It isn’t complicated at all. The only thing I’m asking for is your opinion. If a species takes over a particular area and runs out or kills other flora and fauna, do you think that species is “acting against nature?”
If so, then clearly other species do not act in harmony with nature, and the discussion is over. If not, you’ll have to explain to me why you think the eucalyptus is acting in harmony with nature, but humans do not. I’m not sure what is in your head; that’s why you have to type it out for others to read.
Looking at that link, as an example supporting your view eucalyptus becomes a problem once you take it away from Australasia - once in other environments (Calif, Spain, etc) what it does actually supports the opposite view (that our species is destructive) because it was man who introduced it to Calif and Spain.
Cohle also says that life is a flat circle, something a daft guy told him just before Cohle shot him. He has a tenuous balance between crazy and sanely brilliant. He’s a fascinating guy.
You are seriously pointing to Wikipedia as an authority on the meaning of a complex, deeply ambiguous, deeply value laden and hotly ideologically contested term like “nature”? :rolleyes::eek:
Wikipedia is great for checking basic facts, like dates and names (about which it is usually pretty accurate), but if we start to treat it as an arbiter of culture, values and ethics, we are truly doomed.
It’s tricky, but, yeah, I’d say that extreme cases of invasive species wreaking havoc on a regional environment are “not natural.” They break across the boundaries that permit species to evolve in the first place.
It’s silly to use the word “natural” as a synonym for “all that there is.” By that reasoning Plutonium bombs and supercomputers and genetically modified grains are natural.
In one sense, a comet impact is perfectly natural. But it is an external effect, a strike against nature from space. Evolution isn’t equipped to work with comet impacts. Evolution isn’t equipped to deal with Plutonium…or even flint-and-steel fire starters.
How about: If it didn’t evolve, it isn’t “natural?” (Okay, leave out geology, okay? Life-sciences.) We evolved our brains and even our consciousness. But we didn’t evolve written language, and that’s where the big break starts to take place between humans as a “natural” species and humans as the number one rule-breaker on the planet.
Consciousness is good – but the ability to transfer conscious thought, to make an idea available to thousands (or billions) of others is the real earth-shaker. Damn near as cataclysmic as a comet.
Trinopus - but did you see my distinction between eucalyptus in its natural Australasian habitat and the examples cited by Ravenman where it had been introduced by mankind?
I take that to mean that consciousness is out of place in a non-conscious universe. Being aware of the universe and able to ponder the meaning of our existence has only made us realize that from the perspective of the universe, we’re wholly insignificant and there’s no inherent meaning to our existence. It’s as if we’re freaks of nature/the universe.
Oops, actually, I’d missed that. I can see that one both ways, because invasive species also sometimes migrate “naturally” – or un-naturally! – by storms, animal carriers, etc. It’s squirrely. (Pun intended.)
Definitely, you’re right, Eucalyptus in particular is a weak argument, since it was human agency that brought it here. (There is a low-level “genetic cleansing” effort in California, to remove the old gums, which makes me sad, as I love the damn things.)
(Funny story: in the original Zorro, the novel by Johnston McCulley, you see Zorro riding his horse along beneath the Eucalyptus trees. In the 1830’s or so. Historical oopsie!)
I call BS on that line of thinking in that quote. It’s like saying “We define human intelligence as unnatural. Therefore, human intelligence is not natural.”
I especially call BS on it when someone wants to assume that nothing else in nature has certain features of human intelligence. We may be the smartest around, but we’re not: the only species with: language, tools, capability to build, self-awareness, culture, learning/teaching.
We might be the only species with the full set of those things, or with that set of things so well developed, but we have nothing truly unique.
Trumpeting our uniqueness as in that quote is a lot like the other SDMB poster who learned a little bit about the theory of relativity and then decided that he’s overturned 100 years of physics in his spare time. It says more about the speaker’s biases and ignorance than anything else.
We have written language, and thus the ability to transmit our knowledge over distance and time. No other species comes close.
Also…nowadays…we’re starting in on genetic manipulation. We’re the first animal to look into directly altering its own innate chemical nature. Post- or Trans-humanism, here we come!
