We are all Naturalists
We are all amateur naturalists, navigating landscapes of change. Our navigation depends on tools and traditions, education and opportunities. Science is one of those tools, but it would be misleading to say science is the only way to engage with forests and oceans, climate zones and life with other species. From native people around the globe to the first explorers in America, from climate change activists and protesters to politicians and captains of industry, from dinosaur rooms in city museums to wooded trails in protected parks, from gardens and greenhouses to the research labs of food and drug companies, interactions with nature happen at many levels and are recast with every era.
We come to nature by stages: we use it to our advantage, participate in its diversity and cycles. Our reactions are often emotional. Just as there may be a fear of nature, there could be a worship of nature. False pride can lead to the sense that we are masters of nature, the overlords of the earth. But when things get out of balance, we pay a price. Our attitudes reflect times of bounty and disaster.
Natural history is about discovery and its opposite, leaving things alone, recognizing boundaries and limits. It is a story in which we are intimately engaged, though at times we behave as outsiders and plunderers. We see nature as treasure, as a possession, as a fearful wilderness, a frontier to be conquered, a garden to be tended, an experimental farm, a science or discipline. Nature is a system of intricate connections that follows predictable laws and confounding patterns, nurturing and deadly.
In these contradictory views, there may be a cycle that we experience collectively over time–our historical experience of nature. I suspect this grand cycle reflects our potential for growth as individuals living in nature. This gallery traces broad steps, milestones in our historical experience of nature. As you view the gallery, ask yourself, have you personally experienced any of these steps or changing attitudes?
1. Explore
All people interact with nature and are curious explorers. First nations people live close to the land and often track herds of animals in patterns that follow the seasons. In Western cultures, the study of nature took off with the exploration of the globe by Europeans in the so-called age of discovery, 1500-1700. This was also an age of colonization and slavery. Knowledge expanded, but at a cost.
We are all explorers, with much to learn about environments and the diversity of life around us. This learning starts by venturing forth with an open mind and curious spirit.
2. Identify
As explorers traversed the globe, their crew included botanists, artists and geologists, who shipped cartloads of specimens back to Europe to be named, classified, sorted and displayed. At first, private cabinets of curiosity were the rage with aristocrats, but in time natural history museums, open to the public, were established in Paris in 1635 and in London in 1683.
For the amateur naturalist, there is a similar impulse to identify plants and birds, lichens and butterflies. Learning the names of things, we can share information more effectively. We may also want to gather and collect.
3. Grow
As people find uses for natural resources, and profits are made, it spurs trade and activity. For example, a taste for foreign plants and exotic fruits like oranges and pineapples among wealthy Europeans led to the construction of greenhouses and gardens. Hans Sloan, a physician and collector established an Apothecary’s Garden in London in 1673. But Sloan also used cocoa from America to make milk chocolate. Universities grew plants to study and make medicine from. Labs investigated a range of applications.
Gardening is an easy way for people to cultivate and invent. As we garden, we observe and learn, and benefit from the food that is produced.
4. Evolve and adapt
Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859. Charles Darwin’s idea of evolution pictured nature as a dynamic system subject to forces of change, adaptation to environment and competition. Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest emerged out of a capitalist society flush with the wealth and heady optimism of the world’s first Industrial Revolution. A rival theory was put forward by Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin argued that evolution is spurred as much by cooperation as by competition.
One of the great challenges for the amateur naturalist is to observe dynamic changes in nature. How plants and animals vary from one habitat to another. We can also observe competition and cooperation in nature.
5. Connect to ecosystems
Ernst Haeckel coined the word “ecology” in 1866. “Ecology,” Haeckel said, “was the science of the relationships of an organism with its environment.” Studying a plant or animal in relation to its habitat gives us a deeper appreciation of the give and take in nature, and of a balance of forces that each species operates within. Removing a species from a habitat will impact other creatures, as we learn to see ecosystems in holistic ways.
Modern day ecologists concern themselves with the study of life processes, interactions and adaptations. The movement of material and energy through living communities. The successional development of ecosystems. Populations. Diversity and the environment.
