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This is very interesting. It is important to remember that "man-made" and "natural" are on the same continuum. We are a part of nature, and vice-versa. This dis
by pottspotts 9y ago
This is very interesting. It is important to remember that "man-made" and "natural" are on the same continuum. We are a part of nature, and vice-versa. This discovery is stunning, but not surprising, given the other incredible inventions by mother nature in the history of evolution.
- stormking 9y agoOn the one hand, you're right: Humans are a part of nature. On the other hand, the definition of "natural" is "untouched by humans".
- decorator 9y agoI heard someone use 'Nature' as untouched-by-humans. With the use of a capital. They didn't give any rationale. Maybe once Nature has been corrupted by humans it ceases to be such. Woe is human -- with our ontological flagellation. (We grant the existence of Nature only to turn it back on ourselves.)
- SiempreViernes 9y agoMan, it’s just a useful label for something that occurs independently of human presence. No need to break out the vogon poetry for that.
- decorator 9y agoSure, super useful.
- decorator 9y agoJust looked up the Vogons. From Wikipedia: > Vogon poetry is described as "the third worst poetry in the Universe" That's quite a good insult, really. Well, if what I had done was poetry. So a good insult in a different situation.
- DonHopkins 9y agoVogons are perfectly capable of corrupting Nature without the help of humans. And even restoring Nature by wiping out humans to make way for a hyperspace bypass. At least he didn't say it was bad as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings's poetry about decaying swans. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/poetry.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/poetry.shtml https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxPeIiU2kx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxPeIiU2kx4 Or the Electronic Bard's horrible poems: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/HorriblePoems.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/HorriblePoems.html Despair not, never give up, and just keep practicing: there's always room for improvement: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/WonderfulPoems.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/WonderfulPoems.html
- decorator 9y ago> Despair not, never give up, and just keep practicing: there's always room for improvement There's nought to improve. It wasn't poetry. & if you-all are suggesting my prose is poetic, then that's a compliment, not a zing.
- totalZero 9y agoThat doesn't seem like a good definition. If I pick up a baby bear in the woods and play with it for a moment before its mom finds out, does it cease to be natural? If I don a wig, am I covering my unnatural hair with artificial hair?
- coldtea 9y ago>That doesn't seem like a good definition. There's no such thing as a "good" definition. We begin with the definition, not with some pre-existing concept (which would require an earlier definition of the same thing). The definition is what it is: just a name we use to collect certain phenomena together.
- LukaCEnzo 9y agoI think that the disagreement stems from the difference between what you and him mean by definition. We use words to describe, and to categorize stuff. But naturally this vague. Everybody undestands if you describe a shirt as blue.or green, but most people would find it hard to describe when one turns to another, where the boundary between them is. So we use other names for that, or describe it as blueish green, or something similar. To get rid of confusion, handle edge cases, and for other reasons, we define formal defenitions, which are different from the ambiguous idea we have of something. What the comment you replied to means, is that the formal definition doesn't fit his idea of what is natural. You on the other hand are saying that the formal definition is the only (valid) meaning of the word, and so it can't be good or bad.
- totalZero 9y agoYes. Not to mention that "anything untouched by humans" is not the formal definition of "natural."
- totalZero 9y ago> There's no such thing as a "good" definition. This is completely useless. > We begin with the definition No. We begin with a name, used to describe a particular entity, phenomenon, or class thereof. As the name comes into greater use, its meaning becomes known through some measure of positive (this is X) and near miss (this is like X, but not X), and eventually a definition is clarified that attempts to capture those linkages between the word and the represented things.
- alpeb 9y agoFollowing that reasoning we could say everything is a continuum, and that wouldn't be a useful observation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]