a theoretical framework by which the discussion should proceed.
What we are left with in this second section of the chapter is a moral commitment to care for Nature. This moral commitment is based upon what Nature is (a series of concentric and overlapping human and Natural communities that are symbiotic). As humans, the study of Nature creates the value/duty relationship that outlines the ground of general moral duty from the human side. Then, this general ground becomes more practical when it is specified that there is a moral prohibition not to interfere in a harmful way with our human makings because Nature stands in relation to all of us as “maker.” As such, Nature’s makings (which includes us) requires the respect owed to a maker not to have its own artifacts come back to harm it. This second principle grounds our practical duties to Nature and acts as a firm moral limitation on human technology.
Notes
1 1 I am following W.D. Ross’s text Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949). My translation is of: 89b 23−25: Τὰ ζητούμευά ἐστιν ἴσα τὸν ἀριθμὸν ὅσαπερ ἐπιστάμεθα. ζητοῦμεν δὲ τέττρα, τὸ ὅτι, τὸ διότι, εἰ ἔστ, τί ἐστιν.
2 2 See particularly my books that explore Aristotle: Method and Practice in Aristotle’s Biology (Lanham, MD and London: UPA/Rowman and Littlefield, 1983) and The Origins of Ancient Greek Science: Blood—A Philosophical Study (New York and London: Routledge, 2015): chapter 3, and “Mechanism and Teleology in Aristotle’s Biology” Apeiron 15.2 (1981): 96−102; “The Place of Nature in Aristotle’s Biology” Apeiron 19.1 (1985): 126−139.
3 3 The Oxford English Dictionary cites four principal categories for the noun form in English and many others in verbal and adjectival forms. For a brief summary of the noun forms see below:I. Senses relating to physical or bodily power, strength, or substance: e.g., Semen. Occasionally also: the sexual fluid of a woman. Now rare; and the vital functions of the human body as requiring sustenance, esp. nourishment. Frequently in to support (also suffice, sustain) nature. Now rare. II. Senses relating to mental or physical impulses and requirements, e.g., The vital functions of the human body as requiring sustenance, esp. nourishment. Frequently in to support (also suffice, sustain) nature. Now rare. III. Senses relating to innate character, e.g., The inherent or essential quality or constitution of a thing; the inherent and inseparable combination of properties giving any object, event, quality, emotion, etc., its fundamental character. In later use also more generally: kind, type. IV. Senses relating to the material world, e.g., (a) The creative and regulative power which is conceived of as operating in the material world and as the immediate cause of its phenomena. (b) The phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations. (c) In a wider sense: the whole natural world, including human beings; the cosmos. Obsolete. (d) (Contrasted with art.) In a person’s speech, writing, drawing, etc.: fidelity or close adherence to nature; naturalness; (apparent) lack of artifice. Obsolete. (e) in nature: (of goods or products) in a natural condition; un-manufactured. Obsolete. Rare. In various way, this chapter touches on all of these even though many of the texts considered are not written in English. Please also note that these four senses of nature are not to be confused with the three senses of nature that I put forth.
4 4 I’m thinking here of those who consider the environment as being a constant medium in which humans or some specific agent (human) seeks to commit purposive action within his own rational life plan. These agents view nature rather like a swimming pool in which they partake for their own pleasure when they want to for their self-oriented purposes. I believe that these sorts of agents are on the front lines of being deniers of environmental change. For a brief discussion of this see: George Marshall, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (London: Bloomsbury, 2015) and Haydn Washington and John Cook, Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand (New York and London: Routledge, 2011).
5 5 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, revised edition 1976) sets out one model in which humans set themselves as above the natures of plants and animals to a place mid-way between these primitive entities on earth and angles. Such an ontology is, necessarily, dualistic with humans as the mid-point.
6 6 Aristotle sets these three powers out in Peri psuche (De anima): Plants—414 31; Animals—414b1−415a13; Humans—III.3−5. For a brief overview on this see my article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-bio.
7 7 For more context on this see: Boylan (1981), (1983), (1985), (2015).
8 8 Michael Boylan, Natural Human Rights: A Theory (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014): chapters 2 and 3.
9 9 I have identified this sense of nature of one of three principal forms in the ancient world in my book The Origins of Ancient Greek Science: Blood—A Philosophical Study (New York and London: Routledge, 2015). I have continued with this characterization in subsequent lectures and essays. The other two forms are nature as materially understood under a realistic epistemology and nature understood materially under an anti-realistic epistemology.
10 10 The literature on this is huge. Some brief suggestions include: Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (New York: St. Martins, 1997); Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Gareth Knapman, Race and British Colonialism in South East Asia: 1770−1870 (New York and London: Routledge, 2018); Shashi Tharoor, Inglorius Empire: What the British did to India (Royal Oak, MI: Scribe Publishers, 2018); James Lehning, European Colonialism Since 1700 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Penguin Books, 1994). What is common to these and many other studies is that the age of conquest and massive land theft required a sensibility of superiority over the vanquished. This separation and consequent belief in superiority is analogous to the separation that many feel from Nature.
11 11 Frank Lloyd Wright, An Organic Architecture, ed. Andrew Saint (London: Lund Humphries, 2017, rpt. 1939).
12 12 For an historical survey of such transitions see: Jennifer Birch, ed. From Pre-Historic Villages to Cities (New York and London: Routledge, 2014). To Native Americans this European attitude of natural dominion was seen as being against Nature as it was: “To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature—the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself” from Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Picador, 1970): 7.
13 13 Michael Boylan, A Just Society (New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004): 115−116.