The Nature of Nature
Rebecca Bushnell
Dean of the College at Penn and Professor of English
All right. Set your watches.
How hard it is to talk about the nature of nature. So what is nature? One statement about nature always summons up its own contradiction. So on the one hand, Neil Evernden says where there is – can be nothing that is not nature, it has no opposite. DDT and a tulip are both made of the elements that constitute nature. But on the other hand, is there anything that is really purely natural? Some people have defined nature as that which is not interfered with, while culture is the product of interference. But as C.S. Lewis has observed in the real world, everything is continuously interfered with by everything else. Nothing is untouched. Everything is thus unnatural.
And here’s another question. What’s the value of nature, anyway? Now, these days people sell things by claiming they are all natural. Hooray, we say. But who is to say that nature’s always good? C.S. Lewis, again, noted the contradictions. For example, we say one man’s actions may be unnatural, and thus bad. But a man who rises above nature is good. So when we talk about nature, are we always talking about culture as much about what lurks in the woods? Thank you.