everything is ‘natural’
Naturalism,clear thinking and our future
Everything inItsRightPlace.mp3
The physical world is causally closed. The statement is so broad and yet so pointed that understanding the implications in their entirety is impossible. Yet the meaning of the statement needs to be understood, and by everyone. We have all managed to apply in our own beliefs some parts of the tenet but, unfortunately not all. If we were to understand and apply all implications of that one single statement “The physical world is causally closed” our entire attitude to life, the planet and many of the choices we make would be radically different.
The statement that the physical world is causally closed needs some explanation. In essence it means that all of the phenomena we see in the world are caused by other things we find in the world and that the effects of all physical causes will be found in the world. This supposition is taken from the finding that the total of energy and momentum have always been conserved wherever they have been measured.
A more prosaic example comes from Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier who found that in chemical reaction matter may change its state but it’s total mass will remain the same. Rust is a good example, when iron rusts it also gets heavier because iron and oxygen combine.
The word natural has a long history and has come to be used in many contexts. Advocates of herbal remedies cite that their medicines are natural, people talk about homosexuality as unnatural and we talk about ‘the natural course of action’. However, understanding physical closure permits us to say that each of these statements are nonsense if they are taken even remotely literally. ‘Natural’ as term has its origins in Latin and Greek and roughly in Middle English was used to mean ‘in accordance with nature‘. It is in the sense that the word is used in Lucretius’s epic poem ‘De Rerum Natura‘ that it is used here. That is as a part of the property that things posses by virtue of existence and not as a moral quantifier or proof of goodness.
Not only is it the case that there are a great number of poisons in the ‘natural’ world, it is also the case that it is literally impossible for homosexuality to be unnatural. More broadly speaking, given physical closure all phenomena that we see are natural.
The natural sciences ought to encompass the investigation of all phenomena. However, they have come to mean (through the correct application of the term) the physical sciences (otherwise known as the Naturwissenschaften as opposed to the Geisteswissenschaften, or social sciences). In essence however, the approach employed by all sciences can be called naturalistic and within the present conception of the universe all of the phenomena contained within it are natural.
If everything said thus far is true then it is meaningful to make statements like ‘photography is natural’ and ‘pollution is natural’ also. Most people, will have a harder time digesting statements like these as opposed to the statement ‘homosexuality is unnatural’.
The difficulty lies in an innate bias. It also highlights our need to guard ourselves from nonsense. The bias comes not just from ambiguity about the word natural but the fact that we have come to assume that pairing the word ‘natural’ with a statement gives that statement moral significance. That is in effect the nonsense which I refer to.
The point is that everything that does occur, occurs in the world, if it occurs in the world then it is natural. The flip-side of the coin is that just because something is natural (or can be found in nature) it doesn’t make it either right or give it any special moral significance. It was a natural event that wiped out the dinosaur. That fact doesn’t make the potential extinction of the human race any more palatable, I happen to be quite attached to the interests of humanity.
There are a number of implications of the discussion so far that ought to be considered. In connexion with this post however, my interest is in the world that we live in.
It is no platitude to say that wherever we are we obey the laws of physics. Gravity is a pervasive feature in all of our lives despite the fact that most of us take little time to notice the effect it has on us. But existing in the natural world is not just about obeying laws such as the law of gravity. The natural world is as much about living in a complex system such as our environment. What is more the point about natural phenomena is that we are embedded within those systems and are component part of them.
In effect we are a part of a much wider system and that system houses us. However, much like gravity we seem to be too well acquainted with our environment. So well acquainted in fact that it doesn’t seem to make significant difference to us if we destroy it in piecemeal fashion. Of course we don’t experience a great deal of pollution. Nor do we experience the effects of pollution immediately. Environmentalism is concerned with a concept and by virtue of being a concept it is far removed from us.
But that doesn’t change that fact that the destruction of the system that we live in could be the destruction event of our species. By extension this also suggests the possibility that another species one day in the far future will refer to us in making the same arguments. As human beings we have used our imaginations to great use. From migrating bands of hominid to static cities populated by millions of people living not on subsistence but beyond necessity our species has achieved a lot in a short space. However, it is a part of that achievement that we can see that our actions now have, within the closed physical system that is the world we live, far reaching consequences.
The point is this: Given that we live in the natural environment, (and I see no option but giving ourselves to that fact) a certain clarity of thought is required about our lives within that context. So far we have allowed ourselves an incredible amount of fuzzy thinking on the subject. However, if we are to save the planet we have to divorce ourselves from all of the immediate luxuries of existence (such as gravity) and understand that as necessary as gravity is, so are the effects of our actions on the future of our species.
We are unfortunately predisposed to being told what we want to hear from politicians (lest we don’t vote for them). However, in order that a concerted effort is made by all, that effort will have to be concerted and universal. That means saying a number of unpopular things and effort on all our parts. It means that developing countries will have to develop within the context of change that is uncertain and in developed countries that incentive will have to be on the part of survival. It is after all survival that we are after and survival can only take part within a physical system that we know can sustain us. That system is closed and that leaves a great deal of responsibility on our shoulders.