Philosophy Chat About "Nature" and "Natural"

We had such a great Philosophy conversation last Tuesday that I wanted to give it its own post! Our conversation was inspired by guiding questions in Little Big Minds: Sharing Philosophy with Kids by Marietta McCarty. The philosopher we considered was Lao Tzu. We also read Wild by Emily Hughes.

What is Nature? How would you define it?

Nature is wild and people can explore it but they have to take care of it

Nature is dangerous; well, some things are dangerous, some things aren't

Nature has a balance: predators / prey, life cycles

you don't have to do anything and it'll happen

what everything's made out of ... particles, stardust, everything

What about things that humans make? Is my house Nature? How is my house different from the cardinal's nest? Or is it not?

for the cardinal's nest, humans didn't affect it
we didn't do anything

glass, fabric, paint, mortar, bricks... you can't find that out in Nature

it's what inhabits it
we're not considered Nature, we're considered humans

scientists don't count us as animals

a second ago I saw a leaf fall to the ground; that's Nature, that's the wind

glass is sand that's been heated up a lot
the brick is made of clay and stuff
the paint... if you go back a lot it'll be in Nature
I think technically it is Nature

if we built a bird nest it wouldn't be considered Nature
if a bird did it would be, but why?
a human builds it and we're animals
a bird builds it and they're animals

it's just life
you go into the woods and you just see life
you don't have to go far
sometimes you can view it in your own backyard

a house is a nest for humans

but an animal couldn't do that
even though it's made out of natural materials

What about elements on the Periodic Table that are made by humans using a particle accelerator such as the Large Hadron Collider? Is it Nature if it's made out of the same bits as all other stuff in Nature? Or is it not?

if a bird built a tube and sent particles through it, would it be Nature?

you don't drive down the street and say "there's some Nature" and point to a house, but you would with a bird nest

if we don't have to do anything and it happens, then it's Nature

birds build nests, squirrels build nests, chipmunks build holes
they're changing the world too

if it's something animals do, and we're animals, than the car would be Nature

it's something in the environment that's alive

everything that is not manmade is Nature

Is outer space Nature?

Nature is living stuff, where stuff can thrive and live

water can wash part of the ground away; that would be Nature

grass is growing
stuff is living

outer space is natural but maybe not exactly Nature

we can move trees... is it still Nature?
we can put stinging nettle in a pot and move it around

space is neither Nature nor manmade
it's a new word someone has to make up

neither Nature nor manmade
it doesn't support any living life that we know of yet... we're all looking at Mars

let's just wait to see what people will call it
but I'll just call it space
it's sort of like people who don't have a gender

I think that space is the most natural thing there is, the most ancient, the most original

if things built by people are unnatural than space is the most natural thing there is

if everything is made of star stuff, space and everything in it is the most natural thing

everything is equally natural
in order to define natural, you have to define unnatural too

grass is natural
we just barely affect it

I'm basically going against what I was saying before

people touch grass all the time; it's still considered natural
people take trees, turn their wood into a telephone pole, now it's not natural

in response to Taoism...

children are way more in the flow than adults

being in the flow of the universe
it's really hard not to be

maybe Nature is the word we use to mean going with the flow
a bird building a nest is carried by the seasons

when you're going against the flow you can tell
you're pushing; it feels sharp; it feels kind of crunchy

in response to Wild...

she was in the flow
they were interrupting the flow

she wasn't trying to destroy things

she took the animals with her!

she didn't understand what they were doing
why do you do this? you're supposed to do this

it's okay for her to be in the wild
she had somehow been there and she had been taught the wild way

imagine animals taking you and trying to teach you the animal way; you'd be running back to the house, back to the human way

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