What is nature? How would you explain it?

[Wallenstein]

Another vote from me for the "nature is everything, incl. humans".

Other animals do not intentionally live in equilibrium with other species... the laws of supply and demand force that equilibrium. Foxes don't have a rabbit management plan - they eat rabbits until there are none left, at which point the foxes start to die and the rabbits repopulate, and so the cycle goes.

Humans are subject to exactly the same laws - we're just better at keeping on top of it but at some point we too will be forced back into equilibrium.

Anyway, an ET wouldn't necessarily assume that humans are the dominant species on the planet... they would look to microbes and other beasties as the real rulers of planet earth. Higher species are just convenient habitats for 'em!

 

[ex-member Raikey]

after reading the above,.

can your disertation be on how much of a debate nature is,..?? hahaha

i think u have your word count already here,.....

But for me,...

its a paradox of sorts,...

nature is everthing that "is"

if you look at the terms "man-made" or "natural" they are the same thing,...

the man who "made" the "manmade thing" is not a robot so the tihng is natural,...

but even if he were a robot, would that robot not have been created by a man and thus natural,....

hahahaha sorry,...

but the story of our everything is still on the first page and i would sum up by saying words to this effect trying sooooooo hard not to sound too pretentious,....lol

Nature is the story of life being played out like a soap opera and we are just "extras" for one or two scenes before we get killed off in a "tram crash" or evolve into something completley different,...but still everyting from the opening scene to the closing credits is ,,,nature...

there!,...hahahah

Stu

 

[locum76]

Posts 18 to 22 nailing it so far.

 

[g4ghb]

as locum says 18 - 22 cover it quite well.

I presume you have checked out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature - might help once you read between the lines

 

[hammy]

Having been in the same position a few years ago (at uni) I found James Lovelock sums nature up for the earth anyway as.

''a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.''

I've a few of his books, worth a read if you'er scientifically minded.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

 

[ex-member Raikey]

yer see,...we cant even limit it to Earth though can we?

i just did "a brief history of time" again,...lol i keep trying ....but when i mention the opening scenes i was hinting at the big bang,...

right up until whatever is going to happen in the end,.....

but then we end up in the realms of ,.....

"is the story pre-written"?, etc etc,....in which nature becomes simply a mapped out path,..

or ,.....

one path we are on, in amongst an infinate amount of other possible paths,...

OUCH!!!

 

[hammy]

Does the word ''nature'' only refer to the planet earth though.
A brief history of time, the most popular unread book of all time.
You must be keen lol

http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0549910#m_en_gb0549910

noun
1 [mass noun] the phenomena of the physical world collectively , including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations:
the breathtaking beauty of nature the physical force regarded as causing and regulating the phenomena of the world:

 

[ex-member Raikey]

A brief history of time, the most popular unread book of all time.
You must be keen lol

Aye!,...took it to the beach every day for a month in Cornwall last year to finally crack it,....hahaha

i spent a full day on page 36 i think,...

combined with the low light polution down there and the clear August night skies, and a precurment from the scrumpy farm,

made for some interesting (horizontal) conversations....

Stu,..

 

[Bigfoot]

Sometimes I think Nature is a bit like economics without the external influences. Basically it's the allocation and management of scarce resources. Done without external influence it would be "pure" Nature but even Nature can mould and shape things that have been influenced by the hand of Man. Does that mean we are part of Nature's grand plan? I suppose it does.

 

[ged]

Agreed that 'nature' could theoretically encompass the Big Bang, the fine structure constant and all the cosmos, but I think I'd narrow it down to something a bit more local.

I'd say nature is everything between our planet's core and the top of the atmosphere, plus a couple of small celestial bodies (the sun and the moon) which give us life, weather and tides. I'd also say that to describe it in more detail than that in a couple of hundred words is a tall order. Which is one reason why it's so fascinating.

 

[No Idea]

Nature?
This is a two fold thing;

Its the effect that the other planets and the Sun and Moon have on the surface of the earth, from water and waves, through weather and erosion, to earthquakes and volcanoes, and gravity..

And also the fight for continued life of all the life on the planet, ranging from grass, fighting for access to sunlight with weeds, through the plancton, being eaten by the small fish being eaten by bigger fish, and the spider storing living flies in its web cocoons, to girls trying to outdo each other in a drag race along a tarmac strip for bragging rights to get the best man...

Or...

Nature is the evolution of the planet and its surface environments as it careers through space and through other systems influences, and the continued fight for survival, through to contentment of all the speices, against their peers, other speices and the environment itself.

 

[silvergirl]

Thanks for the comments.
Interesting to hear people's ideas.

For my dissertation, I think I'm going to duck the question and try coming at it from another angle as it's just to hard to come up with something definitive.

