"The arguments about your place in the Big Scheme of Things have not really changed much, especially during the last two centuries. Are you or are you not 'natural'? Are you or are you not a part of Nature? Are you, because of your intellect and tool use, 'outside' of Nature? Does any attempt to place you 'outside' Nature rely on oversimplifications of complex relationships?"
I note by way of further introduction, “Bees appear to have first appeared during the Cretaceous, the period when flowering plants also first appeared. Apparently, the appearances were interrelated, but it is a chicken-or-egg story. Plants that needed to be pollinated and pollinators that needed nectar did, of course, and still do, have an important life-sustaining relationship. There are other pollinators, so it’s easy to come down on the side of plants first, bees second. Obviously, there’s some synchronicity, some conjunction of the stars, some fulfillment of universal life force at work in symbiotic relationships, or so many might argue. And there’s something else. We see bees on flowers and we think, ‘That’s Nature.’ We see an expansive landscape, mountains and whatnot, and we say, “That’s Nature.” We look at a city, and we say, “That’s not ‘natural.’ That’s ‘artificial.’
“But what about pillow cases? Did they arise before humans developed chins? How could one ever encase a pillow without a chin? It might be an unresolvable question, though no one has ever found the remnants, a fossil, of a 200,000-year-old pillow case, or even a pillow of that antiquity. We do have ancient mandibles, however, very, very old mandibles, older than any antique pillow case. So, it’s easy to come down on the side of chins first, pillow cases second. And chins are ‘natural,’ aren’t they?”
“There are organisms without them, hagfish, for example. What, is this your attempt at humor?” you ask. “Pillows and pillow cases are definitely not part of Nature; they are artificial.”
Stumbling to get back to some coherent thought, I add, “Actually, I think it makes a point about evolution and the interrelationships among organisms and even our place ‘in’ Nature.
“Every once in a while, someone or some group becomes super obsessed with saving the environment and labels humans as the ‘enemies of Nature.’ Whereas it is definitely true that humans have caused extinctions and altered ecologies, it is also true that humans evolved the way other organisms evolved, unconsciously. Extinctions have occurred throughout the history of life. That’s not a justification for 19th-century train travelers stopping to randomly shoot bison in the American West, but it’s a note that other organisms and ‘natural’ processes have also caused extinctions.
“With regard to humans, there wasn’t a Neanderthal who said, ‘I think I’ll become human.’ Individuals, you’ll recall from biology lessons, don’t evolve; species evolve. So, conscious evolution has been out of the hands of individuals, though we’re good at hybridization. Evolution exhibits an unconscious randomness at work. No one over the past 300,000 years has created a new hominid species though we could argue that various genocides restricted the gene flow. You might have in your genetic makeup the makings of a new species, but you won’t live to know that you do, and most likely, no descendant species will be able to identify you as the species ‘founder.’ Even those who play around with the human genome might make a ‘monster’ but not a species. Your life and those of your contemporaries might also give rise to some companion species, also, one connected just as bees are to flowers (and vice versa).
“If you walk through the home décor section of Macy’s, you’ll see pillows, pillow cases, sheets, bedspreads, duvets, and shams. You can ask yourself whether or not anyone you know is pillow-less or pillow-case-less. No? Everyone you know has a pillow? Every pillow in a case?
Yet, there are all those pillows and pillow cases in Macy’s, and pillow makers and pillow case makers keep making more.* It’s as though there is a ‘bloom’ just like the algal blooms of the ocean that occur unexpectedly here or there and that kill fish and drive whales to beach themselves. Something in the nature of supply and demand will eventually bring pillow users and pillow makers into near equilibrium just as a dwindling supply of nutrients or a change of seasons and temperatures leads to the demise of the algae. It is possible for pillow cases to outnumber by an unknown quantity chins that rest on pillows, just as there can be more flowers than bees. Maybe there’s a comfort and cleanliness gene that drives us naturally to make both pillows and pillow cases.”
