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Natural vs Artificial
December 7, 2009 By 31 Comments
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I like this :)
It always struck me as odd when something’s called artificial when you have to use natural things to create it.
If it exists, it’s natural. It might not be good — it might even kill you — but it’s natural.
Otherwise, it’s supernatural, and the supernatural does not exist.
” But Natural is GOOD”, some people say. “How about snake venom, how good is that?”.
Also funny how no homeopath would choose a homeopathic anti-snake venom when bitten.
anti-venom is made from venom. So technically anti-venom is an example of homeopathy working.
The venom is used to produce antibodies via injection into another animal (e.g. a horse, hence “horse serum).
Technically the venom is not being directly used to counter the effects of a snake bite. It is used to produce anti-bodies which then bring about an immunological response in the victim.
Well, according to my knowledge of matter, you actually have to extract something from the natural world to make anything. Your blanket statement of “made from” covers any and all things throughout the history of mankind.
Surely crazy homeopathic medicine people have some sort of distinction or line in the sand that “natural” and “artificial” are separated by. Does anyone know?
There are several medical uses for antifibrinolytics made from snake venom, the most notable ones being:
1) preventing clots in certain cardiovascular surgical situations
2) dissolving clots in neurosurgical cases
Would plastic be considered natural? How about digital watches?
If someone means by “natural” anything produced by nature then I might say no. There was no plastic or digital watches until (a la Palin) a bunch of fish sprouted legs and felt a dire need for tupperware.
In another sense “natural” means materialistic (not in the Madonna sense:). In this case it might be.
It’s produced by us, and aren’t we part of nature?
Thats my dilemma.
My first inclination is to define “natural” as any product of a natural process (oil formation, fusion, fosslization, etc.). Based on this I would consider plastic as an artificail product.
If a product of nature (e.g. humans) produces something, is that which is produced considered natural? I know of no natural phenomenon which produces plastic. At this moment I would consider the plastic an artificial concoction of a natural agent.
Are tools natural in their nature? They were originally modifications of natural objects. Consider a chimp fashioning a “termite fishingpole”. Is that modified twig, while still organic, considered a natural product? Or is it an artifact. This is a problem in archaeology. Is a certain stone shaped by natural porcesses and just looks like a possible tool or was it fashioned by some agent?
I’m inclined to define as artificial any modification of a natural object for purposes other than would be possible in its original state. caves are natural phenomenon that can be used as shelter. But once someone stacks stones to build a hovel, as of now I would conider that shelter as an artificail construct (granted made with natural material).
Of course I haven’t artificially carved this thought into stone. :)
adendum:
I am also curious as to what people might define as being artificial?
Breats implants?
Enzyte?
Splenda?
Just curious :)
I don’t think the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ is silly, because it clearly has some utility, but I accept the point that the distinction isn’t as clear cut as we like to think. If a digital watch is artificial because it is a non-natural arrangement of non-naturally occurring substances, then how about a beaver dam? Definitely a non-naturally occurring arrangement — it’s only brought about by living things.
A decorator crab’s shell ornaments? Non-natural arrangement and non-naturally occurring substance (i.e. the glue it uses).
I’m inclined towards a definition of artificial that means something like ‘a product made from two or more independently occurring natural substances, yeilding a non-natural configuration or substance.’
So, life is natural, but things it manufactures are not; they’re secondarily natural, and therefore artificial. Maybe there are varying degrees of artificial sophistication: cactus needles sharpened by finches to extract grubs are a low order of sophistication, whereas pacemakers are of a higher order of sophistication, but they’re both artificial because they’re secondary creations.
Just a thought, what do you guys think?
I tend to think of ‘artificial’, more or less, as simply meaning ‘having parts arranged by humans’. It would be nice if there were an equivalent word meaning ‘having parts arranged by beavers’ or ‘…by ants’.
how about a beaver dam? Definitely a non-naturally occurring arrangement — it’s only brought about by living things.
Isn’t the activity of living things generally included in things defined as ‘natural’?
Humans use fire, and the various methods of heating that come with it, to change things at a molecular level.
The processes are actually still natural, it is our manipulation that is not.
Unless you take the view of us as very elaborate beavers, who are simply rearranging things to our advantage.
Unless you take the view of us as very elaborate beavers, who are simply rearranging things to our advantage.
Yes.
If you have to be trained how to do something, I think it’s that next level of non-natural. I don’t know how to fix a car, but someone figured it out, and some people can figure it out from a book; some people go to trade school. Someone had to invent the car first, and I sure wouldn’t know how to do that. It took a lot of human progress for anyone to take that on and succeed.
A bear knows what it wants to eat, and let’s say that’s a fish. I want to eat a fish also. I can’t catch a fish with my hands, but some humans might have practiced. I think a bear also has to learn exactly when to strike in order to get the fish. But that’s what bears do. Bears don’t have cars. What bears and humans have in common is that they don’t know how to fix cars. Except some humans do. I’d call that artificial.
