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Doing What's Natural

Behold, the Big, Fat Hypocrite

In Nerdy Article #2, I argued that, "[b]y generally avoiding the new and popular, and generally limiting oneself to the tried-and-true, one will, in general, avoid wasting time on the inestimable amount of ephemeral trash that fills our bookstores, airwaves, magazines, newspapers, and so forth." I then went on to frame my argument in terms and examples that suggested reading newspapers, listening to the news, or paying any other variety of attention to current events was a waste of time.

Well, now I'm going to make a big, fat hypocrite of myself.

My homepage is actually set to drudgereport.com, and I listen to National Public Radio every morning. I make a pretty deliberate attempt to stay informed, and this means regularly putting down my nerdy books and checking the news for things that matter.

Ooooh, That Sounds Natural

All right. Having confessed my sin, I can now admit that, while listening to NPR a few weeks ago, I heard a story about a National Park Service (NPS) effort to preserve natural noise within Grand Canyon National Park.

The story caught my attention because, in the course of explaining the difference between natural and unnatural noise, Ted Robbins and the Park Service employees he interviewed made it pretty clear that noises made by human activity and, especially, noises made by human beings using human-made machines are not natural.

This, for example, is what you see when you check out the story online (minus my incredible artwork, that is):

(Click image to enlarge.)

But why is this of interest?

Brad Pitt's Pants and the Tree of Life

Well, it struck me as interesting for two reasons. First off, given the ideological leanings that come through in nearly every broadcast, I'd be shocked if NPR as an organization or any more than a handful of its employees wouldn't happily proclaim the truth of evolutionary theory, according to which humans beings share a common descent with all other forms of life and are, like all forms of life, the non-miraculous product of random genetic mutation and natural selection.¹ Second, our National Park Service makes it explicitly clear that they think evolutionary theory is correct.²

Viewing the world from the perspective of evolutionary theory, however, how can they maintain the idea that human beings and human forms of life are somehow "unnatural" — that, in contrast to coyotes and crickets, humans somehow fail to make "natural" noises?

Probably by letting everyday concepts creep into their "science."

In day-to-day conversation, we talk as if nature exists where (and to the degree that) man-made objects don't. According to American common sense, Brad Pitt would be closer to nature in a cabin on the beach than he would be in an apartment in New York City; he'd be closer to nature on a walk on the beach than he would be in a cabin on the beach; he'd be closer to nature on a walk on a secluded beach than he would be on a walk on a crowded beach; and he'd be closer to nature walking on a secluded beach in the buff than he would be walking on a secluded beach with his clothes on.

Because it remains virtually untouched by Brad Pitt, other human beings and human-made things, we think that Antarctica is the most natural place on earth. And for the exact opposite reason, we think shopping malls, factories and the Superdome are among the least natural places on earth.

At the most basic level, however, evolutionary theory implies that we human beings and human activities are part of nature, not somehow distinct from it. From an evolutionary perspective, we can no more claim that human life — in all of its forms — isn't a natural part of the natural world than we can claim that a branch isn't part of the tree in which it grows.

(Click image to enlarge.)

Given the truth of evolutionary theory and the idea that human beings share an ancestral tree with all other forms of life:

1. A sprawling suburb is every bit as natural as a prairie dog town, an ant hill, or a wasps' nest.
2. Lake Powell's Glen Canyon Dam is every bit as natural as a beaver's dam.
3. Traffic backed up on I-10 is every bit as natural as big horn sheep in line on a craggy, alpine pass in Glacier National Park.
4. A man working at a desk in a cubicle is every bit as natural as a salmon swimming up an Alaskan stream to spawn.
5. A construction worker obliterating a stretch of pavement with a jackhammer makes every bit as natural a sound as a cricket or a coyote doing whatever it is that crickets and coyotes do.

In other words, from an evolutionary perspective, the common sense idea that man-made things aren't natural isn't just false, it's unintelligible. Those that espouse evolutionary theory can therefore only maintain that humans add unnatural noise to our national parks at the cost of irrationality.

That's why NPR's story about the NPS effort to preserve natural noise within Grand Canyon National Park caught my attention.

Didn't Clothes Evolve, Too?

I'm sure you already get my point, but let me drive it home and close this article with commentary on a recent marketing stunt.

Apparently trying to get visitors to see homo sapeins from an evolutionary perspective, the London Zoo recently put nearly naked humans on display in a bear cage and posted a sign at the entrance to the exhibit that read, "Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment."³ It's easy to see why those who believe in evolution might think there's nothing "special" about human beings as distinct from other species — nothing that would set us apart as ontologically or metaphysically different. But for zoologists to claim that almost naked humans sitting on a rock ledge in a bear cage are "in their natural environment" is for them to reveal that they really don't grasp their own worldview.

If human beings and (therefore) human ways of life are the product of evolutionary processes, if we do in fact share a common descent with all other life-forms, then naked people on rock ledges in bear cages are no more "in their natural environment" than clothed bears would be "in their natural environment" praying on their knees in Westminster Abbey.

From an evolutionary perspective, teens in taxi cabs in Mexico City, women peddling rickshaws in Calcutta, and men monitoring the reactor at Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant are all just as much "in their natural environments" as bears in forests, bees on flowers and birds in trees. From an evolutionary perspective, the word "natural" can mean little more than "the way things are."

The London Zoo would have made a point more coherent with evolutionary theory if, instead of putting undressed people in a bear cage, it had simply posted a sign reading "Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment" in the parking lot or at the nearby Regent's Park Tube station.

But then it wouldn't have made the news, I guess.