“I’m still not following. Where are you going with this?” you query.
“There are complex relationships among organisms, including prey supply and predator demand, and most attempts to identify them lead to a reductionism. That’s especially true when we consider our supposed ‘role’ in some ‘Grand Scheme,’ in ‘Nature,’ for example. That is, in ‘Nature’ with that capital ‘N.’ I’m thinking about the rise of environmentalism that extends to blaming humans for the destruction of natural settings or, if you wish, ecological units. That kind of thinking places you and me ‘outside’ Nature. We see reports all the time that we are ‘destroying’ Nature, altering it. And we are proliferating at seeming Malthusian rates: Seven billion of us! Haven’t the ‘experts’ estimated that Earth has a ‘carrying capacity’ that limits the sustainable population of humans to under 35 billion? What happens when we get close to that number? What happens when the chins outnumber the pillow cases?”
“But we ARE altering Nature,” you say.
“And when you say that, do you imply that we are separate from Nature? Or, do those who say humans are altering the planet, as in ‘global warming,’ imply a separation between Nature and us? Are we changing the planet?
“Yes. And haven’t bees also altered Nature? Haven’t plants? It’s not just the organisms with chins. All organisms alter the nonorganic environment; all organisms have the potential to alter other organisms. Where were holes before worms evolved? All burrowing animals alter the substrate on which or in which they live. Burrowers have been altering their substrate for at least a half billion years.”
“So?”
“Hey, I’m not the first to bring up the subject that humans are somehow separate from Nature and ‘invasive.’ You can go back to John Stewart Mill’s nineteenth-century essay on Nature to get the essence of the separation problem.** There are 1) those who want to be ‘one with Nature,’ an ideal of Romantic poets and 2) those who want to use Nature to further the needs of humans. That’s a longstanding division since you can read about ‘man’s dominion’ in ancient scriptures. The question goes back to bees and flowers and pillow cases and chins. Did they evolve somehow in conjunction for an apparent mutualism? Did humans not evolve as every other organism evolved, fitting in, in the eyes of extreme environmentalists, at least briefly in the world ecology and only now in the deep tropical rainforests, where tribes live ‘naturally’? Yet, there are those who claim that humans ‘are THE problem’—whatever that means. Remember the cry for ‘zero population growth’ a few decades ago and still made by some?
“But I mentioned Mill. In ‘Nature’ he writes, ‘Everything in short, which the worst men commit either against life or property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents.’ He uses hurricanes as an example. And he says that whereas humans might have some feelings for or against their destructive ways, Nature injures or destroys with ‘callous indifference.’ So, we alter and destroy, and ‘Nature’ in general alters and destroys. And then some new organisms evolve to fit into the altered environment. Look what photosynthesizers did to the atmosphere that supported anaerobic life-forms a couple of billion years ago.
“Did you know that some people believe humanity is the enemy of Nature? Murray Bookchin expresses it this way:
Implicit in deep ecology is the notion that a ‘Humanity’ exists that accurses the natural world.
“Bookchin, who probably owns at least one pillow case for every pillow he uses, recognizes that humans belong. As he writes, ‘[Nature] is not viewed [by ‘deep ecologists’] as an evolutionary development that is cumulative and includes the human species.’***
“Whew! That means I am as much a part of Nature as the common worm. It changes its environment. I change mine.”
“But you’re ignoring the widespread destruction that humans cause,” you argue.
“No. And I don’t favor destruction when it is avoidable. I would love to see a live Dodo or Elephant Bird. But I also don’t side with those who regard the rest of Nature as superior to or even equal to humanity. In many instances, humanity has improved upon Nature. What did people put their heads on before there were pillows? Rocks? Piles of dirt? Nothing? Just letting their necks bend till they became stiff? Look, bees might have aided the evolution of flowers—and vice versa—but bees didn’t invent flowers. Someone a long time ago said, ‘I’m going to invent a soft bunch of something for my head.’ Someone else said, ‘I’m going to invent a case I can rewash to keep dirt from accumulating in my headrest and, consequently, on my head.’ Inventing. It’s what we do better than any other form of Nature because every other ‘improvement’ is the result of a rather unpredictable and often slow evolutionary process. We evolved with certain abilities. Yes, we can destroy on purpose and destroy without design. We can’t anticipate every outcome.
