What is nature for?

Let us first assume that everything in the photos above, including the pictures themselves and this writing here, is part of nature. What, then, is nature for? It both encompasses and transcends the question "what is the purpose of life?" because it goes beyond life - to the "inanimate objects" that exist in the universe.

To inquire about purpose or meaning is a very human thing to do - the inquiry itself a part of nature. One purpose could be inquiry, one purpose existence, one purpose admiration, love and/or appreciation. But what is the universe for? A silly question, I might add. Silly because the question's inherent complexity is enough to befuddle any genius. Many geniuses have tried, and all have practically failed, to explain or answer such a question. But perhaps the meaning is simply in asking the question? The answer, always beyond reach, rendered insignificant.

In questioning one can experience the befuddlement, the mystery that entangles both the inanimate and the animate parts of nature/the universe. The artificial, human creations themselves full of insidious mysteriousness. 

Another day, another day.

The Eye Test

 

 

When I look around me I cannot help but see the overlays of the "artificial" and the "natural" - trees, power lines, ocean, bridges, buildings, islands and lights. For so long it was normal to see these things as two separate categories - those things built by humans and those things not. But even the trees and the islands have had their share of human hands on them.

So I came up with the term "artinatural" to talk about things that are simultaneously artificial and natural. But my main point perhaps was not to insist on the artificiality of the natural (which is, indeed, a human concept), but rather to see the naturality of artifice. These words, of course, are all artificial, all socially-constructed (and imperfect I might add) concepts to help comprehend the world and, more basically, to simply function. There was never a requirement that words and concepts be true, but rather, merely that they be useful. Perhaps this is why things must be separated out, categorized, and defined so narrowly.

Pictures help me think. I look at them and they say something that I never tried to spell in words. They hold their own kind of truth. They are not merely worth one thousand words, they can transcend words. So maybe the word artinatural comes closer to the truth of the photos above. And, although they capture a piece of the artinatural landscape out there, they themselves are artinatural entities consisting of magnetic data, electricity, the workings of the photographers eye - itself both artificial and natural (especially with the contact lenses I wear). Alas, the world is so overwhelmingly complex, intertwined and overlapping.... 

The subways and roads are like arteries, the buildings like beehives, the lights a clever re-directing of the sun's energy. But this is not to say that the natural is always right, or that it is always meant to be. All of the above are subject to change; they are temporary attributes of the landscape. They may have gotten it quite wrong, actually. The "appeal to nature" (which implies that something is right if it is natural) is fallacious - since nature is in constant flux, and because nature contains all that is both good and bad, one cannot claim that something is good, right, or correct simply because it is natural. Of course, this happens all the time and it should be watched. Again, "nature" needs to be better, and more humbly, understood.

Nature: the mother (and father) of all contradictions

Besides being a form of self-reflection, to contemplate nature is akin to contemplating life itself. Such a strange, multitudinous, complex, and overwhelming thing, so full of contradictions. Nature - "the universe in its entirety" - is so unfathomably unfathomable it seems hubristic, or just plain silly, to attempt to describe it.

It's a silly thing to do... maybe that's why so few have tried - but have they not? One could argue that organized religions and religious thought have tried to encompass the vastness of nature in their quests to explain divinity. But why not approach the topic more directly? Why isn't there a field of study that at least attempts to formulate understandings of nature? Again, one could argue that biology and physics have aimed at these understandings - but not in the way that I'm speaking of.

I think the time is ripe for a new field of study called Nature Studies - one aimed at bringing together perspectives on the idea of nature. The truth is, nature has already been the central topic for so many minds. It would be nice, though, to provide a fuller platform with which to comprehend a subject, that some would argue, will always be incomprehensible.