A Philosophy of Nature

A Philosophy of Nature

It would be nice to give a general description of nature that brings out its essential attributes; not of this or that aspect or department of nature, but the whole thing.[1] What is the general form of the natural world? When people speak of nature in this vein, they mean the earth and the life that exists there; not other planets in other solar systems, or possible worlds, but this planet as it actually is. This includes geology, botany, zoology, and psychology—terrestrial science. Is there something that unites these various fields? The first thing we should note is that nature consists of natural kinds: divisions of nature that depend only on nature not on human conceptualization. We are trying to describe nature as it is objectively not from our subjective human viewpoint. Some people doubt that natural kinds exist; kinds are imposed by us, they say, by our classifying minds. There is a simple refutation of this: if that were so, our minds themselves would have no natural divisions, but how then could they impose divisions on nature? Take concepts: color concepts, shape concepts, mathematical concepts, ethical concepts, etc. They must fall into groups of their own accord, so to speak, or else they can perform no acts of classification. But then, why insist that nature cannot exhibit objective divisions? The truth is that our concepts fall into different conceptual kinds without this being imposed on them from outside. In the physical world kinds fall into two kinds: natural and imposed. So, we can say, unambitiously, that nature consists of a finite collection of objective natural kinds—geological, botanical, zoological, psychological. Rocks, plants, animals, and psychological states. Nature is naturally carved up in a certain way; it isn’t a homogenous blob or a blank slate.

We can start our description of nature with geology—“the science which deals with the physical structure and substance of the earth”, as the OED defines it. The first thing to note is that the earth is old, older than has been traditionally thought—some four billion years old. It wasn’t born yesterday, or six thousand years ago. It has been a long time in the making, from its molten beginnings to its current semi-solid state. The rocks that compose it are of various ages—igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. These are the earth’s natural kinds. A geology text will tell you all about them and their origins. They were not created all in one go but over vast geological time; so, some parts of nature are older than others. The idea that the earth was created in one fell swoop in the relatively recent past is a myth that the science of geology has exploded. This evolution (the word is appropriate) is apparent in the layering of rock with which we are familiar—those rock strata beloved of geology textbooks. The earth thus consists of natural kinds of rocks, very ancient by human standards, some more ancient than others, divided into strata that sit one on top of the other. These have evolved as a result of natural forces that have created them over time: volcanic eruptions, cooling, heating, sedimentation, pressure, bombardments from outer space. Not all of these mineral kinds are native to planet earth; in fact, many originate in stellar debris floating around in remote parts of the universe (this is true of nearly all metals). The natural substances of earth are a mixture of the native and the alien, original and acquired. We might call this astronomical holism: a planet like earth is not an isolated system but is formed by the totality of cosmic matter and processes. The universe works in large units—galaxy-sized, roughly. The general form of these accretions and original materials is that of stratification: a layering of types of matter accumulated over time, not the replacement of one type by another. The landscape of earth—what we observe of it—is formed by complex and various forces and types of stuff that resemble a layered cake. The earth retains its history, which can be read off its structure. It didn’t emerge fully formed one bright day, equipped with everything it would become; it slowly evolved by means of natural forces. It is a mish-mash of things. It has grown and transformed over time, as if organically. Its surface today is nothing like what it was four billion years ago. Geologically, it is a work in progress with a long history behind it; it didn’t spring fully formed off an assembly line.

I repeat all this in order to make a point: the rest of nature is much the same. Biology (including psychology) recapitulates geology. Perhaps this should have been obvious, since the flora and fauna of the world are a kind of extension of its geology. From the point of view of an alien geologist, plants and animals are just iterations of geological strata—metamorphic rocks, basically. The matter of the earth has transformed into another type of material, squishier, more active, with some new properties—but the same old stuff that has lying around for millions of years. Our alien geologist may report back to base that earth has created new kinds of “rock” from its original composition. Some of this is actually quite rocky, like coral rock and bones and teeth. The same old atoms have taken on new properties, forming new strata. The new strata sit on top of the old strata forming a kind of soft malleable crust or icing capable of renewing itself by acts of duplication. The same principles apply to it as apply to the underlying geological strata: it is ancient, evolving, stratified, and the result of natural forces. The biological world is essentially another chapter in geological history. Darwin’s theory of evolution is a theory of the origin of another type of rock (the fleshy kind). Plants and animals belong in a late chapter of the history of geological existence. In fact, Darwin was on the brink of discovering his theory of plant and animal evolution during his geological excursions recorded in The Voyage of the Beagle, because he had already understood the lessons of geology: the world is old, created over time, indebted to the past, preserving the past in altered form, everchanging. All he needed was the idea of natural selection under conditions of random mutation. Geology gave him the basic principles of organic evolution on earth. He could have written a book before On the Origin of Species called On the Origin of Rocks and told a very similar revolutionary story.Both sorts of natural kind evolve gradually over time by natural forces, not by divine act fully formed. Rock formations change over geological time, and so do flesh formations. The inorganic and the organic instantiate much the same basic pattern. The old is gradually modified into the new while preserving its old nature. This is not to deny the differences between organic and inorganic evolution; it is just to point out that in a general theory of nature the two march in parallel—evolving natural kinds under natural forces obeying a principle of stratification.

The same picture holds for psychology: minds evolve gradually over time, as a result of natural forces, preserving earlier formations. We are now very familiar with this idea: minds today contain characteristics from the distant past; they don’t leave this past behind. The mind consists of strata, old and new, that coexist today, not always harmoniously. Thus, the id coexisting with the superego, and the like. The mind follows the pattern laid down by its mineral and physiological predecessors. It’s a mish-mash of the old and new. The brain is like a rock formation arranged into layers with temporal labels. Some parts of the brain are indeed evolutionarily older than other parts (e.g., brain stem and pre-frontal cortex). It is the same pattern repeating itself: the old folded into the new, layer upon layer. The mind is a stratified thing too. This is as true for the human mind as it for the minds of other animals. The mind is old structures combined with new–like the body, like the ground beneath your feet. For example, human knowledge is a stratified structure: we have old knowledge and new knowledge coexisting together—knowledge of how to eat and mate and knowledge of physics and history. If we want a label for this philosophy of nature, we could call it “historicist stratificationism”, or “hist-strat”. That’s how nature works as a general rule.[2]

[1] The OED defines “nature” as “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, and the landscape, as opposed to humans and human creations”. Odd that this definition seems to exclude both humans as a species and animal minds. Isn’t physical anthropology the study of part of the natural world, and aren’t animal minds part of nature?

[2] We could apply the same analysis to language, architecture, the arts, the sciences, religions, etc. Geology is the model for them all. Yet geology is not generally held in high esteem, compared to physics. If I am right, it lays down the blueprint for the rest of life on earth. I don’t of course mean that everything living reduces to geology, just that geology provides the form of many other regions of nature. It is a good question whether geological evolution is required for other types of evolution, which I leave for homework. I would say that geology was as important as astronomy in shaping our current view of the universe and our place in it.