“But consider worldwide efforts to ‘repair’ Nature. That’s not something Nature would do. Nature acts, as Mill writes, with ‘callous indifference’ when it destroys. ‘Nature’ doesn’t ‘care’ about a lost species or ecology. Erupting volcanoes don’t care that they wipe out whole forests. Floods don’t care about what they drown. ‘Nature’ might provide us with scenic views, but it also kills indiscriminately.
“Picked up a dead woodpecker from my deck this morning. It flew into one of my large glass windows that reflect the trees around my house. Am I to blame for killing the woodpecker? Then, is a gopher to blame when a galloping wild horse accidently breaks a leg as it steps into the gopher’s hole?
“There’s an invasive reductionist thinking in almost every aspect of our lives these days—maybe in past days, also. Our relationship with ‘Nature’ is complex, but so is every other organism’s relationship. How far do the reductionists go? Bookchin notes David Ehrenfeld labels the smallpox virus an ‘endangered species.’ As Bookchin says, maybe ‘deep ecologists’ like Ehrenfeld should preserve the virus by keeping it in his blood.
“Let’s end with a note on the almost unfathomable complexity of relationships. Science Advances Research online site contains an article entitled ‘An herbivore-induced plant volatile reduces parasitoid attraction by changing the smell of caterpillars.’**** It contains the following statement:
Herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) can mediate tritrophic interactions by attracting natural enemies of insect herbivores such as predators and parasitoids (Abstract).
“In short, plants are autotrophic, caterpillars are herbivores, and certain parasites are carnivores. There’s a tri-trophism at work, and in a complex relationship, the caterpillars avoid the volatile indole that they cause a plant to release unless the parasites are present. When the parasites are around the caterpillars seem to use the plant compounds to change their ‘smell,’ reducing the effect of parasites. Now, that’s complex very complex. And that’s the way ‘Nature’ works, somewhat heuristically as one organism or process affects organisms in the local ecology in a kind of trial-and-error approach.
“But of course, we humans are capable of conscious heuristics, though we, like all the other life-forms, are also subject to callous indifference, such as the stray cosmic ray that strikes our DNA or the per-chance encounter with a virus. And we’re also subject to runaway ‘blooms,’ both ‘natural’ blooms and supposedly ‘artificial’ blooms like all those pillow cases in Macy’s.
“Think about that the next time you change your pillow case. We all know that mites are ubiquitous and that washing one’s pillow cases reduces their number. We also know that in using pillows and pillow cases, we have provided a new environment for mites to flourish. You have choices: Be completely ‘natural’ by laying your head on a rock; be somewhat ‘natural’ by using pillows and pillow cases without washing them because it would decimate the mite population; or be as completely ‘artificial’ as you can be by bleaching your pillow cases to kill mites even if it means accepting a world in which you consciously attempt to destroy a mite ecology and a world that is overrun by more pillow cases than there are chins."
*The MyPillow company and other pillow companies keep making more pillows, necessitating more pillow case makers to make more pillow cases.
**Mill, John Stuart Mill, “Nature.”
***Bookchin, Murray. “Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology,” in Pojman, Louis P. Ed. Environmental Ethics, Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005, pp. 212-222. Originally in Socialist Review, Vol. 88, no. 3 (1988) pp. 11-29.
