Mr. Natural

In a story dated April 20 2005, Associated Press write Amy Lorentzen quotes Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh:

“If you want to find a human-like creature that exists in a completely natural state … that creature is the bonobo,” said Savage-Rumbaugh, an experimental psychologist who is one of the world’s leading ape-language researchers.

If I wanted to find such a creature, I’d go to the mall.

Humans are certainly human-like, but Savage-Rumbaugh’s remark implies that we (unlike bonobos) do not live in a completely natural state. I marvel at the prevalent and unexamined belief that humans and human artifacts are somehow not a part of nature. A bird’s nest is natural, but a house is not. An ant hill is natural, a city is anything but natural.

This dichotomy between man and nature could make sense in a philosophy which embraces the supernatural. Absent the supernatural, humans must be a part of nature because nature is all there is.

Posted on April 25th, 2005 by pwyll
Filed under: General

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