Beauty

I found our discussion on the topic of beauty to be interesting. I thought about what beauty means and there was one thing that Pollen said in the book that was not brought up in class. It is found on page 79 at the bottom: “Tulips, in other words, are mortal.” I don’t know if it was meant this way but it seems that he is saying is that part of what we find beauty in is mortality. The most beautiful things only last for a limited period of time. A person, not matter how beautiful, will eventually die; sunsets only last for a moment; greatest artwork will eventually decay with time; and the list goes on. It may also be an indication that maybe we find things beautiful because we as humans are mortal. We only have a shot time on earth and we see each day as something beautiful. That is part of the emotional pull that attracts us to objects and gives us our remembered experiences. If we were immortal then we would know that we could experience anything at anytime without end. Thus, making the importance and beauty of things decrease.
Over all, I don’t think that we can put a label or set of rules on beauty. It is almost impossible because everyone has different experiences, hopes, dreams, and values. The only thing that we can say is a universal theme to beauty is that it is often held to our own desires and beauty (as well as ourselves) will not last forever.

Mutation and Morality

Question on the Apollonian principles of Contrast, pattern, and variation....what of Pollan's flowers going through hybridizing? On pages 80 and 81 ,Pollan says that every seven years tthe tulip seed flowers can show new color...and cult admirers can take the tulip long distances from it's form in the wild...This mutation process is un-natural to me, therefore, is the tulip still, in mutation, a "moral" flower? Everything Apollonian about it seems to not be there for me. Pollan says that the tulip's genetic variability gives us a "great deal to play with". The Turks even took over the insects job in the 1600's of pollinating these flowers. On page 81, even Darwin called deliberate crosses "artificial processes". And so is Human desire in charge of saying that even these mutations are Beautiful?
It brings to mind our class discussion on Thursday about "Pretty vs. Beautiful". Seems to me that sometimes we, as human beings ,try to fix things that just aren't broke to suit our own perceptions of "Beauty".
Paula

On the principle of symmetry

I found Pollens description of symmetry in Chapter 2 on the tulip very intriguing. He reasons that against the backdrop of a disorganized forest or the random assortments of plants, flowers provide a structural organization. He goes on to say that symmetry exhibits purpose and intent, showing that there is relevant information in the place. He also points out that symmetry is a sign of health in a being, as mutations or sicknesses disturb the symmetry a lot of the times. Therefore, he argues symmetry is significant. But I found myself asking, why is symmetry so significant to us? As an architecture student I found the theme very relevant to my major. My professors constantly stress to veer away from symmetry in modern building design. They argue that by creating symmetry a building looses identity. And take a look at modern architecture. Unlike classical architecture, modern buildings take the forms of pretty much anything but symmetrical. Why is this? Modern buildings still look appealing if not intriguing. People are interested in them and architects make tons of money of them. All without symmetry.

(Seattle Public Library)

My theory on this is that our perception of symmetry, at least in architecture, has changed. Now, instead of having a disorganized background, there is symmetry everywhere. Classical and even early modern architecture worshipped symmetry and order. The result was cities with so much symmetry that symmetry has become the "backdrop." It is a kind of a reversal of Pollen's theory. Buildings that have no symmetry or visible organization stand out from the all too familiar symmetrical backdrop of a city. So do these manifestations of strange shapes and seemingly random orders now give us the appearance of something significant and worth noting? Has symmetry been replaced?

 

Must We Justify Everything?

So as I replied to the post "justifying beauty," I though again like I did in class, why do we have to justify everything. Is it the fast pace world or is it the need for worth? I sometimes don't get why we don't just accept what is here and not pick every piece of it to death. Why can't the flower just be a flower. Why must it serve a purpose set in stone? I think the beauty of the tulip or flowers in general are different than the apple's sweetness. The apple has always been and always will be something sugary sweet, maybe not the red delicious but one of them. Yes, its not a candy bar but no one can deny the fact that domestic apples are sweet, even granny smiths have some sweetness after you get past the sourness. Any ways, what I am asking is why you think we feel everything must have a telos? Can the tulips telos be simple enjoyment or does it have to serve a bigger purpose than eye candy. I wanted to mention the carrion flower too. It was the flower in the reading that smelled like a rotting carcass. While it may have an awful smell, it too is a pretty impressive looking flower. A little hairy yes, but even it has beautiful symmetry, color and variation. How does the carrion flower fit into the picture? Is it any different. Most of the reading was about color and symmetry. I don't remember reading anything about smell. Can something still be beautiful but smell bad? Is smell something that should be added on to the "definition" of beauty?