****Science Advances Research Article online at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthias_Erb/publication/325190151_An_herbivore-induced_plant_volatile_reduces_parasitoid_attraction_by_changing_the_smell_of_caterpillars/links/5afe699e458515e9a5764ba0/An-herbivore-induced-plant-volatile-reduces-parasitoid-attraction-by-changing-the-smell-of-caterpillars.pdf
I note by way of further introduction, “Bees appear to have first appeared during the Cretaceous, the period when flowering plants also first appeared. Apparently, the appearances were interrelated, but it is a chicken-or-egg story. Plants that needed to be pollinated and pollinators that needed nectar did, of course, and still do, have an important life-sustaining relationship. There are other pollinators, so it’s easy to come down on the side of plants first, bees second. Obviously, there’s some synchronicity, some conjunction of the stars, some fulfillment of universal life force at work in symbiotic relationships, or so many might argue. And there’s something else. We see bees on flowers and we think, ‘That’s Nature.’ We see an expansive landscape, mountains and whatnot, and we say, “That’s Nature.” We look at a city, and we say, “That’s not ‘natural.’ That’s ‘artificial.’
“But what about pillow cases? Did they arise before humans developed chins? How could one ever encase a pillow without a chin? It might be an unresolvable question, though no one has ever found the remnants, a fossil, of a 200,000-year-old pillow case, or even a pillow of that antiquity. We do have ancient mandibles, however, very, very old mandibles, older than any antique pillow case. So, it’s easy to come down on the side of chins first, pillow cases second. And chins are ‘natural,’ aren’t they?”
“There are organisms without them, hagfish, for example. What, is this your attempt at humor?” you ask. “Pillows and pillow cases are definitely not part of Nature; they are artificial.”
Stumbling to get back to some coherent thought, I add, “Actually, I think it makes a point about evolution and the interrelationships among organisms and even our place ‘in’ Nature.
“Every once in a while, someone or some group becomes super obsessed with saving the environment and labels humans as the ‘enemies of Nature.’ Whereas it is definitely true that humans have caused extinctions and altered ecologies, it is also true that humans evolved the way other organisms evolved, unconsciously. Extinctions have occurred throughout the history of life. That’s not a justification for 19th-century train travelers stopping to randomly shoot bison in the American West, but it’s a note that other organisms and ‘natural’ processes have also caused extinctions.
“With regard to humans, there wasn’t a Neanderthal who said, ‘I think I’ll become human.’ Individuals, you’ll recall from biology lessons, don’t evolve; species evolve. So, conscious evolution has been out of the hands of individuals, though we’re good at hybridization. Evolution exhibits an unconscious randomness at work. No one over the past 300,000 years has created a new hominid species though we could argue that various genocides restricted the gene flow. You might have in your genetic makeup the makings of a new species, but you won’t live to know that you do, and most likely, no descendant species will be able to identify you as the species ‘founder.’ Even those who play around with the human genome might make a ‘monster’ but not a species. Your life and those of your contemporaries might also give rise to some companion species, also, one connected just as bees are to flowers (and vice versa).
“If you walk through the home décor section of Macy’s, you’ll see pillows, pillow cases, sheets, bedspreads, duvets, and shams. You can ask yourself whether or not anyone you know is pillow-less or pillow-case-less. No? Everyone you know has a pillow? Every pillow in a case?
Yet, there are all those pillows and pillow cases in Macy’s, and pillow makers and pillow case makers keep making more.* It’s as though there is a ‘bloom’ just like the algal blooms of the ocean that occur unexpectedly here or there and that kill fish and drive whales to beach themselves. Something in the nature of supply and demand will eventually bring pillow users and pillow makers into near equilibrium just as a dwindling supply of nutrients or a change of seasons and temperatures leads to the demise of the algae. It is possible for pillow cases to outnumber by an unknown quantity chins that rest on pillows, just as there can be more flowers than bees. Maybe there’s a comfort and cleanliness gene that drives us naturally to make both pillows and pillow cases.”
“I’m still not following. Where are you going with this?” you query.