I did come across this quote which I thought was quite good though

“Human beings are a fragment of nature, and nature is a figment of humanity” Kemal & Gaskell 1993

 

[Tengu]

Thats a good one

Humans are part of nature. Beavers alter their enviroment

and you are to note; machines evolve according to set rules

 

[durulz]

Thanks for the comments.
Interesting to hear people's ideas.

For my dissertation, I think I'm going to duck the question and try coming at it from another angle as it's just to hard to come up with something definitive.

I did come across this quote which I thought was quite good though

“Human beings are a fragment of nature, and nature is a figment of humanity” Kemal & Gaskell 1993

I really like that quote. It's spot on.
As a university lecturer myself, who has had to tutor students writing everything from a 3rd year dissertation to a Phd thesis, my advice is always to write the body of the essay first. And THEN do the introduction - last. It's hard to introduce something you haven't written, and by the very nature (ker-ching!) of the action of writing your essay you'll discover new information and new ideas that will affect how you think about your topic. Writing the introduction first will just confine you.
Mind you, some tutors will say write the introduction first because that will guide you and keep you focussed.
But I always do it last and tell students to also do it that way.
So write your dissertation first and see what conclusions you draw, and then write the introduction.

 

[Bushwhacker]

A brief history of time, the most popular unread book of all time.
You must be keen lol

That's a good book and was fairly easy to follow, so I then bought The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Holy carp, it turns your brain inside-out!
I could cope with 4 dimensions but he goes into double figures, my head hurts trying to think about it now.

 

[robin wood]

I really like that quote. It's spot on.
As a university lecturer myself, who has had to tutor students writing everything from a 3rd year dissertation to a Phd thesis, my advice is always to write the body of the essay first. And THEN do the introduction - last.

This is excellent advice. Another excellent piece of advice is when writing up turn the internet connection off. Posting questions on internet forums however interesting is a good avoidance strategy.

 

[silvergirl]

This is excellent advice. Another excellent piece of advice is when writing up turn the internet connection off. Posting questions on internet forums however interesting is a good avoidance strategy.

Thanks for that Robin. Will unplug the connection now as I know you are right!
(feel free to tell me off if I'm on here again before tea time!)

 

[ex member coconino]

The way I look at it, nature is how things are without conscious intervention. It follows from this that when I, a part of nature, decide to cut down a tree then the result is unnatural, whereas when a beaver instinctively cuts down a tree the result is natural. However, natural consequences follow unnatural actions, and the line between natural and unnatural becomes increasingly blurred: the human-felled tree rots in the same natural way as the beaver-felled tree, but it would not have been there to rot without decisive human action, so is it still natural?

Just my 2p worth!

 

[Bushwhacker]

The way I look at it, nature is how things are without conscious intervention. It follows from this that when I, a part of nature, decide to cut down a tree then the result is unnatural, whereas when a beaver instinctively cuts down a tree the result is natural. However, natural consequences follow unnatural actions, and the line between natural and unnatural becomes increasingly blurred: the human-felled tree rots in the same natural way as the beaver-felled tree, but it would not have been there to rot without decisive human action, so is it still natural?

Just my 2p worth!

I don't agree, where's the cut-off point where cognitive thought is/isn't natural?
A crow has cognitive thought, if it uses a twig to get some food from a hole in a tree is that natural?
It had a thought process, made a conscious decision to extract that food using a tool, that piece of food would still be there if the crow hadn't removed it.
What's the difference between that and you cutting a tree down?

As I asked earlier on. At what point in evolution did man suddenly become unnatural?

 

[ex-member Raikey]

I don't agree, where's the cut-off point where cognitive thought is/isn't natural?
A crow has cognitive thought, if it uses a twig to get some food from a hole in a tree is that natural?
It had a thought process, made a conscious decision to extract that food using a tool, that piece of food would still be there if the crow hadn't removed it.
What's the difference between that and you cutting a tree down?

As I asked earlier on. At what point in evolution did man suddenly become unnatural?

Yeah i agree,...

thats bringing back the thinking that we can evolve out of nature....

we cant,...

evolution no matter how advanced is natural,......

we only ever look in present terms,...even the last 3 or 4000 years are nothing more than a quick bump in a greater evolutionary tale,......

we evolved in intelligence to invent weopons with which to hunt , from slings, bows, the laser sighted rifles,...

but this is our path of evolution,

out prey evolved to become nocturnal or to burrow deeper,....

there is nothing more natural than this process,....

we are close to depleting many natural resources and endangering certian species,

but we have evolved with intelligence (questionable after the previous phrase) to genetically modify foods to grow in the changing enviroment,...

we are woven very tightly into this fabric no matter how unatural is seems now ,....

fast forward a 1000 years and if were still here we may be attending a course on how to use the ancient art of microwave cooking, or using the internet to get information.