Does “Nature” Really Exist?

Papa Pigeon hunts for scraps amid a refurbishment job

A family of pigeons has made its nest in a disused air duct at work. Mama Pigeon stays up high with her nestlings, while Papa Pigeon, a handsome specimen with beautifully marbled black-and-white plumage, wanders the premises, hunting scraps to bring back for the young. We’ll eventually have to turn the ventilation back on. But for now, there's an unspoken agreement to leave the birds alone until the young are ready to fly.

Nobody would mistake our jobsite for a natural environment. An air duct isn't a verdant branch; the dumpsters and trash cans make a poor analog to the forests pigeons once scavenged for food. Yet our environment provides shelter, warmth, protection from weather, and abundant cheap nutrients. Animals that adapt to live among humans, from rats and pigeons to dogs and cats, flourish and get fat, while their wild cousins struggle.

How much can wild animals adapt to human-made conditions and still remain natural? To get really pointy-headed about it, we haven’t yet created a meaningful definition of the word “natural.” When does this piece of wood stop being a natural tree and become an artificial object? When the tree is felled? When the lumber is milled? When the carpenter turns it into a table? You see the problem. The word “natural” means something, but we can't agree what.

We know that “artificial” describes what happens when humans get involved in our world. Houses, streets, and cities are clearly artificial. But wild influences inevitably make their way into our artificial environment, from crabgrass and ants to feral cats and, yes, pigeons. Some living beings flourish in environments moderated by human artifice, without being necessarily domesticated. Are these influences natural?

Mama Pigeon guards her nest from the intrusive photographer

I’m inclined to say yes, crabgrass and feral kittens are natural forces in an artificial environment, because they’re neither planned for nor controlled. We make salutary efforts to control both, spraying lawns with harsh chemicals to ensure only desirable plants grow, and trapping feral animals for rehabilitation or removal from the environment. But these efforts are minor and don’t stem the flood. Nature persistently clings to the artificial space.

So. If humans and their built environment are artificial, but nature adapts itself to the artificial environment, then humanity is no longer strictly artificial. We’ve become a moderating force on nature. Scientists acknowledge this influence when they speak of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological moment since around 1750, during which human activity has exceeded wind and water as the greatest force shaping Earth’s surface.

Nature, then, is an artificial thing. We cannot separate what exists before human involvement from what exists after. Even in places where humans have little or no involvement, our influence alters the environment, from pollutants in the air and water, to the sounds generated by our machines. Any hunter or outdoorsman knows the frustration of going into nature to escape humanity, only to find litter and noise scattered everywhere.

Our human illusion of separateness gets spoiled whenever we try to escape. Even just studying nature fixes it in a form, creating “laws” which reality must supposedly obey. Yet reality isn’t an algorithm; we cannot list nature’s laws and expect coherence. Whether we tromp out into nature to study it, or watch nature infiltrate our built spaces and adapt itself to us, we witness a supposedly non-human world adapting itself to human forces.

Papa Pigeon takes flight

So nature does not exist. If nature is whatever humans haven’t influenced, then we’ve never seen such a thing. The human influence on non-human space is pervasive, and we carry it with us wherever we go. Pigeons living inside a half-refurbished public building are one easy example of this, since a nesting family is adorable. The extinctions of passenger pigeons and western black rhinoceroses are more grim examples.

If nature adapts to humanity, it is no longer free of human influence; it is artificial. Humans have created the natural world around us. So far, we’ve done so mostly heedlessly, assuming wild species will simply accept our intrusion of cities, long-distance roads, and carbon-burning technology with peace and equanimity. Which, of course, they haven’t. We’ve fallen ass-backward into a changed world without planning anything.

Therefore, if humans create nature, we need to start doing so consciously. We need to keep ourselves aware of the influences we force upon the world, the ripples our actions cause on everything. We need to study the non-built world so we can steward it accordingly. The next creature moving into our space might not be as cute as a pigeon.