What about bees. Bees are bees, but not all bees know how to do all bee stuff. They have jobs, just like people. They don’t seem to have a lot of angst about it either, like what they want to do when they grow up, pointy-haired bosses, how to commute to and from their office. Can you imagine some bees saying, it’s a nice day, I think I’ll walk. No. If someone knocks down their nest, they build a new one. They don’t have Red Cross, FEMA shelters, and red tape insurance hassles, they build a new one. For as smart as we are, we don’t really have our shit together as smart as bees, because our species is resistant to socializm. Furthermore, if my neighborhood were razed by fire or storm, there are already vacancies abundant. I am pretty handy at fixing things, but I can’t make a house, not one anyone would want to call permanent.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Humans have a lot of nature that bears and bees don’t, that’s just the sort of animal we are. I do really think as a whole social unit, humanity depends on one another, and that’s how we developed naturally from having to rely on oneself to survive. That’s why I don’t have to invent my own car or catch my own fish. Taking that fish and putting it in a can, opening the drawer to find the utensil to open that can back up, putting the can in a special trash marked recycling, and putting it out so someone can take it away and make it a new can; meanwhile, I put some mayonnaise on that fish, chop some celery into it, and put in between two slices of bread from a loaf which was baked in a factory and sliced and bought from a store, on a plate, I don’t think that’s natural. It’s not less natural than if I caught and cleaned my own fish and knew how to bake bread either.
Fire can exist naturally, but we know how to build and tend it, and for some reason, I guess, we’re the only species who can’t eat everything raw – or animals would eat more stuff if they knew how to cook it. I guess a lot of random thoughts.
The distinction between natural and artificial is only natural. The two things are clear and distinct.
By artificial we really mean man-ufactured through processes more sophisticated than is possible by other (known) species. Everything else is natural.
But why should only man made objects be unnatural. I think it is an artifact from the religious belief that humans are not animals. Humans are separate from nature because we were chosen specially by god. Therefor what humans do was considered different than what animals do. Now that we know we are all animals isn’t it time we discard such ideas?
The religious part, maybe. The difference part, no.
http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/10/27/monkey-tool-usage-hammer-and-anvil/
I don’t really think there’s as big a difference as we like to think. Most of us are at a luxury to use our brains for much more than daily survival. However, that’s what is on a lot of our minds. What to have for dinner, whether we can afford the mortgage. Busy worker, going to work, don’t get eaten by sharks, come home, watch tv. Animals don’t have tv. Some domestic animals do.
It’s not that we’re anthropomorphizing them. We’re animals.
As small as the difference between man an animal really is, ironically, it’s a pretty big difference.
Perhaps the difference actually comes down to our use of heat to manipulate natural processes?
“a bunch of fish sprouted legs and felt a dire need for tupperware.” LOL!
I was led to believe it was in order to drink Guinness, but maybe that was just propaganda.
Stephen Hawking has suggested that computer viruses fit a basic definition of life.
http://www.rohitab.com/discuss/index.php?showtopic=18512
If you think the distinction between natural/unnatural is fuzzy now, wait a few years until we have machines that have a consciousness (if they haven’t been developed already.)
“wait a few years until we have machines that have a consciousness”
I’ll believe a machine has consciousness when one gets depressed and kills itself.
Actually, real viruses don’t fit the definition for “life”. Seriously. Viruses don’t count as being alive. Strange but true.
Damn. I got to stop using this computer.
You’re all debating under the assumption that man and animal are two distinct, separate groups. I could argue that they are fundamentally the same. Pigs and humans share almost all of their dna, so this cannot be the defining characteristics. Birds use complex sounds for communication, and bees communicate through movements. This cannot define humanity. Advanced societies have been built in ant colonies. Our cities are evidently not defining characteristics. A cynical idea is that our destruction of our environment is what makes us distinct from animals, but beavers are actually more destructive than we are, at least on their scale. Other animals farm, enslave, rape, fashion tools, walk on two legs, fight, build shelters, show preferences for certain foods, and myriad things.
Dogs look pretty guilty after they pee on the floor. Evidently they can show guilt, and they know cause and effect. And you can see animals will deceive each other.
So how would you define a human as separate from other animals? Only then can you define artificial from natural, as the assumption I’m seeing is that artificial is man-made, yet if nothing separates man in character from beast, the separation from natural and artificial is meaningless.
Thank you. It’s so hard to shake off the solipsistic ideas about humans we’ve all been raised with. Particularly amusing is the idea that yes, there was evolution, but at some point God attached a soul, making a beast human. (Catholics, I think.) Any way you look at it, that first human’s mama was an animal. God would have to have waved his soul-bestowing wand over every hominid in Africa in order to prevent one of them committing bestiality.