Nature, science, language, values, feral beliefs...

I've been trying to avoid using (or accepting) misleading language that contributes to the misunderstanding of nature and reality. Some politicians provide quite obvious examples of language misuse designed to manipulate the opinions of the public. (Apparently not obvious enough to enough people.) Last week, I mentioned the phrase "Survival of the Fittest", derived from Darwin's work on evolution, and a little bit about why its meaning has now become misleading and manipulative. In the years since Darwin adopted the phrase, many people who are uninformed about (and mostly uninterested in) evolutionary biology have reinterpreted it in various attempts to pervert its original meaning.

It has now become common for individuals who deny the importance of scientific inquiry to hijack bits of what they think is "scientific" terminology in attempts to make pseudo-scientific claims and programs sound more "impressive". It is also common for people with financial incentives to use language "creatively" to help make their plans for exploiting features of the environment more acceptable to both willing and unwitting listeners. See: "ecosystem services", "harvests", "reforestation", "remediation" and such terms. Many of these attempts at manipulation are relatively easy to detect, if people are well informed. But even well-informed people trying to understand nature often need to be careful that they are not applying inappropriate concepts to describe, and explain, what they are seeing. For example, all too often the word "purpose" seems to creep into discussions of natural processes.

Some (much?) confusion can be attributed to a human tendency to anthropomorphise elements of our surroundings and then to construct reasoning that incorporates such familiar stories. Humans can be said to "compete", and engage in "arms races". However, there is an obvious problem with describing predator-prey relationships in terms of "evolutionary arms races" - which is not an uncommon phrasing. Predator and prey species evolve over time, in response to their environments, but there is nothing *intentional* about the changes; there is no conscious planning and decision-making. Whatever segments of prey species which happen to have traits that make them less susceptible to predation are just more likely to survive and reproduce. Likewise, predators that have traits that enable them to consume more prey are also more likely to survive and reproduce. This is not the way humans normally think about how to create an advantage. To think and speak this way - to employ simplifying metaphors - creates confusion, and obscures the intricacy of evolutionary processes in important ways.

Predator and prey species - as humans identify them - are just two components of complex, changeable habitats. Plant populations that evolve over time to become less palatable to certain browsers must also evolve to adapt to changing climates, surrounding vegetation, diseases, seed propagators, and so on. Many chance events will determine which populations eventually change in which ways. Human researchers may identify some of these events afterward and list them as "reasons" for changes, but no "plan" or "intention" will have been involved. If we are not careful about what our words imply, we'll probably misinterpret many things.

It seems to me that people who maintain that "nature" is just a human construct and that it doesn't "really" exist can be grouped into two broad categories. The first would include thinkers - perhaps beguiled by the fluidity of language - who have come to feel that there is something "lacking" in the way we conceptualise most things, including nature. Presumably such thinkers are at least open to the idea that a more "accurate" concept could potentially be realised, somehow, sometime. The second category would include people who have become convinced that it is impossible for humans to "truly know" the "true nature" of nature (and most other things). A subset of this second group of people also seems to "know" somehow that nature does not "really exist". This latter group will likely have fewer qualms about any amount of disruption of the natural world. People often try to "readjust" concepts using language in some way that appears to add support for their preexisting personal assumptions and agendas. 

One classic example of this is the way the phrase "Survival of the Fittest" has been perverted in support of nefarious social proposals like eugenics, and varieties of denials of services. Even people who "don't believe in evolution" may invoke some notion of "survival of the fittest" to try to help justify a range of programs, from general socio-political inequality to anti-vaccination campaigns. Such use of the phrase is only possible due to general ignorance of details of the process of "evolution by natural selection" that has gradually been developed from the nineteenth century work of Darwin and Wallace. The general lack of detailed understanding, as in many areas of inquiry, sets a ready stage for social manipulation, but it is our "flexible" language that delivers the misleading messages.

