some point. It could be possible that we’re a parasite that will eventually kill Nature, but I’m an optimist.
Um, humans are a part of nature. So is everything humans build.
“Um, humans are a part of nature. So is everything humans build.”
Well, i really doubt that a tire factory is a part of nature, unless of course you can justify and i’d like to see you try.
I’ll give it a shot. What is a tire factory made of? Cement and metal mined out of the ground and wood from harvested trees. How was it constructed? By Homo sapians, a primate of the hominid family of which it is the only living species. Seems pretty natural to me. Nothing from outside nature was used in its construction.
As far as the OP, nature isn’t in touble, but we (meaning the human race) may be. It is unlikely that human beings could end life on Earth. Life has survived much worse than anything we could do, so it is likely to continue despite anything which we do to try and end it. However, it isn’t too difficult for us to make the Earth uninhabitable by people. I think at some point we will be put into check by our own population. At some point we will not be able to feed ourselves and millions (perhaps billions) will die from starvation and the wars that will result. But humanity will survive.
Let’s not split semantic hairs about whether humans and human constructs are natural. I think we all know what HM242 means whether we agree with his or her terminology or not.
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Nature as we know it is in trouble. We’ve made some rather dramatic changes on the planet that have had a large impact on the natural world. Whether the situation is dismal or not depends on what you mean by dismal and which ecologists or environmentalists you talk to. I think we all agree that the planet isn’t exactly in mint condition. Paraphrasing Bill Watterson, if we were to sell it, we’d have to advertise it as a fixer-upper.
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The mechanistic view is one way of looking at things, and it’s especially useful for deconstructing things and figuring out how they work. It isn’t the only useful view, or even the most useful view, when examining large complex systems. I think to get a healthy picture of a phenomenon it’s a good idea to supplement the mechanistic view with some other point of view. I don’t blame the mechanistic view for the exploitation of nature, rather I blame an emphasis on short-term profit and an ignorance of non-economic costs.
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I think the philosophical view humans take of nature is already changing. Younger generations tend to be more environmentally aware and sensetive than older generations already. What form the eventual new philosophical paradigm will take, I don’t know. I do think our attitude is changing for the better, but it might not be fast enough to preserve many things we’d like to keep around.
Is the Earth polluted? You bet it is.
All this damn oxygen in the air. Whatever happened to the good old days, with a nice clean oxygen-free environment? I’m telling you, the introduction of oxygen was unnatural – a horrible crime against Nature. We should go back to the way things were.
Let me put it this way. Humans, and everything humans have produced, are indeed a part of Nature. The problem is not that humans are destroying Nature. That’s simply not true. We are a small and pitiful species that, in most likely scenarios of continued ecological devastation, would be destroyed long before life on earth could be.
The problem is that we are rendering the Earth unfit for human habitation. Nature wouldn’t care if we went extinct. Moss would cover our cities and birds would nest in our computers. Life would go on. But if we give two shits about our continued survival, we have to stop ruining the planet for us.
Just because the neighbours will keep living there is no excuse for burning down our own home.
Dr. Lao wrote:
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Recently, the taxonomy tree in our neck of the zoological woods was changed somewhat. The hominid family, formally called family hominidae, now consists of humans, chimps, bonobos, and gorillas.
So, while humans are the only living species of their genus (Homo), they are no longer classified as the only living species of their family.
<nitpick>
I forgot to put a </nitpick> tag at the end of that last post.
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(1) as others said, the environment is being changed by human activity…by how much and to what effect is up for debate
(2) the mechanistic view is still held…HOWEVER, areas of science such as Chaos Theory (non-linear dynamics) and Quantum Mechanics kind of require a different view of things. Chaos Theory in particular requires a more wholistic view of a system rather than its constituent parts.
(3) sure. but would people embrace it? We would have to either forgo our current technology altogether (extremely unlikely) or find a way to live and work wisely such that our technology does not destroy the environment we rely on for survival (I recommend the latter)