The amateur naturalist can look for similar relationships, starting with the identification of distinct habitats and considering the relationships of the plants and creatures that flourish within them.
6. Conserve wild spaces
National parks first appeared in the United States in 1872 in Yellowstone, Wyoming. Canada created Banff National Park in Alberta in 1885. Lands protected by government embodied a radical new idea, that the natural wonders of the land should be available not to a privileged few, but to everyone. The designer of New York City’s Central Park in 1853, Frederick Law Olmsted, wrote of Yosemite that it was “the greatest glory of nature … the union of the deepest sublimity with the deepest beauty.” The naturalist John Muir not only wrote about his encounters with nature, he was an activist who founded the Sierra Club in 1892 to lobby governments to protect wilderness areas and adopt environmental policies.
The amatuer naturalist of today can join similar organizations and get involved in efforts to save local wilderness areas and to manage forests, wetlands and waterways more wisely. A current concern is caring for soil, reducing pollution and carbon emissions, and reversing the effects of desertification around the globe.
7. The Hidden World
Around 1600, Antoine van Leuwenhoek, a Dutch cloth merchant who built lenses as a hobby, observed tiny creatures in pond water. He alerted the Royal Society in London and became famous for discovering a new realm of life. Around 1850, Louis Pasteur formulated the germ theory of disease. In the 20th century, scientists like Carl Woese and Lynn Margulis discovered that all life on earth needs bacteria to survive. Bacteria live around us and inside us and interface with our cells, skin, gut biome and immune system to promote health. It’s not just people that need bacteria. Bacteria are able to pull nitrogen out of the air and make it accessible for plants. Nitrogen is a key component of amino acids, which build DNA and enable growth. Also animals like cows and humans use bacteria to properly digest their food. Without this essential gut bacteria, food wouldn’t be properly digested. People would become obese and be unable to fight off disease.
Everyone interacts with bacteria. We encourage parents to touch their infants to demonstrate love and nurture, but also to build up a baby’s reserve of helpful microbes. As an adult, if you’re taking antibiotics and have a poor diet, you’re killing bacteria. If you have a healthy diet and enjoy an active lifestyle, mixing with other healthy people, and if you spend time outdoors in nature or if you’re a gardener, chances are you’re supporting healthy bacteria inside and around you.
8. Tell Stories
How many of our stories revolve around the endurance of a storm, travels and discovery, friendships with animals, sightings of birds, accidents and successes with food, memories of a landscape? The land connects us to one another and our stories reveal our feelings about nature, our confidence in the future and curiosity toward things other than ourselves.
9. Human factors
Humans have caused drastic unintended effects on the natural world. We’ve done this through the cultivation of crops over thousands of years, creating dams and diverting waterways. We’ve also interfered with evolution by manipulating genomes and altering ecosystems. We’ve transported species across the globe, introducing new elements that upset the balance of long-established habitats. We’ve changed the world’s climate through the use of fossil fuels, polluted oceans, turned productive land into deserts and ravaged environments to suit our own needs for housing and agriculture. Many of these changes have occurred because of the explosion in human population, creating extraordinary demands for food and energy.
We often speak of nature and culture, as if they are separate spheres. But our culture affects nature, just as nature affects culture. The challenge for the future is to design lifestyles in ways that will be beneficial to the natural systems we depend on.
10. Bridge to the Future
As children and adults, we explore and learn the names of things. We plant gardens, exchange food, and find uses for raw materials. As we learn about evolution, we appreciate how nature is continually changing, competing, cooperating, surviving and falling into extinction. As we learn about ecology, we become aware of habitats and ecosystems working as units whose parts depend on one another. We come to value natural sites and work to set them aside, conserve them, while enjoying the sites that others have set aside for us. As we learn about the invisible world of microbes, we come to appreciate the role of bacteria in healthy soils and in human health. As a result, we may modify our diets, and extend loyalties to companies that are more eco-conscious than others. We begin to appreciate the effect human behavior has had on environments around us, the damaging effects of fossils fuels, over-population and pollution. Finally, we work to build a bridge to the future by developing green technologies, green medicine, green politics.