I have always thought that "organisms"(mainly humans and animals) had the ability to plan out or state a goal. But now in Aristotle's terms "nature" has goals. In my mind it seems as if Aristotle was painting nature in a way that was almost humanly, having wants, goals, and desires. Now since I associate goals with thinking beings I differentiate human goals from that our nature. However, we base many of our actions around things that we have found in nature.
Nature has always had a legs up on the human competition because of how perfectly crafted her ideas were. The thing that gives nature the leg up is her ability to change so flawless when adverse circumstances are directed towards her.
Being that nature is always changing and evolving I am wondering whether we took or copied the behavior that she demonstrated in the earlier times of our existence. If that is true about how we used what nature had perfected in order to make the improvements that we have made then I would have to undoubtedly say that nature was on of the creators of humans and therefore humans would be apart of nature.
What do you think? Did we copy what nature was doing in our early stages of evolution or can we stay that this ability to have goals was one of innate functions that we were ultimately born with? Or, can the words human and nature be interchangeable for one another?
I think humans are part of nature, and that's why we exhibit the broad similarities such as having goals, changing behaviors, etc. I'm not sure I'd go as far to say that we copied nature as we evolved. I think the shared characteristics like evolving and having goals/telos is because we are, in fact, a part of nature; and we were from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI would also agree that because of humans ability to evolve we are apart of nature. Fossils have shown that over long periods of time organisms brains have evolved becoming larger and more efficient. So if a bear is considered apart of nature why should humans be faulted for simply having a brain that evolved faster, which has allowed us to change the landscape to what we see today.
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