I got the title for this site from Bill Cronon's book of the same name. It contains essays by Cronon, Carolyn Merchant, Candace Slater, Mike Barbour, and others growing out of an extended seminar at the University of California, Irvine in the spring of 1994. The task they set themselves was “to rethink the meaning of nature in the modern world.”
In The Land Ethic I briefly described how modern ecology teaches us that nature is rarely in balance, the first part of the rethinking that Cronon and colleagues set themselves. This part is familiar and widely understood. The second part is unfamiliar and even frightening: Cronon and other contributors argue that “Nature” is a human construct. (Note the capitalization and scare quotes. They're important.) “Nature” is the autonomous other that “lies forever beyond the borders of our linguistic universe.”
Now to explain the scare quotes.
“Nature” (with the scare quotes) is the human construct we use for rhetorical and persuasive purposes. Nature (no scare quotes and capitalized only because it's at the beginning of a sentence) is the transcendent reality that exists independently of human thought and perception. “Nature” is imbued with values. Nature has none.
The distinction, though sometimes difficult to keep in your head is vital. Environmentalists (and others for that matter) often seek justification for a particular course of action by calling it “Natural.” But if you accept the distinction, “Nature” cannot be a source of values, because it already embodies them. In fact, “Nature“ may be little more than a name for those values we hold most dear.
Seen in this light, disputes about biodiversity conservation or environmental protection are not about whether we ought to protect “Natural” values. They're about what states of nature count as “Natural.”.
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