MAJOR WESTERN VIEWS OF NATURE

Western culture has developed a number of different views of nature and of the relationship between humans and nature. Below are very brief synopses of some of the major views.

THE BIBLE: THE AMBIGUITIES OF CREATION IN THE HEBREW BIBLE

The Hebrew Bible (“Old Testament” in Christianity) is a rich source of quite divergent views about nature, the relationship of humans to the natural world, and the value and sacrality of the earth. We can oversimplify by highlighting two main views concerning nature and our relationship to it.

1. Dominion . On the one hand, the Bible presents God as transcendent of the created world, with ultimate sacred reality and value not part of this world. Humans are the only part of creation characterized by the image of God and we are given dominion over the natural world. The natural world is for us to use, and it can become a distraction from the higher reality of Heaven. Such views have been used as a support for an other-worldly focus that devalues the natural world, as well as a justification for a secularized view of nature as merely a resource for our exploitation. This perspective has helped justify environmentally destructive practices and a sense of human alienation from the natural world.

2. Stewardship . On the other hand, God made creation and called it good (Genesis). Creation manifests God’s glory and is alive and responsive to God (Psalms). God cares for all of creation, which is God’s, not the possession of humans (Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Revelations). And humans are a creature of God along with all other species. Recent “creation-centered” theologians have reinterpreted the tradition by emphasizing the second view. In their view, humans are indeed a special part of creation, as the ones God has entrused with the responsibility to care for and sustain creation.

THE GREEKS: TRANSCENDENTAL DUALISM: NATURE AS “UNDER” A HIGHER REALITY

Ancient Greek philosophy, primarily Plato and Aristotle, has been the foundation for most Western European philosophical ideas and approaches. Plato was a strong transcendental dualist. In terms of metaphysics, this changing, phenomenal world is separate from another divine, eternal realm of Ideas or Forms. The natural world has less reality and less value than the transcendent world. Aristotle’s metaphysics is less dualistic, yet he believed there was a transcendent realm with an Unmoved Mover that animates matter, directs the changes that occur, and creates order in the world. Later Neo-Platonism took a more dualistic view, emphasizing the value and reality of the transcendent and devaluing the natural world.

The Greeks also established a dualistic view of human nature, dividing our psychology into reason, emotion, and will, with reason that which should control the others. Similarly there was a strong tendency to separate mind and body, with mind ideally in charge. In fact, reason is what allows us to comprehend true reality and the transcendent realm. Thus, transcendental dualism is found here too: reason is “above” the emotions and body, which are “earthly,” and reason transcends our particular contexts in the search for eternal truths. In this way, classical Greek epistemology is dualistic, distinguishing a “lower” knowledge about particular, concrete, and shifting context and “higher” knowledge of abstract, universal, and eternal truths.

The transcendental dualism also related to conceptions of the relation between humans and nature and between male and female. Aristotle summarizes several aspects in the following statement: “It is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient; whereas equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful. The same holds good of animals in relation to men; for tame animals have a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by man; for then they are preserved. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind. (Politics, bk. 1, chap. 5)

EARLY PROTESTANTISM: A FALLEN WORLD: NATURE AS DISORDER

Probably the most negative view of the natural world is associated with Calvinism (a branch of Protestantism) and the early period of Puritanism. It combines the transcendental dualism of Platonism with a biblical sense of the Fall from Garden of Eden. The expulsion of Adam and Eve was not simply their individual fall from grace; all of Creation fell with them. In this view, nature is a dangerous and even demonic wasteland. At best it is a place of trial like the biblical wilderness, where spiritual commitment is tested and, hopefully, strengthened. But primarily, nature is seen as forbidding in the extreme and antithetical to what is properly human and spiritual. The American Pilgrim William Bradford saw nothing “but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men” and the Puritan John Cotton spoke of nature as “a wild field where all manner of unclean and wild beasts live and feed.”

