This weekend I was musing over the word ‘nature’. It struck me that ‘nature’ has to be one of the most abused/over-used/confusing words in the Western languages.
When we talk about a person’s ‘nature’, we may mean the essence of that person–that which makes him who he is. His ‘nature’ might be kindly and quiet, or it might be loud and funny. He was born that way. That is what we mean when we speak of his ‘nature’ in that context. As such, we hail his nature as something he should be true to. It is the REAL him, as opposed to all the constraints and artifices that those around him would like to impose on him.
On the other hand, in another sense of the word, a person’s ‘nature’ could also be precisely that which he strives against: his propensity towards all the vices. When we say that someone has an ‘animal nature’, we are implying something brutish and thoughtless. (This of course is unfair to ‘nature’ and to the animals, because often when man is most ‘animal’ in his behavior–greedy, selfish, and murderous–he is often least like the animals.)
‘Natural Law’ when seen from a Thomistic perspective is the general moral law that we all (sort of ‘know’) in our hearts. But turn the words around and the ‘Laws of Nature’ as we discuss them in science have nothing to do with ‘Natural Law’ or morality. Indeed, ‘the Laws of Nature’ are not laws but really just physical principles which scientists have observed, principles that the universe invariably operates by (they are never broken, and always in some sense deterministic).
‘Natural’ foods are what we term foods grown without pesticides and meats from animals reared to roam free on the range. In addition they have to be manufactured without preservatives and chemical additives. It is thought, in some quarters, that food which is not genetically engineered, is more ‘natural’ and less dangerous to consume… And yet, the very ‘nature’ that we look to for health and good living is also treacherous to us. No matter how healthily and ‘naturally’ we live, at some level ‘nature’ itself is ultimately our destroyer. Neanderthals (who surely ate foods without pesticides and hormonal injections) still got cancer, pneumonia, and suffered strokes.
In fact, however artificial it is, it was multiple surgical interventions that extended the life of our newborn son twelve years ago when he otherwise would not have survived his first year of life precisely because ‘nature’ had supplied him with a heart that had no walls.
A ‘nature painting’ can either be a painting painted with all ‘natural’ materials (materials from nature that have not been subject to ‘artificial’ chemical processing), or it could also be a painting of ‘nature’. In this case by ‘nature’ is meant the unspoiled outdoors that man hasn’t messed with (too much… or at all?).
Another use of the word ‘nature’ aims at telling people what their roles are in life. It is the ‘nature’ of woman (some, perhaps most, say) to be nurturing and take care of her children. It is how she was ‘made’ and therefore she must ______ (insert different roles that different societies find non-negotiables as to what women may or may not do). In any case, for a woman to be called an ‘unnatural mother’ is not a compliment.
This argument from ‘nature’ was used to keep black men in slavery… and before that, it was used by members of the nobility (argument from birth) to keep their rule while keeping their peasants peasants.
With Classical Liberalism, Thomas Jefferson claimed that ‘nature’ and ‘nature’s’ God were the originator of the classical liberal rights of Life, Liberty, and Property; THIS at the same time that others claimed that the ‘nature’ of the black African was to be in servitude.
Appeal to ‘nature’ seems to be able to justify everything from altruism to fascism as to what our ‘nature’ as humans dictates in terms of where we all fit into ‘nature’s’ order.
Even within science, the use of the word ‘nature’ is obscured. In physics, f. ex. when we smash two atoms together for fission and look at the products, we claim we are studying ‘nature’ and its laws. Within environmental science, others claim that this is ‘unnatural’ and dangerous and perhaps with an appeal to ‘natural law’ even wrong.
So is our place in ‘nature’ or outside ‘nature’??
Within our value-laden theologies and philosophies we cannot decide whether ‘nature’… our own human ‘nature’–or even the ‘outdoorsy nature’–is desirable or not. Do we need to tame, deny, or conform to our ‘nature’ or to God’s ‘nature’ (meaning the physical world around us)? In many respect, we have not come to terms with each other on the meaning of the word ‘nature’, neither in terms of human ‘nature, nor in terms of the ‘out of doors’.
If we do not understand the sense in which others (today and through history) use the word nature? [including its use in Holy Scripture], how can we be sure we’re not infusing their writings about ‘nature’ with our own preferred understanding of the word?
A famous conservative a while back said “Words mean something”, and indeed they do. A thorough study of language is the best foundation we can lay for our children’s higher education and spiritual and intellectual preparation for responsible adulthood.