Is Nature Dead or Alive?: Examining the Modern Epistemes of Western Society

James Cameron's new science fiction epic, Avatar juxtaposes a Capitalistic human mining colony against the native people (and ecosystems) of Pandora. The film portrays an escalating conflict between two orders of belief, one imperialistic and exploitative, the other more animistic and mutualistic (Cameron). Thematically, the film warns of the dangers of the exploitation of ecosystems and the peoples that inhabit them. It promotes an anti-mechanistic view on life.

What, then, establishes something having life? Is it the molecular composition? Consciousness? Autonomy? Additionally, can the earth be considered alive? How a culture or, more specifically, a scientific institution answers these questions underlines how it relates to the natural world. The nature of the conceptual discourse, the epistemes of certain periods of history, immensely influences the way in which people interact, not only with each other, but with their environment.

The theory of autopoiesis defines itself against a mechanistic and often imperialistic view of the world and argues that organisms are irreducible with their environments. Using the process of metabolism, the world system regulates and interrelates (Margulis 267). In Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution the authors state that,

"[...] life does not 'adapt to' a passive physiochemical environment [...]"

instead it,

"actively 'produces and modifies' its surroundings" (280).

A biological system cannot be reduced and deconstructed because the very nature of that system is reliant on the communication between various parts. This includes the organism's environment on the basis that this relationship renders the identities (or taxonomies) interconnected (278). In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Emphasis on scientism can facilitate the reduction of nature into its various parts, disregarding the infinitely complex relationships between different "components." In contrast, an autopoietic and animistic world view, the earth can be considered alive. In her book, The Death of Nature Carolyn Merchant describes that the,

"ecological model and its associated ethics make possible a fresh and critical interpretation of the rise of modern science in the crucial period when our cosmos ceased to be viewed as an organism and became instead a machine" (xx).

For millennia, myths and ethics that portrayed the earth as a nurturing mother discouraged the exploitation of its natural resources. However, as technological development accelerated these old ideas were replaced with new ones facilitating the exploitation of natural resources. Because women were thought to be "closer to nature" a changing perception of the female was used to carry along with it a new conception of nature, as both passive and chaotic (143). Nature and woman became synonymous with disorder and needed to be controlled through domination and mastery (2).

The scientific method focuses on breaking down nature into segregated components. This mode of thought could be considered "instrumental rationality," in which parts lose their integrity as irreducible pieces of the whole. This view of nature sees life as mechanical and potentially exploitable. Furthermore, the phenomenon of urbanization further alienates the individual from the natural world. Existing in environments that are completely segregated from nature, as opposed to living in rural communities, breeds a form of illiteracy. That is, an unacquainted and ignorant experience of the natural world. Much of this mentality can be attributed to changing interpretations of religious myths and scriptures. The notion that God created the world for our taking condones the exploitation not only of nature, but of other people and organisms. This mentality seems to rely on the idea that resources are limitless and that their exhaustion has little effect on the quality of human life. We know now that this attitude is not only ignorant, but also dangerous. Global warming has become a very real imminent threat that has been driven by human activity.

Interestingly enough, the scientific revolution that aided in the creation of these new epistemes (systems of understanding) and justified imperialism was built on theories that reveal how interrelated and delicate natural systems can be. The first law of thermodynamics explains that energy cannot be created or destroyed, that you cant get energy from nothing. The second law introduces the concept of the continuous increase degradation of energy, also known as entropy (Miller 47). These laws help explain the limitations that nature must function within, restrictions that many civilizations ignore in the name of "progress."

"There is no waste in functioning natural ecosystems,"

states G. Tyler Miller in Environmental Science (72). The natural world relies on interdependence between systems, whereas many contemporary industrial practices exploit natural systems and exhaust resources.

This aesthetic alienation from the natural world is a result of the conceptual discourse and modern epistemes that act as the lenses through which societies view the world and its systems. In The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Michel Foucault scrutinizes the bases of knowledge in the present day.

"In attempting to uncover the deepest strata of Western culture, I am restoring to our silent and apparently immobile soil its rifts, its instability, its flaws; and it is the same ground that is once ore stirring under our feet" (xxiv).

Foucault is examining the traits and constraints of the modern episteme, in attempt to deconstruct them. This indicates that de-naturalizing and de-contextualizing modes of thought has the potential to aid in the conception of new (and potentially more ecologically sensitive) perspectives of the world.

History is never made up of one voice nor is it exclusively human in concern. Emphasis should be placed the interrelationships between organisms, on an autopoietic and multi-dimensional paradigm of socio-environmental relations. With the looming consequences of global warming in view, dramatic changes in conceptual paradigms need to be established to provide the basis for ethical economic developments. Ecosystems are irreducible, they are help together through a network of interdependent relations between organisms and systems.

"European culture increasingly set itself above and apart from all that was symbolized by nature,"

reveals Merchant (143). The increased isolation from where we get our products, and from nature, has allowed the heedless exploitation of these resources, environments, and the organisms within them. Therefore, new ways of interacting with the environment need to be driven by new ways of conceptualizing nature and a more holistic definition of life.

Works Cited

Cameron, James, dir. Avatar. 2009. 20th Century Fox.

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970.

Margulis, Lynn, and Dorion Sagan. Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution. New York: Copernicus Springer-Verlag, 1997.

Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. San Franscisco: HarperOne, 1990.

Miller, G. Tyler. Environmental Science. Fourth ed. Bemont, CA: Brooks Cole, 1993.