This wilderness is dangerous to humans, a place where death is imminent. It is wild, in the sense of lacking order, stability, or control. It thus is also unintelligible: we cannot understand any structure or pattern or design. It is contaminated by the biblical Fall and by sin, the antithesis of the Garden of Eden. As such it is not only devoid of value, it is spiritually dangerous as well.

Given this view of nature as wilderness, the ideal became a garden. Wilderness needed to be conquered and transformed into a human constructed and ordered realm of nature, a new Eden. The garden has both rational and spiritual order, and thus is understandable, controllable, and has religious value. Those who live in the garden live in the light of reason, order, and spiritual truth. Outside is danger, chaos, and waste. Some contemporary radical ecological thinkers reverse this picture, seeing wilderness as inherently orderly and human society as disorderly; we have fallen from an Edenic wilderness to the evil of modern civilization which is destroying the last vestiges of the nature’s garden.

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: MECHANISM: NATURE AS MACHINE

Mechanism is a view of nature that developed in the seventeenth century with the scientific revolution and associated with Bacon and Descartes as well as the major scientists of this period as well as the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Nature was seen as inert, energyless matter moved by an externally created framework, like a clock. The astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) said, "My aim is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but to a clockwork." Originally this clock was wound up by God, who has allowed his clockwork creation to run on its own (this view is called “deism”). Eventually the notions of a divine creation and higher purpose were dropped, and the natural world was seen as simply a machine for our use. Carolyn Merchant has called this the “death of nature” and considers it “the most far-reaching effect of the scientific revolution.”

The purpose of science was to establish and extend human dominion over the universe. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) argued that "(my discoveries) have satisfied me that it is possible to reach knowledge that will be of much utility in this life; and that instead of the speculative philosophy now taught in the schools we can find a practical one, by which, knowing the nature and behavior of fire, water, air, stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies which surround us, as well as we now understand the different skills of our workers, we can employ these entities for all the purposes for which they are suited, and so make ourselves masters and possessors of nature."

Nature thus is a functioning system, but has no real vitality in itself: it is given “life” by the system imposed on it. In contrast to the “nature as wilderness” view, nature is seen as orderly. This order comes, however, not from the inherent movements of nature but because an external agent has created a system that makes it work that way. Its parts are not intrinsically linked to each other but are separate and independent objects that have been placed artificially into the machine’s system; relationships are secondary and accidental to the identity of the parts. The individual parts have no intrinsic value, only their efficient functioning does; each part is thus replaceable as long it keeps the machine working. Nature as a whole also lack intrinsic value; its value is being an environment for humans. And humans (their self, soul, and mind at least) are separate from this machine.

Today few explicitly think in terms of the nature as a clock or animals as machines. Yet some of the key notions of mechanism remain strong today, including in the common sense view of the world and in political discussions: the goal of science as mastery of the natural world; nature as essentially inert and consisting of interchangeable parts whose value is found only in its role in the system (thus developers are allowed to “replace” a natural wetland by an artificially created one); the human self identified with the mind or soul; animals as mere objects for scientific or technological experiment; order as something imposed on nature. Be attentive to these views in day-to-day discussions and political decision-making. Needless to say, contemporary environmental writers tend to reject this mechanical view as inaccurate, arrogant, and destructive. However, the emphasis on the order of nature is something that has traditionally characterized ecological thought.

ROMANTICISM: NATURE AS DIVINE BEAUTY

Romanticism is an intellectual movement that was prominent in Europe and the United States from 1750 to 1870, and it remains an important part of modern views of nature and especially contemporary ecological thought (as well as interest in Asian religions).

Romanticism gives great attention to the natural world and places high value on nature. The beauty of nature is emphasized, and unspoiled nature is especially prized. There is a strong sense of the spirituality of the earth. Nature is infused with the divine. It is not merely a book of divine symbols but has a spiritual presence. In this it is related to the organicist view. This spiritualization of nature often had a transcendental dimension, with nature pointing to the Creator and a transcendental divine – in a sense a combination of the organicism and nature-as-book views. But in some romantic writings, one can recognize a view of nature itself as the divine, linking it to the heretical tradition of pantheism, where God is located in nature, rather than in some transcendent reality.

