I mean, "Nature" is a dialectic all in itself. It is at once both the ultimate origin of the human species, and everything with which we sustain & furnish ourselves; and at the same time it is the origin of every disease that would harm us, and of every condition & necessity that allows for one person to hold dominion over & abuse another. For that reason, it would be unwise not to attempt to make ourselves the masters of it.
But I would disagree that there is a "dialectic" between the "natural", and the "unnatural". That's a position born either out of theology, or of pastoral romanticism. Instead one might say that there is a dialectic between those things which are the product of human society distinctly, and those things which are not, but both are in fact contained within the broader scope of the Natural.
Good points all around. I will say that I wasn't using artificial to mean unnatural, merely to assert the dialectic you point out between human creation and nonhuman creation.
Otherwise we'd have to place bird nests and beaver dams into the category of artifice, and then things just get silly.
I mean, "Nature" is a dialectic all in itself. It is at once both the ultimate origin of the human species, and everything with which we sustain & furnish ourselves; and at the same time it is the origin of every disease that would harm us, and of every condition & necessity that allows for one person to hold dominion over & abuse another. For that reason, it would be unwise not to attempt to make ourselves the masters of it.
But I would disagree that there is a "dialectic" between the "natural", and the "unnatural". That's a position born either out of theology, or of pastoral romanticism. Instead one might say that there is a dialectic between those things which are the product of human society distinctly, and those things which are not, but both are in fact contained within the broader scope of the Natural.
Good points all around. I will say that I wasn't using artificial to mean unnatural, merely to assert the dialectic you point out between human creation and nonhuman creation.
Otherwise we'd have to place bird nests and beaver dams into the category of artifice, and then things just get silly.