Justifying Beauty

Since the beginning of the course, we have been discussing the distinctions between nature and man, apple and sweetness. Now we have moved onto trying to pry apart the purpose of beauty in flowers and, on a larger scale, all that is around us. Why do we have beauty? What is the purpose of natural beauty? Are flowers wasted creation? Looking around at the snow falling this evening, I find myself marveling at the simple beauty of snowflakes. Do we need to justify why they are beautiful? Is it really imperative that these simple gifts have a specific, useful purpose? Or are we simply trying to assign a purpose to organize our lives and meet our own agendas? I think it is okay to be simple and just appreciate the beauty that surrounds us. It speaks to something deeper within a human, something we might not be able to define on paper. It has the ability to heal and speak to our emotional well-being, which may be a purpose in and of itself, if we feel the need to assign a useful role to it. While there are plenty of plants - such as tomatoes and potatoes - that give us food for our physical health, we also need "food" for emotional health. I do not believe you can separate the physical, mental, and emotional health of a human being when justifying the purpose of beauty. Do we simply not need to be nurtured in these other two areas? I think beauty allows us the opportunity to smile, to be happy, to be in awe. Beauty often gives us cause to marvel and pause. Perhaps that is its purpose - to allow us to stop for a moment and smile.

Does Our Separation Stem From Societal Beliefs?

Throughout this debate I have been questioning myself, why do we have such a distinction between man and nature? In ancient mythology, the beliefs of the earliest humans, humans have been documented to have a deep relationship with nature. Some even worshiped nature. So what happened to extinguish humans’ love of nature and its beauty? From what I’ve gathered, when the Judeo-Christian religions were developed the church wanted to separate them as much as possible from Pagan religions so they made the forests the land of the devil. Puritans forbade their members from going into the forests lest they be accused of witchcraft. (Granted they had good reason to fear the forest; there were some dangerous animals in the forest at that time.) My point is we are a part of nature. From the earliest of documented history we have been striving for oneness with nature. It’s just that in the past 2,000 years society and psychology has intervened in that relationship, thereby suppressing this desire. This is what Pollen is describing in his chapter on the tulip. For a good number of years people of the world adored and cherished this flower for its beauty. Yet when the Puritans came to America, they banished the flowers valued only for their beauty. Pollan says they felt the tulip was stemming too far into the old “paganistic” ways.

What I want to know from the class is: do you think this is valid? Do you think that religion, our beliefs, is what serves to separate us from the “natural world”?

In class yesterday, we talked a lot about what defines 'natural' and 'unnatural' things, and how those definitions might fit into the various cycles that make up the world. A majority of the class seemed to agree with me that everything, even man made objects, is 'natural', although there were a few good points raised for the other side as well. However, after I left class, I could not help but think that this debate over how we define nature is an underlying cause of the current environmental 'crisis'. 'Unnatural' things are, in my view, purley a human construct. By making a distinction between natural and unnatural, we are trying to separate ourselves from the natural, and therefore nature itself. Since we all live on the same planet, what we do affects nature as a whole, and since unnatural things affect nature just as much as natural things do, they ought to be considered natural, and I don't see a need for a distinction. I think this is what pollan is trying to get at at the end of his chapter on the apple. Instead of being appoloian and trying to draw clear separations between things, we need to recognize that nature is itself one gigantic cycle that we are a part of. Once we recognize this, we can start to figure out how to work with the cycle, instead of working against it, and acheive some sort of sustainable equalibrium.
M. Knight Shamalan's most recent movie, "The Happening", is based on this concept. In the movie, trees start emitting a chemical into the air that rewires humans nuerons and makes people who come near trees and plants kill themselves as a way of reducing the human population and therefore the excess carbon that they are putting into the air. It was an awful movie, plot wise and acting wise, but this concept is a dramatic illustration of what could happen if we don't chose to recognize that we are very much a part of nature.

Nature: What is it?

This is sort of a response to a blog post from yesterday. While writing this, I realized that I had a lot to say and a lot of questions. I thought that this might be well suited for a new post. I do not mean to insult the original poster; I merely hope that this can stimulate some good discussion by going off on some tangents.

I have been trying to form a general idea of what “nature” is and how we humans fit into it. I think that humans are, as animals, part of nature. In our class on Thursday, it seemed that many people (including myself) consider that trees, bacteria, and animals are part of nature. Like us humans, all of these organisms follow basic survival principles such as eating and reproduction (in some form or another). Following this train of thought, I believe that humans are a part of nature.