As a result of the emphasis on the beauty and spirituality of nature, nature tended to be seen as an object of aesthetic and religious contemplation. (Some Native American writers have criticized romanticism for making nature an object of perception rather than living medium for all of human life.) The individualism characteristic of romanticism led to an emphasis on the solitary individual’s encounter with nature and spirit. In this encounter, Romanticism tends to value emotion more than logic, intuition and mystical communion more than reason, poetic imagination more than science, direct experience more than intellectual apprehension. There is also a tendency to prefer spontaneity more than rational will.

CONSERVATIONISM: NATURE AS RESOURCE

“Conservationism” is often used as a general term for any approach that seeks to conserve the earth’s resources. The basic perspective here involves a long-term view of preserving natural resources rather than mere short-term exploitation. In this sense of the term, virtually any environmental thinker or activist is a conservationist. But another, narrower meaning of the term refers to one approach to conserving resources, based on a particular philosophical and political view.

Conservationism as a movement began in Europe in the eighteenth century and is indebted to the rational search for order, progress, and material well-being in the Enlightenment. It was championed in the United States by Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), the “father of American forestry” and the nation’s first Chief Forester under Theodore Roosevelt. For Pinchot and “progressive conservationism” in general, nature was primarily a set of resources for human use. Pinchot argued that there are three main options open to us: nature could be left unused and thus wasted; it could be ruthlessly exploited and used up, leaving nothing for future generations; or it could be managed for greater efficiency and long-term productivity. Conservationism saw the third option as necessary for economic prosperity and as the only moral stance. Associated with this agricultural approach to conserving resources was a negative attitude toward animal predators such as the wolf or grizzly bear. Just as there were “predatory capitalists” that should be curtailed in the national economy (a major concern of Roosevelt’s economic policies), large animal predators needed to be exterminated from nature’s economy. Nature could and should be remade into an orderly and efficient system.

Conservationism has some similarities with the nature-as-wilderness view because it tends to see nature as lacking value unless humans control it, which is our duty. However, in tone it is in line with the rationalistic views associated with the Enlightenment. In contemporary ecological philosophy, conservationism is often criticized for being anthropocentric in its conception of nature, granting only instrumental value to the natural world. Nature is not a locus of spiritual reality or part of our community but merely resources for our use. It is seen as arrogant in its claim that humans can and should make nature more efficient than it is by itself. The drive to control nature is considered an outgrowth of the colonial mindset. And it represents and reinforces the dominant cultural worldview that separates us from the natural world.

PRESERVATIONISM: WILD NATURE LEFT ALONE

At the same time Pinchot was espousing conservationism, John Muir (nature writer born in Wisconsin and founder of the Sierra Club) was presenting an alternative: preservationism. In this view, nature is seen as having intrinsic value (value in itself, separate from any use it may have for humans). Nature was not a mere resource for our use, but a living system that deserves to fulfill its natural development. For Muir and others like him, nature is sacred: “God’s wilderness.” Clear-cutting a forest is like bulldozing a great Cathedral.

The ideal here is to leave nature alone. We may want to enter it (by foot), but we should not disturb it. In the 20 th century, this view evolved into the “wilderness ideal,” with the term wilderness having a positive connotation of beauty and vitality. Eventually this ideal was put into law with the Wilderness Act of 1964, which set aside areas where people could not log, mine, build resorts, drive cars, or live.

This view tends to assume that humans inevitably degrade and disrupt nature, without we need to keep humans out of nature except in a temporary and minimalist way: “Take only pictures; leave only footprints.” “Nature knows best, so leave it alone.” While this view involves a high valuation of nature, it has the problem of emphasizing the dichotomy between nature and culture, between the natural world and humans.

