Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Nature's Agent?
"Man is Nature's agent and interpreter; he does and understands only as much as he has observed of the order of nature in fact or by interference; he does not know and cannot do more." p. 33
This quote had me pondering while doing the reading for the class because throughout the semester thus far we have learned how humans think of themselves separate of nature but here Bacon says that we are nature's agent but how can that be. My thinking is that if we are really nature's agent then we would not be destroying the environment and would be taking care of it. We would not think of nature as something we do not care about due to the fact that we are nature's agent. Maybe I am a little bias because I see how we treat the environment here in the United States. We destroy the environment so we humans can live on it. Of course there are many places around the world who do everything they can to help the environment such as places in the Western part of the United States with the creation of National Parks but for the most part we destroy it. In the Middle East they destroy countless parts of nature to drill oil and even here in Alaska there is a debate on whether we should dig for oil although we would be destroying the homes of many animals such at the grizzly bears or caribou.
Bacon introduces a new idea to our society by showing humans that not only are we in fact part of nature but it is our duty to be nature's agent. He says that we have to do everything we can to protect nature and to understand it. He says that there are a lot of things that we do not understand about nature but we should do everything we can to advance our studies of nature and see how it benefits us. This thinking to me is problematic because I think we surpassed the stage of trying to understand nature and we only want to do what is best in our eyes. My question really is do we consider Bacon to be correct when he says that we are nature's agent and that we should go beyond our limitations to understand it or is it to late for that sort of thinking.
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I think your interpretation of this first intriguing line is interesting: that “we have to do everything we can to protect nature and to understand it.” I definitely see how you got that, since he implies here that Nature is all we have. And I agree with Bacon, that every experience we have is first and foremost grounded in our relationship with our surroundings; and our surroundings are first and foremost parts of Nature in one way or another.
ReplyDeleteBut I also got from this line that Bacon is implying that Nature needs us. Maybe it was just how I read it, but it seemed that part of Nature’s very existence/meaning is our interpretation of it. So maybe humans are “a part” of nature, but in the same way that the mind is “part of” a person—we are a part of it, but not in an inferior way but instead in an essential way. If one reads it this way, it’s easy to validate an anthropocentric perspective with it, and that could easily oppose the kind of “protector of nature” status of humans that you are talking about.
So I am not really sure if Bacon thinks we are the best, most necessary part of Nature and so can do whatever we think is best with it, or if he thinks that we still depend on Nature’s thriving first and foremost.