What is interesting to me is that this concept of nature only includes organic things; however, this framework seems incomplete in my eyes. I think someone in class said that the weather and rocks are also parts of nature, and I like this view. What do you guys think? Does nature include inorganic things as well?

One thing that I am torn between is the inclusion or exclusion of man-made objects into the concept of nature. I don’t know if houses or cars should be considered part of nature. One claim is that these objects don’t spontaneously form on their own and are thus “un-natural”. This makes sense to me. However, interestingly enough, I have asked several people if bird nests, beaver dams, etc. are part of nature, and the general response has been yes. I think that this is very interesting and that we should try to find out why this is. Are only man-made objects not considered part of nature, or does this also include objects made by other animals?

Humans Nature?

We brought up this point in class on Thursday Jan 15 whether humans are in fact, part of nature or if we are "natural." We were also trying to distinguish nature from non-nature. Some said for example, rocks were not nature. I feel nature is one of those fuzzy areas in our world. When I looked up the meaning for nature, there were probably 15 different definitions between different websites like Merriam Webster, etc. The way I view nature is anything that is on earth and not changed by humans. So anythings that is not man-made. For example, houses are not "natural". They are made from natural things like wood or even plastics that are basic molecules found naturally on earth. Rocks, dirt, living trees, those are all natural and to me are considered part of nature.

Another thing I noticed during class was views on extinction. I felt many people felt humans were going to be an animal that would, in loose terms, never go extinct. In some ways I can see how people have that feeling. After all, we have the technology to keep people alive and medicines to make you feel no pain and structures to keep us safe during catastrophes or crisis. That definitely does sound like a sure ticket for the future. On the other hand, I have no doubt we will be taken by mother nature. There has been no other species to survive from the start of times. All species originally on earth are long gone, what makes us any different? Even with out ever growing capabilities to "better survive", I don't think we have a ticket to the far future. Human-like beings will probably be in the future but it won't be homo sapiens like we are now.

I'd like to know what other peoples views/definitions are on nature and also how they feel about extinction.

Systems Philosophy

Today's class (1/15/09) was heavily focused on the relationship of humans and nature. We covered a few topics. These topics included what constituted as nature, human influence on nature, and what the future holds for nature. Many interesting points were brought up as well, including how our human influence has negatively effected the environment. Many if not all of the concepts we discussed today could be summed up in "systems philosophy". This form of philosophy is the study of the development of systems. In a sense its a philosophy that covers the root and cause of all things. I am posting this topic because systems philosophy is so relevant with our class. If anyone is interested in systems philosophy or already knows something about it please respond to this post. If you are interested, I highly recommend looking into Ervin Laszlo. He is one of the heads of the Global Shift Movement and considered one of the founders of systems philosophy.

Founder of Deep Ecology Dies

Arne Naess, the founder of Deep Ecology, died Monday according to The New York Times. Those of you sensitive to auspicious signs may interpret this as encouragement to learn more about that philosophical movement.

Environmental and Environmentalist Crises

Writing for Slate, Johann Hari argues that there are really two environmental movements in American history and that one group actually makes it harder for Americans to take their environmental predicament seriously. Although American Environmentalism owes much to the romantic tradition of transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and naturalists like John Muir, this tradition's emphasis on the "spiritual" causes of environmental crisis don't offer the concrete solutions required by problems with empirical causes and material consequences. The problem is that this romantic tendency views empiricism as a symptom of a greater spiritual crisis, which allows romantics to deny the applicability of solutions that rely on empirical evidence. To confirm this point, Hari points out that

Human beings didn't unleash warming gases into the atmosphere out of malice or stupidity or spiritual defect: They did it because they wanted their children to be less cold and less hungry and less prone to disease. The moral failing comes only very late in the story—when we chose to ignore the scientific evidence of where wanton fossil-fuel burning would take us. This failing must be put right by changing our fuel sources, not altering our souls.

Hari's remarks suggest that the romantic's appeal to a spiritual failing at the heart of environmental crises overstates the case. There is no deep or sinister flaw behind our current crisis. We have simply exceeded the empirical limits that make the world inhabitable.

When responding to questions of the environment, it's good to be aware of the traditions that shape our understanding of the world, whether they are spiritual or empirical, but it's also good to note that these traditions incline us toward particular interpretations. Take the question of whether cities are the solution to excessive resource consumption (for one account of how this might work, look at Craig Ruff's article from the online Dome magazine) or whether cities demand the industrial conditions that have ruined the environment. Romantics tend to view cities as "dehumanizing" thereby contributing to a spiritual decay that manifests itself in environmental destruction. Empiricists deny these indirect effects in favor of a rationalism based on the supremacy and sufficiency of objective evidence.

