There Is No Such Thing As Nature: Is Nature A Social Construction?

Consider one fundamental proposition on which much social ecological thought, theory, research, practice, politics and policy hinges:

“There is no such thing as nature.” Discuss

The Meaning of Nature

Nature is described as the phenomena that exist; it also refers to the inherent qualities possessed by certain things. In philosophy, nature refers to the set of all things that are natural. The word nature originated from the Latin word essential qualities, or natural. This paper will discuss the questions that are related to it.

  I agree with the argument that there is no such thing as nature. This is because by acknowledging the existence of nature then we are isolating ourselves from it when we are also part of it (nature). This can be well explained by redefining nature as the way people perceive the workings of the world instead of the early, classical perception that separate human from nature (Pollet et al. 2014 p.72).

Once we differentiate ideas of nature from those things they refer to, then we can make an explicit claim that there is no such thing as nature. It is a name given to all different kinds of real-world phenomena. The phenomena that nature represents are not nature as we think but, instead, what humans choose to call as nature (Quinn and Alston 2017 p.96). Therefore, in real sense nature does not exist at the level of the ontological (or at the level of material reality). When geographers are having a discussion about nature in their teaching and research (either implicitly or explicitly), we need to know that they are not referring to it but to what they call as nature. It is also clear that nature is made real because many actors and geographers in society choose to discuss all sorts of things. The conclusion that we can draw from this is that no right word can define any real reality. This is because words are linked to things only by convention. So what can people can say about nature? The word nature encourages people to disregard the context that defines it (Fitzsimmons 2017 p.86).

 A typical illustration that can prove that nature does not exist is the perception that people may have on those with obesity. What many people claim to be natural and not natural?

Now let me explain. In recent years, media have reported the research conducted by several researchers’ that propose the genetic cause of obesity or excessive weight gain. This information can make the general public and obese people to believe that obesity needs medical attention (injection, pills, and surgery).  In this case, a person’s view of the solutions and causes of obesity will be different. The perception that many people will have on what causes obesity and its origin will be different. One person may connect it to the kind of foods an individual take or their own life. Others, especially in the western community, will connect obesity to families of lower income (Underhill 2017 p.102). Other people might also conclude that obesity has economic, cultural and social causes such that medical treatment cannot provide a permanent solution to the problem. This case is relevance in geography in that many geographers tend to re-categorizing things that seem to be natural or those that have natural causes. This attempt of establishing things that appear natural and things that are a non-natural character is an essential part of finding out where the boundaries between social and natural life lie. Human geographers are key individuals because they have expanded our sense of why and where relation, structures, and social processes are essential. Most of the Geographers believe that nature is s social construction and this means that nature is not natural at all. From this case, we can also argue that nature does not exist (Moore 2017 p.102). This geographer approach explains why there is such thing as nature.        

Nature as a Social Construction

It is also true that Nature is harmonious. There exist an amicable agreement between life and death, disorder and order that we as human perceive. With the death of an individual, comes the birth of another person. This duality verifies a balanced as well as the harmonious world (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010 p.76).

It is also clear that people are doing something that is not related to all another form of life on earth. We are killing and not giving back. Humans made use fossil fuels just the same way plants use soil. Both fossil fuels and soil consist of dead life forms. However, by burning, fossil fuel human being create objects that do not add value to life (ecosystem). This is the significant difference that separates humans from all other types of life forms. The first ecosystem that will be destroyed by a human is the Coral life. This kind of destruction is not in line with the duality of death and life (Thompson 2017 p.78).

The fact that human beings can have this kind of argument as to whether there is such thing as nature points to the reality that human has the moral obligation of defending life. We have obligation/power since we can identify the problems, unlike other organisms. This suggests that we are responsible for all forms of life. Humans have two choices that they have to make;  to create life or choose to destroy life.

