6 ms·

> We are, truly, Of Nature, not Above Nature. This sentiment has always made me question when people say things are "unnatural", "artificial", or "synthetic":

• Drakim 3y ago
  It makes more sense when you realize that unnatural and artificial are societal words akin to immoral or bad. Within that context they are perfectly crumulent words, it's only when we wish to have them be objective outside humanity that they don't make sense anymore.
  • Koshkin 3y ago
    > societal words Indeed, all words are "societal." The meaning(s) of a word is/are always a matter of convention (or tradition).
• mc32 3y ago
  Ok, maybe synthetic is a better word for many instances of their use. As in synthesized with the aid human intervention.
  • xixixao 3y ago
    In which case coral reefs are also synthetic :)
    • simiones 3y ago
      Most coral reefs predate human intervention by a few hundred million years.
  • GoldenRacer 3y ago
    Where exactly is the line drawn for how much and what type of human intervention is required? When I cook food, human intervention is causing chemical reactions that change the composition of the food. I doubt many people consider grill marks to be unnatural or synthetic.
    • simiones 3y ago
      I think the line is typically drawn at any human intervention. I doubt many humans consider steaks to be a naturally occurring phenomenon. Now, there is a secondary fuzzy notion of "artificial" typically used in relation to "chemicals". I don't think that definition stands up to most serious scrutiny, and is at any rate unrelated to this article.
      • asow92 3y ago
        That's exactly what's being—albeit atypically—advocated for here: That even steaks are a naturally occurring byproduct of humans and cows because humans and cows naturally exist.
        • simiones 3y ago
          Sure, but then of course absolutely everything is "naturally occurring". Plastic is a naturally occurring substance, computers are naturally occurring objects, C++ is a natural language. Perhaps then only miracles from God (for those who believe in such things) are unnatural?
          • asow92 3y ago
            Now you're getting it.
            • simiones 3y ago
              I am, but this is just not what those words mean, to anyone.
              • asow92 3y ago
                It may be heterodox, but it’s what it means to me, and I’m sure I’m not completely alone in feeling so.
              • MacsHeadroom 3y ago
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• basil-rash 3y ago
  That’s one of those revelations that only sounds profound when everyone involved is really stoned. Outside of that, everyone knows the meaning of “unnatural” and we all get that the colloquial meaning and a strict etymological analysis don’t quite align.
  • wharvle 3y ago
    The deeper insight is that every definition of a word breaks down when you try to pin it precisely and in some absolute, universal-context sense to an exact meaning. That doesn’t mean they can’t be very, very useful.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • birracerveza 3y ago
    As George Carlin said > Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us.
• r34 3y ago
  That's why I use to claim that for me everything is a priori natural. Additionally I disagree every time I hear that "culture is the opposite of nature" (not sure where it comes from, but seems to be a well-grounded philosophical concept). For me it can't be so by the rules of logic alone. On the other side: we have a lot of taboos in the language/culture and not all of them are bad in terms of social well-being or happiness of individuals (the very simple example is that we sometimes lie to our kids). And I think that what we hide behind those taboos tends to emerge as "unnatural" or rather usually "supernatural". I also usually don't agree that we don't need a revolution in physics, but I understand it is so successful in creating all those working machines and we have to maintain them... ;)
• simiones 3y ago
  "unnatural" or "artificial" have a very clear meaning: made by the intervention of humans in ways outside our base anatomical functions (so excluding babys or spilled blood). This intervention can be mechanical (Stonehenge), or biological (breeding animals to become more useful to humans), or chemical (synthesizing oil from plastic), or a complex combination of all of them (whisky); it is also transitive: anything created by an artificial object is also artificial. The fact that a naturally occurring thing (human beings) can create artificial things is not surprising under this definition. The definition can also be theoretically extended to other human-like agents, like hypothetical aliens. It hasn't been practically very necessary so far. Edit: I should note that this is the sense of "artificial" or "unnatural" that is used in the context of the article. There is a secondary meaning, used in phrases such as "artificial sweetner" vs "natural pesticide" that I don't think stands up too well to serious scrutiny.
  • asow92 3y ago
    When birds make nests outside of their base anatomical functions, are they "unnatural"?
    • simiones 3y ago
      No, because birds are not humans. To be fair, "unnatural" is sometimes extended to refer to "life" instead of "humans", typically only when talking about the evolution of life or the search for extraterrestrial life. In that sense, then, yes - bird nests or termite mounds or coral reefs are unnatural. A more common wording for this same idea is something like "not created by geological processes".
      • asow92 3y ago
        > We are, truly, Of Nature, not Above Nature. What gives humans the special designation of their byproducts being unnatural?
        • simiones 3y ago
          You're asking the question backwards. We have a concept, "byproduct of human action". We needed a word for this concept. We more or less arbitrarily chose "unnatural" or "artificial" as the words for this concept. You can argue that "unnatural" was a bad choice for this concept. But that's irrelevant to what words mean. There are other words like this - for example, "antisemitic" means "something that is against Jewish people", even though "semitic" means "of Jewish or Arabic or Phoenician etc. descent". So something discriminatory against semitic peoples is not necessarily anti-semitic. Natural language doesn't follow strict logical rules. And of course, natural language is in fact itself an artificial, unnatural, construct.
• carapace 3y ago
  I feel that people who are clever enough to raise this question are also clearly clever enough to answer it for themselves. Anyway, operationally speaking the difference is in how easily the matter in question can be digested by living things. If it's easy to digest it's food, if it can't be digested at all then it's worse than artificial: it's anti-life.