“There are complex relationships among organisms, including prey supply and predator demand, and most attempts to identify them lead to a reductionism. That’s especially true when we consider our supposed ‘role’ in some ‘Grand Scheme,’ in ‘Nature,’ for example. That is, in ‘Nature’ with that capital ‘N.’ I’m thinking about the rise of environmentalism that extends to blaming humans for the destruction of natural settings or, if you wish, ecological units. That kind of thinking places you and me ‘outside’ Nature. We see reports all the time that we are ‘destroying’ Nature, altering it. And we are proliferating at seeming Malthusian rates: Seven billion of us! Haven’t the ‘experts’ estimated that Earth has a ‘carrying capacity’ that limits the sustainable population of humans to under 35 billion? What happens when we get close to that number? What happens when the chins outnumber the pillow cases?”
“But we ARE altering Nature,” you say.
“And when you say that, do you imply that we are separate from Nature? Or, do those who say humans are altering the planet, as in ‘global warming,’ imply a separation between Nature and us? Are we changing the planet?
“Yes. And haven’t bees also altered Nature? Haven’t plants? It’s not just the organisms with chins. All organisms alter the nonorganic environment; all organisms have the potential to alter other organisms. Where were holes before worms evolved? All burrowing animals alter the substrate on which or in which they live. Burrowers have been altering their substrate for at least a half billion years.”
“So?”
“Hey, I’m not the first to bring up the subject that humans are somehow separate from Nature and ‘invasive.’ You can go back to John Stewart Mill’s nineteenth-century essay on Nature to get the essence of the separation problem.** There are 1) those who want to be ‘one with Nature,’ an ideal of Romantic poets and 2) those who want to use Nature to further the needs of humans. That’s a longstanding division since you can read about ‘man’s dominion’ in ancient scriptures. The question goes back to bees and flowers and pillow cases and chins. Did they evolve somehow in conjunction for an apparent mutualism? Did humans not evolve as every other organism evolved, fitting in, in the eyes of extreme environmentalists, at least briefly in the world ecology and only now in the deep tropical rainforests, where tribes live ‘naturally’? Yet, there are those who claim that humans ‘are THE problem’—whatever that means. Remember the cry for ‘zero population growth’ a few decades ago and still made by some?
“But I mentioned Mill. In ‘Nature’ he writes, ‘Everything in short, which the worst men commit either against life or property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents.’ He uses hurricanes as an example. And he says that whereas humans might have some feelings for or against their destructive ways, Nature injures or destroys with ‘callous indifference.’ So, we alter and destroy, and ‘Nature’ in general alters and destroys. And then some new organisms evolve to fit into the altered environment. Look what photosynthesizers did to the atmosphere that supported anaerobic life-forms a couple of billion years ago.
“Did you know that some people believe humanity is the enemy of Nature? Murray Bookchin expresses it this way:
Implicit in deep ecology is the notion that a ‘Humanity’ exists that accurses the natural world.
“Bookchin, who probably owns at least one pillow case for every pillow he uses, recognizes that humans belong. As he writes, ‘[Nature] is not viewed [by ‘deep ecologists’] as an evolutionary development that is cumulative and includes the human species.’***
“Whew! That means I am as much a part of Nature as the common worm. It changes its environment. I change mine.”
“But you’re ignoring the widespread destruction that humans cause,” you argue.
“No. And I don’t favor destruction when it is avoidable. I would love to see a live Dodo or Elephant Bird. But I also don’t side with those who regard the rest of Nature as superior to or even equal to humanity. In many instances, humanity has improved upon Nature. What did people put their heads on before there were pillows? Rocks? Piles of dirt? Nothing? Just letting their necks bend till they became stiff? Look, bees might have aided the evolution of flowers—and vice versa—but bees didn’t invent flowers. Someone a long time ago said, ‘I’m going to invent a soft bunch of something for my head.’ Someone else said, ‘I’m going to invent a case I can rewash to keep dirt from accumulating in my headrest and, consequently, on my head.’ Inventing. It’s what we do better than any other form of Nature because every other ‘improvement’ is the result of a rather unpredictable and often slow evolutionary process. We evolved with certain abilities. Yes, we can destroy on purpose and destroy without design. We can’t anticipate every outcome.