Many philosophers argue that nature is not a harmonious pattern of change, season, reproduction, balance. Instead, it is a catastrophe which often contained in a fragile balance. He also illustrates that nature itself cannot be defined as natural since it is being naturalized. Zizek also claims that human beings cannot perturb nature. This statement is true because we as humans cannot disturb a system as we are part of the system. This logic is not conducive to the well-being of humans. This is true because burning all the fossil fuels that are on the earth surface will not affect the earth negatively. The humans are the ones that will be affected negatively because the quality of life of the humans will be compromised.  From this argument of Zizek then it is true that nature does not exist.

All nature skeptics concluded that there is no such thing as nature because nothing in this world can be guaranteed to be without the influence of human. However, this argument has many flaws. An individual does not have to forgo the claim to be another or isolate person just because another person has some influence on one. So the reason why we have to abandon the claim that argues that there is another that is natural since it often carries some human influence is that to be other does not mean that you have to be purely the other person. Something cannot be named as nature just because it has some features or elements of human (Johannesen, Strickland and Eubanks 2018 p.98).

When we consider the work of some philosophers such as Plato who contributed a lot to things that deal with nature, he disagreed with the sophist who argued that human nature is more less the same with nature of animals or natural world that surround us. This argument by Plato also suggests that nature does not exist. When we consider the argument of many philosophers, they argue that other substance does not exist except God, and that is nature. This, therefore, shows that anything in this world lives with the power of only one force. The power of God, this, therefore, means that all things are equal.it also suggests that nature does not exist because if God is nature, then it will be difficult to prove the existence of nature the same way we cannot quickly determine the presence of God (Lenart and Vaupel 2017 p.62).

Nature does not exist just the same way the World, The Nation, the universe, and God does not exist. Nature is something that contains all things. And nobody in this world has ever touched, seen it. There is no one who knows how nature works (Youniss 2017 P.65).

Again when people release deadly chemicals into water and soil, they are not hurting the nature or earth, but rather hurting our life as well as reducing our ability to obtain help from the symbiotic duality of death and life.

Conclusion

This question dealing with the existence of nature allows people to have a good understanding of modern philosophies. It also strengthened our belief into knowing the presence of human beings because human beings are not discrete things. This paper sincerely explained why there is no such thing of nature. And we found out that human beings are part of nature and we cannot separate ourselves from nature. We also found out that God is nature. And no other person knows about its origin, and this clearly shows that there is no nature. This is because we cannot prove the existence of God just like we cannot prove that there is the world or the universe.

References

Fitzsimmons, M., 2017. The matter of nature. In Theory and Methods (pp. 109-124). Routledge.

Isaacs, S., 2018. The nature and function of phantasy. In Developments in psychoanalysis (pp. 67-121). Routledge.

Pollet, T.V., Tybur, J.M., Frankenhuis, W.E. and Rickard, I.J., 2014. What can cross-cultural correlations teach us about human nature?. Human Nature, 25(3), pp.410-429.

Johannesen, R.L., Strickland, R. and Eubanks, R.T., 2018. Richard M. Weaver on the Nature of Rhetoric: An Interpretation. In The Vision of Richard Weaver (pp. 91-100). Routledge.

Lenart, A. and Vaupel, J.W., 2017. Questionable evidence for a limit to human lifespan. Nature, 546(7660), p.E13.

Moore, J.W., 2017. The Capitalocene, Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(3), pp.594-630.

Quinn, G. and Alston, P., 2017. The nature and scope of states parties’ obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (pp. 3-76). Routledge.

Ritzer, G. and Jurgenson, N., 2010. Production, consumption, prosumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer’. Journal of consumer culture, 10(1), pp.13-36.

Thompson, M.A., 2017. Recent approaches to studying argumentation in institutions have pointed out the role of institutional rules in constraining argumentation that takes place in institutional contexts. However, few studies explain how these rules concretely affect actual argumentation. In particular, little work has been done as to the consequences of interactional asymmetry which often exists between participants in... Argumentation, 31(1), pp.165-177.

Underhill, E., 2017. Mysticism: A study in nature and development of spiritual consciousness (Vol. 73). Lulu. com.

Youniss, J., 2017. The nature of social development: A conceptual discussion of cognition. In Issues in childhood social development (pp. 203-227). Routledge.