Thespian said:
CarlMinez said:
Humans are animals, exclusively. Nature is what is essential, fundamental. The very core, so to say. Therefore, the term is always relative and impossible to define. But it could be argued that a nuclear power plant is less "natural" than a leaf, even though they are both technically the products of nature. Therefore, a nuclear power plant could be called unnatural.
I was discussing two things, responding to what you said and what someone else said...
But I don't see how a nuclear plant can be called unnatural, you kinda contradicted yourself there. How is it less natural than a leaf? Because it's farther down the chain? Sorry, but I'm pretty sure that "Natural" is a state of absolution - Meaning it isn't subject to terms of gradation such as "more" or "less". Either something's natural or it's not. Animals have been known to use tools too. If a monkey use a stick to get termites out of a whole in the ground, is a termite-covered stick unnatural? All the components of it came from Nature, and it serves something that came from nature, what part of it is unnatural?
It's the same, on a bigger scale, with a nuclear plant.
Well, the word natural is subjective, and therefore it is inevitably relative. In fact, the word unnatural is used almost only in subjective context. Some human behavior is considered unnatural simply because it's rare. Homosexuality is an example of something that has been considered unnatural but is still very common in the animal kingdom.
So we should really find another word because we can't reach any conclusion discussing what is natural or not.
However, if we really must create some kind of "natural to unnatural scale" a power plant, which is a complex system, is probably comparably unnatural, whereas a gorilla using a stick to eat ants is natural, while still more unnatural.
But this debate really bothers to ethics and philosophy, because this is also about humans impact on nature and to which point we should distinguish our society from nature. In this case, my personal opinion is quite simple. We are animals, and though we have a complex language and the ability to invent things, that in itself has no universal merit as long as we can't use it for good. And we are obviously not using our supposed "superiority" to do good.
Furthermore, humans are not successful by any standard. We are overpopulated, yet, the majority of us lives in environments that do not satisfy our biological needs. (80 percent of the population lives in relative poverty, etc)
