What’s the difference between natural and man made?
What’s the difference between natural and man made?
Just something I was talking about with the wife this evening. She says that our house is not natural and used the phrase “out in nature”. But lots of animals build nests. And are we not animals just doing the same?
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The issue is that many people don't consider humans as part of the natural world.
Which is a ridiculous concept to me.
A beaver dam is a natural as the hoover dam. Both represent a species altering the environment for their benefit.
It's kind of a pseudo-religious idea, the whole 'natural is good and humans are not natural'.. Gaia is good, humans have sin, humans are made separate and rule over nature and are therefore not part of 'nature,' God's creation is perfect, all those ideas seem to have been merged into the dichotomy: there is nature and there is humanity.
The problem is just that if "natural" doesn't mean "not made by humans" then it doesn't really mean anything at all. If the things people made are natural, what's excluded by using the word, exactly?
The supernatural
And the subnatural!
AngryUpvote
Walking through the health food aisle like "thank God I finally found some ghost-free food!"
Maybe a degree of refinement?
- dust accumulates and becomes dirt. Natural
- a beaver builds a dam out of nearby fallen logs, natural
- we create ovens and break down rocks to create bricks and get specific metal alloys to create wires and <many more steps in the middle> and you have the hoover damn. Part of the natural world? Sure. Organic? Mostly (carbon based, sans the metals). Refined? Unquestionably. Natural? Maybe not
Definitely refinement.
Man used to build 'natural' tools and shelters and some still do in the most remote parts of the planet. Mud huts and arrowheads are man-made yet also natural. I think we left the 'natural' path when we started smelting, domesticating, tanning, irrigating, etc. We took naturally formed materials and refined or processed them into something you can't just stunble upon in nature. A billion planets in a billion years will not naturally produce an internal combustion engine without some sort of intelligent intervention.
I concur. My gut is telling me there is a difference, but when I try to articulate it, I can’t.
Kind of like that senator who couldn’t define pornography, but her know it when he sees it.
To me bird nests and beaver dams are made with natural materials found in nature, and with little or no manufacturing and refinement. Think of all that human building materials go through during the manufacturing process. Yes the materials ultimately come from the Earth but then go through many refinement processes and assembly steps, and I think each step moves it farther from natural. You don't see shingles and sheet rock laying around in a forest, those things are not natural.