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Nature does nothing in vain.

Article Excerpt
Man alone among living things knows that he has evolved. Man alone is



able to decide what direction or directions he desires his own future evolution to follow, and can set about acquiring the knowledge he needs to achieve the desired results. --Thomas Goudge, Ascent of Life

According to recent scientific findings, we are responsible for the elimination of three species every hour, a rate approaching that holocaust of species associated with the age of dinosaurs. (1) Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon recently declared that "the global response to these challenges [of biodiversity] needs to move much more rapidly." (2) But even if we could significantly reduce gas emissions and put a halt to global warming, biodiversity is likely to continue declining. It takes on average a million years for a species to branch off and distinguish itself; no new phyla have surfaced for over one hundred million years. Our phenomenological experience of biodiversity is thus almost exclusively one of decreasing numbers. Where Darwin once saw an entangled riverbank teeming with life, our vision of the earth's future landscape is as desolate as the moon.

But perhaps such worries are unwarranted? Insofar as evolutionary theory commits us to some degree of interspecific competition, it seems counterproductive to preserve and prolong the life of each and every species. Who is to say that two million species is not preferable to twenty? Moreover, why not strive to preserve variation within a specific species, especially given that the taxonomic units themselves are so contested? Since subspecies are potential species, perhaps our attention is better placed there.

Numbers aside, there are many arguments in favor of preserving, if not enhancing, biodiversity. Some are consequentialist, appealing to values instrumental to the welfare of Homo sapiens, such as the medical potential of tropical plants. Other arguments are deontic, appealing to intrinsic values, such as the beauty of the wilderness or the sanctity of life. None are entirely persuasive, however, for the simple reason that they assume we can, in some meaningful sense, alter the pace of the evolutionary process and thus ensure greater longevity either for humans or for other species. Implicit in these arguments is the belief that we can step outside of a realm called 'Nature': that human agency can be partitioned and treated as a separate sphere that does not follow the same deterministic chains found in the biological realm.

My objective here is to make sense of that assumption, and to take an approach quite different from those who subscribe to the movement known as deep ecology. While deep ecologists wish to level man with nature and to steer us away from anthropocentric values, they overlook the fact that their concept of nature is itself replete with social concepts that are in turn steeped in natural discourse. To put it another way, what remains underexamined is the sense in which ecology itself embodies a complicated amalgam of the social and the natural.

'Nature' has long held the promise of a realm separate from human influence.

To commune with 'nature' mandates just such a distinction. A sharp contrast could be drawn between the lush vegetation of the Jamaican forest and the cement buildings of the South Bronx. But just as the cement harks from bauxite mines found in the Jamaican interior, the nearby forest receives rain laced with acid from distant cement factories. There is, arguably, no place in the sublunar region immune from human agency. As Bruno Latour provocatively remarked, the ozone layer is a political object.

Any effort to single out what is meant by 'nature,' let alone demarcate its part in 'the environment' is most likely futile. 'Nature,' as David Hume warned us in 1740, is one of the most ambiguous and equivocal words in the English language. It is the repository of anything and everything. But one possible means to acquire at least a feeble hold on its set of meanings is to look at distinctions drawn by specific sciences and to examine them as they have evolved over time. We have perhaps no other means of access, since we lack the view from nowhere and must thus be content with our own contingent historical reach. So let me propose here, for the sake of argument, that the 'natural realm' be understood as the sum of physical phenomena studied by natural scientists at a given point in time. Let me contrast this with the 'social realm,' taken to be the sum of social phenomena as studied by social scientists.

What I will...

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