CLASSICAL ECOSYSTEM ECOLOGY: NATURE AS INTEGRATED ORDER

As the field of ecology developed in the 20 th century, what we can call the “classical ecosystem” view of nature became the dominant view. Perhaps most fully presented by the ecologist Eugene Odum, the focus was on the ecosystem as an integrated system in which various plants and animals co-existed in mutual interdependence along with the abiotic elements of soil, water, air, etc.

In this view, ecosystems are primarily characterized by symbiotic interdependence that creates harmony and stability. Nature maintains a dynamic equilibrium. Even the predator-prey relationship was seen as symbiotic: the fox and the hare co-exist in balance, and if we remove the predator, the system will become unstable, with the hares undergoing a population explosion that result in environmental degradation, which leads to massive die-off. Even the changes that a forest goes through are orderly: a predictable succession of different types of communities that culminates in a climax forest. (For instance, in Wisconsin after a forest fire, there will first be a grassland, then shrubs, then pines, and finally a mixed hardwood forest.)

POSTMODERNISM: NATURE AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

This is a complex school of thought that has developed in the last few decades. The “modern” in postmodernism refers to the Enlightenment. It is a diverse movement that is critical of the basic principles, theoretical implications, and social effects of the Enlightenment. For a postmodern, the “Enlightenment Project” has many problems. A central problem is its rationalism, which treats the world as a mere object to which we are not related. Rationalism also devalues other forms of awareness, including those in ecological thought and activism.

Postmoderns emphasize the close relationship between Colonialism and the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment’s claim of the superiority of reason (and the European superiority in being rational) bolstered claims of the superiority of European culture. Its attempt to find one universal truth reinforced the belief that it is appropriate for European nations to impose their culture on others. Its treatment of nature as merely a resource to be efficiently used supported the devastating exploitation of nature in other areas of the globe.

Postmodernism also tends to criticize conceptions of singularity and order. For instance, it rejects the traditional idea that there is one “Western culture.” There are many cultural traditions in the West; what is promoted as “Western culture” is the culture of the dominant group of elite white males. Similarly, it has criticized the notion that there is some “original, pristine” nature we can conserve or go back to; nature is always changing, and has been influenced by indigenous humans for millennia. This has been taken to an extreme view that since there is no standard of pristine nature by which to judge actions, we can do whatever we want with the world.

It also has criticized the conventional idea of succession and climax in nature. Plant communities that are supposedly at “climax” are in fact filled with patches of different mini-communities and ecosystems are always changing. And after a major disturbance, an area may go through a number of different transitions and produce a different result than the previous “climax” community.

Postmodernism (in the form of “social constructionism”) also rejects the idea that our perceptions and conceptions are transparent representations of a simple, universal, given “world out there.” Different cultures conceive of and experience nature in various ways. This has been taken to an extreme view that “nature” per se does not exist in any real sense, so we do not need to be concerned about preserving it.

Many environmental thinkers have accepted some of the insights of postmodernism, including criticisms of the Enlightenment, but reject those views that deny the reality of nature and devalue it.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

REVIEW

In reviewing these different views, note how the West has created several dichotomies:

• Dominion versus stewardship
• Transcendental dualism versus organic view
• Wilderness as disorder (early Protestantism) versus wilderness as ideal (preservationism)
• Nature as machine (mechanism) versus nature as divine beauty (romanticism)
• Conservationism versus preservationism
• Nature as disorder versus nature as integrated order (classical ecosystem theory)

Note also the two main trends: devaluing nature or highly valuing it.

Low value:

• Dominion
• Transcendental dualism
• Nature as disorder
• Nature as machine (mechanism)
• Nature as resource (conservationism)
• Nature as social construction (postmodernism)

High value

• Stewardship
• Nature as divine beauty (romanticism)
• Nature as divine wilderness (preservationism)
• Nature as integrated order (classical ecosystem theory)

Back Home