So what does our language tell us about the so called "fittest"? "Big", "strong", "powerful", "smart" or "cunning" are words that probably pop into many people's minds. Just like the most "successful" humans are assumed to be the "smartest" (rarely the "luckiest" because that messes with the "fittest" illusion). Words like those commonly imagined don't have much to do with the actual details of "evolution by natural selection". Instead, concepts like "contingency", "climate change", and "mass extinction event", might be more appropriate. No individual of any species ever "controls" evolution (and perhaps that is one reason so many people fear the process). Those with a more detailed understanding of evolution are less likely to refer to "survival of the fittest" because they know the "fittest" (species) are just whichever happen to be the "survivors". So you're left with the tautology: "survival of the survivors". That just doesn't have the same impact.

The history of the way the meaning of the word "fittest" has been twisted and manipulated in the last 175 years seems similar to the way the words "nature" and "exist" have sometimes been twisted for various purposes. Words can change meaning over time, and even from speaker to speaker at any given time. That helps to make it even easier to misunderstand things. My sense is that nature not only continues to exist, but that it will exist - in whatever forms - as long as the earth consists of suitable habitats. I personally find that extremely satisfying.

Over some years, I've been thinking and writing about some of the many, many complex natural processes that make up our concepts of nature. There are innumerable concepts of nature, including some that declare that nature does not exist. "Nature does not exist?" That claim seems mildly provocative. What might such a "philosophical" proposition mean? One proposed meaning is that "Nature" is merely a human construct. (Not really, really "real".) I think that one of the problems with playing around with language to "see where it leads" is that we think we are in control while we are not. There appear to be lots of conceptual "rabbit holes" for unwary speculators. After casting about in a vocabulary, we may not really learn much, and just spin an entangling linguistic web. But then, what's so bad about a little "contrarian" mental exercise?. Maybe okay for shits and giggles in privacy, but it can be a kind of conceptual assault when presented as serious discourse.

Nature existed for very long periods while the earth was uninhabited - and even uninhabitable - by humans. Would we be tempted to say that no "natural resources" existed then? Nature described as an *entirely* human "construct" seems confusing to me, and ultimately pointless. Is this related to the age-old debate about whether or not abstract categories "actually" exist (beyond our declared definitions), and whether they take us closer or farther from understanding reality? It seems to me that abstraction can either facilitate or obstruct understanding, depending on how it is used. Abstractions that are fluid and evolve to accommodate new information, and are not dogmatic, are essential for creative thinking. It is potentially useful to consider ways in which nature might differ from our current conceptions of it, but that is the opposite of denying its existence.

And now we have "AI" LLMs that are adding immensely to the general confusion. By using an inbred statistical selection of existing word patterns, these algorithms essentially dehumanize language by eliminating the dynamic human creative process that real language usage depends on. The resulting dehumanized precipitate is then used to train human readers, resulting in degradation of human creativity. Human creativity is an interactive process and does not, somehow, persist in any mechanical rearrangement of words (yes, computers are machines). Prompting an LLM text generator to spew out words about nature will produce pernicious results, regardless of how "factual" any particular selection of words might seem. Very bad things can initially seem convenient.     

If you walk into a forest and look carefully around, and still want to claim that nature doesn't exist, then you'll have to come up with a different term to indicate what you are seeing and thinking about. But, of course, that new invention couldn't "exist" either, according to the very same reasoning. That seems like a strange non-existent existence facing those content to let language lead them around the bush(es). Current distracted human populations have more than enough trouble perceiving reality without elaborate word games and machine-made summarisations to help them sort it out.

I noted last week that lichens provide one example of symbiosis in nature - one that you couldn't guess just from looking at them. I see the same lichens now that I saw before I knew about their symbiotic structure, but think about them quite differently. Similarly, I can't tell just by looking at many plant species that they form symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi that help the plants absorb nitrogen. The knowledge won't help me get ahead in life, or even pay for a parking meter, but it completely changes my experience of nature.

