You Say Nature, I Say Nature: Week 1 - Defining Nature

What is Nature? 

After reading the excerpt from The Dictionary of Ideas and The Etiquette of Freedom, by Gary Snyder, I realized that defining nature is not such an easy task. These readings suggest that there is no singular way to define nature, but rather that the term nature is fluid and varies from culture, religion, and science. 

In the Dictionary of the History of  Ideas,  it is stated, "the natural is held by some to be better than the artificial, the customary, the contemporary. Of these four terms only the supernatural is usually considered to be better than the natural." This statement suggests that the natural is not that which is artificial, customary, or contemporary, therefore natural is defined through a set of oppositions of what it is not. In order for something to not be, it must have something to be measured against.  

In Etiquette of Freedom Gary Snyder also explores  nature, the natural, the unnatural, the supernatural, the wild, wilderness, and human nature through a series of dichotomies. Snyder's examination of the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of wild demonstrates how we define these terms based upon our own experiences as humans, he writes " the wild is largely defined in our dictionaries by- what from a human- it is not."

The Oxford English Dictionary defintion of wild

Of animals- not tame, undomesticated, unruly

Of plants- not cultivated

Of land- uninhabited, uncultivated

Of societies-uncivilized, rude, resisting constituted government

of individuals-unrestrained, insubordinate

This definition articulates what the wild is not, however it does not state what it is. I feel that this is also applies to popular definitions/notions of nature, nature is not artificial, it is not touched by mankind, it is not human. Nature is either defined very narrowly by category (a flower, at tree a park, a wilderness preserve) or very broadly as "the physical universe and all its properties." There are also innumerable connotations of these terms, something can be in nature, or something could be in someone's nature. It appears that nature is something that one cannot control, what is natural is subjective. 

Patricia Piccinini, Silicone, acrylic, human hair, leather, timber

Patricia Piccinini's sculptures focus on the changing conceptions of life and nature under the onslaught of technology. Her sculptures meld together that which is human/unhuman, natural/unnatural/supernatural, real/unreal.