Natural Worlds

Natural Worlds

Sir David Attenborough, great naturalist and celebrated TV presenter, an indisputable “national treasure”, likes to use the phrase “the natural world”.[1] I have no objection to this usage in its place (but see below), but I think the phrase deserves scrutiny (and he is not the only one who uses it). What does it mean? What does it refer to? What is the natural world? It is not the same as the actual world, construed as one among many possible worlds. It is part of the actual world—the part consisting of animals, plants (including fungi), and landscape (rocks etc.). But it’s narrower even than that: it refers to these things as they exist on planet Earth. It corresponds closely to what we call “nature”, as in “I love nature”. The idea is that the natural world is one world among many worlds existing on planet Earth—the physical world, the art world, the philosophical world. In practice, Sir David limits his interest to the natural animal world, leaving plants and rocks to one side; he is concerned mainly with animal life on Earth. His famous TV series is not about geology or ferns. In any case, the natural world is taken to be one world among many—one domain among many. There might be a series on TV in some remote galaxy called “Life on X” that deals with a quite different natural world. Natural worlds form a plurality, like possible worlds; we can quantify over them, as in “All natural worlds obey the laws of physics”. We might take this to be equivalent to “It is necessary that natural worlds obey the laws of physics”. Natural worlds are multiple, and ours is just one of them. The natural world of Mars, say, is different from the natural world of Earth; a series on the former would be pretty dull in comparison.  Sir David’s Martian counterpart might want nothing to do with it (geology has always left him cold).

Now the first point I want to make is that Earth itself is home to several natural worlds: we have the geological world, the botanical world, and the zoological world, on the one hand, and the arctic, temperate, and tropical worlds, on the other. Not to mention the worlds of whales, monkeys, and bats. The phrase “the natural world” is a catch-all phrase, whose semantics is not exactly pellucid. Semantically, why doesn’t it include the physical world and the chemical world? These are both “natural”, aren’t they? Isn’t matter part of nature? The same for mind. There are many different worlds on Earth, each well-defined, but the natural world isn’t one of them; the phrase is intended to refer to the totality of them (a collective term). In fact, that phrase is pretty empty, a mere stand-in for something better that we can’t quite come up with. We fall back on the phrase because there are no preferable synonyms. It might even be said to be strictly meaningless. A tough-minded critic might insist that there is no such unified thing, only the multiple worlds I have listed. Reality is always natural, trivially so; we need a term that is more specific—a genuine sortal term. It is merely disjunctive, like “thing” or “object”—sorely in need of an individuating concept. Natural worlds don’t form a natural kind. How do we count them? What is their criterion of identity? We can talk that way if we must, having nothing better to offer, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that we have a genuine concept here. This is a kind of dummy sortal concept, like thing. Sir David might have simply said “natural things”, in which case the semantic lameness would have been transparent (“I have always been interested in natural things”). The phrase is highly uninformative: everything is natural and nothing is not a thing. Why not just say “I am interested in animals” or “I am interested in plants” or “I am interested in rocks”? The phrase “the natural world” is just a cobbled-together piece of semi-nonsense—indispensable practically, perhaps, but semantically ill-formed. What does it mean? Isn’t it a bit like “the spirit world” or “the astrological world”? Exactly what is meant by these phrases? Is it perhaps used because it might seem a touch vulgar or unacademic to announce that you are interested in animals? And your interests might be even more confined: worms and insects leave you cold, but you lovelions and elephants. If so, you should say so and not hide behind something nebulous called “the natural world”.[2]

And what about “Life on Earth”: is that phrase kosher? It is intended as all-encompassing, but is it? Isn’t it both too wide and too narrow? Too wide because it includes plant life (not covered in the series), and too narrow because a lot of animal life is not on the earth. Some animal life exists in the earth, some swims in the seas, some flies above the earth, and some does a combination of the above. It would be more accurate to say “Life at or near the Earth”. In fact, the series mainly covered terrestrial life—walking life, basically. Again, there is not the natural unity promised by the phrase. Life on or around Earth is a miscellany, as is the so-called natural world. What is strange is that our language is so impoverished in this respect: why don’t we have a good word for the thing we are trying to refer to? Why can’t we come up with one? It’s suspicious. I have racked my brains and I can’t come up with anything satisfactory. This is why I don’t blame Sir David for resorting to the phrase; he has dedicated his life to something he can’t name or describe. A mysterious entity—the natural world. What other kind of world is there, and can’t you be more specific, please? He clearly loves apes and is impressed by lions and admires elephants, but what is this “natural world” he keeps banging on about so enthusiastically? Do I love “nature”? No, not all of it, but I am fond of many animals and admire a pretty flower; I don’t have any general love of nature as a whole (disease, death, cockroaches). Isn’t all this talk rather pretentious and vague, like “I love humanity”? Doesn’t it lend itself to a kind of emotional inauthenticity? When Sir David recounts his famous close encounter with a family of gorillas, he comes alive and hums with emotional intensity; blather about “the natural world” seems like a way to secure funding from the bigwigs at the BBC. The phrase is best permanently scare-quoted. It has a bureaucratic ring to it.[3]

[1] I recently had the pleasure of watching a documentary on PBS about the making of young David Attenborough’s wonderful “Life on Earth” series, which prompted this essay. I remember seeing him once on the tube in London in the 1970’s. I am a great admirer of his, but the phrase stuck out like a sore thumb and gave me a twinge of unease. This is an expression of that unease.

[2] Why even call it the natural world, as if it is just a special case of natural things like mountains and valleys, atoms and molecules? Why not call it the super-natural world, meaning that it is on a higher plane than more mundane things (like Superman)? It is a cut above the usual hoi-polloi. It is something special, amazing, spiritual even (though not divine). Granted this won’t include common-or-garden rocks, but it might include landscapes and seascapes.

[3] I intend no rebuke to Mr. Attenborough in this tetchy essay; we are all under the same semantic burden. But I do recommend refraining from using the phrase so lushly and lovingly. It isn’t what it purports to be—a lucid designator. I might also remark that it somewhat dehumanizes (!) animals by treating them as a kind of abstract stuff—bits of “the natural world”. Better to stick with specific species and individual animals: we should be concerned with the fate of apes and lions (etc.) not some vague pseudo-entity called “the natural world”. Words matter in politics and ethics. In some moods, I would like to ban the word “nature” and its cognates. I don’t love my bird Eloise because she is part of the natural world (oh so natural!); I love nature, inasmuch as I do, because Eloise is part of it. Also, my lizard, Ramone, and my cat, Blackie.