Siding with "the rationalists," Hari claims that circumspection about the limits of our rational powers only blinds us to the possibility of clearly seeing the environmental challenges confronting us. The future of environmentalism, as the future of life on Earth requires us to acknowledge the simple, empirical facts of our condition and to use this acknowledgment to develop strategies to change our future,

Rationalist environmentalists are close to finding a language that can rouse people to the great global game of Russian roulette we are playing without descending into cause-discrediting voodoo.

Since crises tend to be rapid affairs calling for swift action, we don't have time for the kind of romantic obscurity that passes for thought in most environmental writing today and throughout our history.

I don't mean to confirm Hari's conclusions, but merely to point out how well his review illustrates the tension between two very different understandings of nature, those of empiricism and romanticism. We should return to the Hari's account of the consequences of this division throughout the semester because the distinction seems so clear and the consequences so great. We may also find that these distinctions suggest a level of simplicity that distorts the interaction between empiricism and romanticism.

For instance, Michael Pollan suggests that taking "the plant's-eye view" seriously, thus muddying the waters of rational purpose, helps contribute to a solution for both spiritual and empirical environmental crises. His research draws upon rationalist, empirical research in order to carry out a project that inclines us toward romanticism's emphasis on discovering and respecting the limits of our own human-centered perspective. Hari's simplifications, if they are applied to environmental problems, might be bold enough to head off or at least diminish one kind of environmental crisis. On the other hand, if precipitous action caused by a lack of circumspection has contributed the greatest part to these crises, we might also recognize the virtue of complicating our accounts and thereby undercutting the certainty that led us to this mess in the first place.

Blog Rules

We need to set down some ground rules for contributing to the blog. First, let me say what the blog is supposed to do, then we can consider what rules or procedures might be valuable for achieving those goals. Finally, this should not be an autocratic process, so I welcome your comments, suggestions and, even, objections.

The blog should serve as a venue for discussing material covered in class. Of course, raising a topic in class branches onto other topics and discussions, so we need not restrict ourselves to textual analysis of class readings, though that is perfectly allowable as well. I think the blog offers the possibility that we can deepen our understanding of class materials by expanding the range of issues we're considering. Among other things, this requires that we try to make the connection to class discussion explicit, even if only to alert readers to the fact that we aren't keeping things very tightly bound to class. As a general rule, we should focus on posting content that deals with the intersection between philosophy, nature and the environment. This description seems broad enough to cover everything we would like to discuss, while also allowing leeway for contributors to follow digressive paths within the shadow of this general topic.

So, our first rule is that we post only on issues relating to philosophy, nature and the environment. Further, we must remember to make the connections to these themes or class discussions as explicit as possible. Yet, a second set of considerations will complicate this activity. Namely, a blog is open to the public and we should write with the expectation that anyone could read what we contribute to the blog. At the same time that we want to make explicit references to readings or the significance of our writing for a specific topic, we also want to remember that the content of the blog is public. We want readers outside of class to understand what we are saying, so keep the public nature of the blog in mind whenever posting new content. A "post" should be written like a short essay beginning with a general thesis that expands by offering evidence supporting that thesis and concludes by explaining the significance of the evidence for the original thesis. "Replies" are less structured and should simply try to address the post in a constructive, direct fashion. In either case, we are addressing an audience that goes beyond the classroom whose members have interests other than our own.

Now that we're writing posts that attempt to lay out their significance to philosophy, nature and the environment as explicitly as possible without sacrificing public readability, we might want to discuss style. Style in writing differs from grammar to the extent that we shift our focus from what conforms to the rules of grammar to what contributes to successful communication. While many blogs dispense with style considerations, as an academic exercise, I can't allow this blog to do that. Consequently, posts and replies need to be slightly more formal than a regular blog because we need to understand what each other is saying. This means refraining from using shorthand, abbreviations, incomplete sentences and profanity. While there are perfectly good reasons to use these things in writing and literature, these linguistic tools are unwieldy in novice hands and could just as easily harm communication as facilitate it.

Above all the blog is a place to share ideas about how philosophy, nature and the environment relate to one another and how we might put those ideas to work in our everyday experience. While drawing upon class materials as well as news, art, literature, science, psychology and a host of other fields I can't think of now, we need to be aware that this is not a private activity, but that it also has public repercussions and significance. If we follow basic rules of grammar and style in our posts while trying to be respectful and constructive in our replies, we should be in pretty good shape.