Once I began to recognise the interconnectedness of natural processes, at multiple scales,  it became clear that the language of static "things" was inadequate to account for my surroundings. Just as human social structures are far more interdependent than commonly supposed, nature consists of complex interactions - between many "things" we name, and many still unidentified. As science discovers more and more about microscopic and macroscopic interdependencies in natural processes, names of "things" - forest, bog, river, desert, - begin to seem like linguistic snapshots of our surroundings. Like photographic snapshots, they can provide some satisfying sense of familiarity, but lack essential details. Obviously we have to use names for various purposes, but why can't we also stay alert to the ways they may limit our awareness?

When looking at a broad expanse of forest on a mountain slope, for example, I'm now inclined to think more about the soil beneath the trees, and the air around and above them. Just as I know that mycorrhizal hyphae connect with tree roots, and squirrels spread the spores of the mushroom fruiting bodies, I have also learned that the trees help control the moisture level and temperature of the soil. In short, a dense forest co-creates its own habitat, and also has more far-reaching affects on atmospheric conditions beyond its margins. So the single word "forest" represents much more than a whole lot of "trees".

Mutualistic symbiosis is common and essential to what we call nature, although not commonly observed. Many animals have intestinal microbiomes, and even more fundamentally benefit from endosymbiosis: energy-producing mitochondria embedded in animal body cells were once, eons ago, independent bacteria. Much in nature is sometimes obscured by the names we recite. It seems like it might be difficult to reason with such abbreviated language.

Over the years, I have taken some pretty pictures of lichens. Lichens can be very photogenic, with bright colours and elaborate shapes. They're also very cooperative, always sitting still for the photographer. Focusing on their aesthetic qualities, you can take interesting photos of them without knowing anything about them, as I did early on. At first, I only understood that they "helped to break down rocks as part of the soil formation process". I even knew about symbiosis, but didn't realise I was actually looking at an example of it. Later, I learned enough to be impressed about how complex and varied these symbiotic associations are. For living things that are ubiquitous, it almost seems sneaky the way Lichens have been so little noticed by people (although there are some who study them intensively, and even some apparently who eat them).

At first, the bright orange and green lichens spread out on rocks seemed visually the most attractive. They were good for many attempts to find the best positions and lighting for artistic framing - framed in accordance with one person's sense of aesthetics at that particular time. Later I became more aware of different sorts of lichens growing on different parts of trees, and that their appearance varied with the amount of precipitation they received. I then learned that there were thousands of species spread all over the world, and that they were each actually made up of several organisms - fungi, green algae, cyanobacteria - living symbiotically in the same structures. The bulk of the structure is provided by fungal filaments, which also form the structure's anchor to a substrate and supports an embedded layer of green algae, or cyanobacteria, which carries out photosynthesis. Lichens come in a huge range of sizes and shapes, and can live for a very long time. Learning that much changed the way I looked at lichens, and even the way I thought about nature.

Lichens can be seen (or not seen) just about anywhere - on rocks, trees, fences, walls, roofs, and in cities, countryside and wilderness. Neither plants nor animals, they appear immobile and inconsequential. It's easy enough to understand that they can provide food for large and small creatures, from elk to tiny invertebrates, and perhaps a little harder to see that they can physically and chemically help degrade rock into soil - very slowly. If you sit and watch lichens growing on a large rock, you won't see much change - it's one of the slower processes in nature. But now when I notice lichens I am reminded that many natural processes are very slow, but also more complex and dynamic than they might at first seem to my human senses.

An artistically-framed photo of a colourful lichen on striated rock doesn't mean the same thing to me as it once did, whatever that was. The striations might be due to uplifted sediment deposition many millions of years old, and the lichen might add a bit to the surrounding soil over millennia, and these would be just two of the many, many surrounding natural processes proceeding at varying rates not visible in "real time". Contemplating these on-going processes requires a very different kind of framing than that used in framing a static image. Nothing in nature is static, but many of my early photographs subtly predisposed me to imagine that it was.