Science and/or Nature...

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Can scientific progress and living harmoniously with nature be *not* mutually exclusive?

Keeping in mind how much scientific research depends on energy production and manufacturing.

What is "living harmoniously" with Nature?

My first cut at a rough definition: getting what we need from Nature without destroying it.

ruveyn

What is "destroying [nature]?" Matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only shuffled about.

I assume nature is a word here used to invoke the extremely intricate interwoven relationships of animals, plants and environment that interact to maintain something of a status quo so that they all flourish. To talk about raw energy and gross matter in this context is to be totally insensitive to this fantastic matrix.

I assume nature is a word here used to invoke the extremely intricate interwoven relationships of animals, plants and environment that interact to maintain something of a status quo so that they all flourish. To talk about raw energy and gross matter in this context is to be totally insensitive to this fantastic matrix.[/quote]

I was talking about the dynamics of the components and their interrelations. Matter and energy by them selves do not account for living systems, for example. I never referred to raw energy and gross matter. On such details I am very exact and if I were referring to just matter and energy, I would have said so. Nature is a system. Any system can be wrecked and still leave the pieces intact.

It is possible to sustain ourselves by extracting energy from ecosystems without totally wrecking the ecosystem. Clearly anything we do will affect the system, but out extractions need not destroy the ability of the system to regenerate its perturbed structure. In some cases we can actually promote the dynamic stability and adaptability of some of the subsystems. It is as easy as planting a tree.

The name of the game is to use without totally destroying.

ruveyn

Science helps to determine how things operate which enables us to make decisions regarding the best use of the planet under our stewardship.

or the worst decisions. There is nothing in science from which we can acquire the wisdom to use but not abuse. That requires something akin to an ethical factor.

Science tells us quantities and interactions. It tells us nothing about good and bad. (I reject Sam Harris' thesis that ethical judgments can be derived from physical science).

ruveyn

Best or worst, yes. Either way, the knowledge obtained from research should enable the prediction of the effects of endeavors.

If the approach were scientific perhaps things could be managed but the motivations for employing and deriving energy and utility from nature currently are in the area of personal gain and wealth accumulation.

Almost all species that have ever existed are now extinct. The great bulk of them went long before humans came on the scene. To talk of "preserving nature" carries with it all sorts of assumptions. By our existence, we change the ecosystem, no matter what we do. At what point do we declare that our changes are a bad thing? From how large a perturbation can the system recover? Was it ever at equilibrium to begin with?

The elimination of one of the widespread forms of life has a very large chance of causing surprising and unwelcome natural conditions. There was the classic case some decades ago when the Maoists installed a program to kill off all the sparrows to prevent the loss of rice. They managed that and the next season were inundated with a massive influx of flies. I suppose you might be happy to see all the tigers, lions, bears, and other wild creatures disappear but frankly as someone who is fascinated with life forms, I feel the world would be poverty stricken without them.

I kind of have to agree with this perspective. I mean, if you gave tigers bulldozers then they'd be doing what we're doing. Nature is Austrian. It is not really characterized by an aim towards equilibrium, although a lot of this appears to be found, but rather through the fact that each creature is born with the hope that it utterly disrupts the natural scheme of things and has a crap load of children(profits) through doing this. No creature is really aiming at keeping an equilibrium, and in the long-run all of the ecosystems we find should shift to be very different no matter what we do simply through evolutionary processes simply because there will be winners and these winners will be different from the losers. No creature has been as effective at disrupting the equilibrium and having children(being profitable) like mankind has though.

[quote="Orwell]
Almost all species that have ever existed are now extinct. The great bulk of them went long before humans came on the scene. To talk of "preserving nature" carries with it all sorts of assumptions. By our existence, we change the ecosystem, no matter what we do. At what point do we declare that our changes are a bad thing? From how large a perturbation can the system recover? Was it ever at equilibrium to begin with?[/quote]

I have no doubt that this will also be our fate too. In the mean time we can keep our house in order and have a little fun.

Sooner or later there will be an asteroid big enough to wipe out all life on the surface and a good part of the seas. Or the climate will take a bad shift, After all we have had ice ages in our past. I don't think any mammalian species has ever lasted as much as ten million years. Insects and various plants do better than mammals.

ruveyn

I am always disappointed by people claiming we go against nature. We are a natural product; thus, everything we do is natural. We're just a lot better at it than most other species on the planet.

Life makes a lot more sense when you realise that it is human nature to lie, cheat, steal, murder, enslave, belittle and destroy. Civilisation is all about the suppression of these urges. If you ever start to believe the nonsense that we are compassionate beings by default, deprive a populace of food for one day.

We are the most widespread organism of our size on this planet. I am not advocating deliberately exterminating other species, but frankly the examples you give are typical of the underinformed who only look at a tiny selection of existing organisms. If lions went extinct (as they have done in Europe and the Americas, and will probably soon do in Africa) the underlying structure of the ecosystem will likely remain intact. It would be much more concerning if blue-green algaes started dying off in droves. There is great diversity of life, and it is interesting to study and to be valued (I am a biology major after all, I am not interested in a sterile Earth) but you have to consider the perspective that what now exists is a fraction of a fraction of what once was, and the overwhelming majority of species that went extinct did so before humans had any opportunity to cause it.

Thom_Fuleri raises a good point. I would like to add to it with this comic:
[img][563:800]http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/artificial.PNG[/img]

That humanity through its idiocy should wipe away the extraordinary products of millions of years of evolution with the totally dumb assumption that they are relatively worthless is simply disgusting to me. Every day new discoveries are made about this treasure house of natural engineering that put to shame the accomplishments of the most sophisticated scientific disciplines. That the consensus at this site seems to be totally ignorant about this great loss gives me ground to see that ignorance and stupidity reign supreme wherever humanity leaves it footprint. I am appalled.