“But consider worldwide efforts to ‘repair’ Nature. That’s not something Nature would do. Nature acts, as Mill writes, with ‘callous indifference’ when it destroys. ‘Nature’ doesn’t ‘care’ about a lost species or ecology. Erupting volcanoes don’t care that they wipe out whole forests. Floods don’t care about what they drown. ‘Nature’ might provide us with scenic views, but it also kills indiscriminately.
“Picked up a dead woodpecker from my deck this morning. It flew into one of my large glass windows that reflect the trees around my house. Am I to blame for killing the woodpecker? Then, is a gopher to blame when a galloping wild horse accidently breaks a leg as it steps into the gopher’s hole?
“There’s an invasive reductionist thinking in almost every aspect of our lives these days—maybe in past days, also. Our relationship with ‘Nature’ is complex, but so is every other organism’s relationship. How far do the reductionists go? Bookchin notes David Ehrenfeld labels the smallpox virus an ‘endangered species.’ As Bookchin says, maybe ‘deep ecologists’ like Ehrenfeld should preserve the virus by keeping it in his blood.
“Let’s end with a note on the almost unfathomable complexity of relationships. Science Advances Research online site contains an article entitled ‘An herbivore-induced plant volatile reduces parasitoid attraction by changing the smell of caterpillars.’**** It contains the following statement:
Herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) can mediate tritrophic interactions by attracting natural enemies of insect herbivores such as predators and parasitoids (Abstract).
“In short, plants are autotrophic, caterpillars are herbivores, and certain parasites are carnivores. There’s a tri-trophism at work, and in a complex relationship, the caterpillars avoid the volatile indole that they cause a plant to release unless the parasites are present. When the parasites are around the caterpillars seem to use the plant compounds to change their ‘smell,’ reducing the effect of parasites. Now, that’s complex very complex. And that’s the way ‘Nature’ works, somewhat heuristically as one organism or process affects organisms in the local ecology in a kind of trial-and-error approach.
“But of course, we humans are capable of conscious heuristics, though we, like all the other life-forms, are also subject to callous indifference, such as the stray cosmic ray that strikes our DNA or the per-chance encounter with a virus. And we’re also subject to runaway ‘blooms,’ both ‘natural’ blooms and supposedly ‘artificial’ blooms like all those pillow cases in Macy’s.
“Think about that the next time you change your pillow case. We all know that mites are ubiquitous and that washing one’s pillow cases reduces their number. We also know that in using pillows and pillow cases, we have provided a new environment for mites to flourish. You have choices: Be completely ‘natural’ by laying your head on a rock; be somewhat ‘natural’ by using pillows and pillow cases without washing them because it would decimate the mite population; or be as completely ‘artificial’ as you can be by bleaching your pillow cases to kill mites even if it means accepting a world in which you consciously attempt to destroy a mite ecology and a world that is overrun by more pillow cases than there are chins."
*The MyPillow company and other pillow companies keep making more pillows, necessitating more pillow case makers to make more pillow cases.
**Mill, John Stuart Mill, “Nature.”
***Bookchin, Murray. “Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology,” in Pojman, Louis P. Ed. Environmental Ethics, Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005, pp. 212-222. Originally in Socialist Review, Vol. 88, no. 3 (1988) pp. 11-29.
****Science Advances Research Article online at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthias_Erb/publication/325190151_An_herbivore-induced_plant_volatile_reduces_parasitoid_attraction_by_changing_the_smell_of_caterpillars/links/5afe699e458515e9a5764ba0/An-herbivore-induced-plant-volatile-reduces-parasitoid-attraction-by-changing-the-smell-of-caterpillars.pdf
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