Human Being and His Environment (part 2)

In my previous article, I tried to trace the historical account on how people viewed man’s nature in relation to environment.  Ancient Greeks viewed man as a “spectator” of the flux of nature.  Medieval men viewed man as a “steward” of nature, the creation of God.  With these ideas of “spectatorship” and “stewardship,” ancient Greeks and Medieval people never viewed man as a “master” of nature/ environment.  By “master” of nature, I mean he does not have to subject nature/environment to his dominion or control.

This paradigm on nature of man develops an attitude among ancient Greeks and Medieval people to take responsibility of the environment.  They never have the attitude to abuse nature/environment to advance human self-interests or the attitude to actively intervene the natural process of nature forcing it to secrete its laws. 

However this paradigm changed during the Scientific Revolution roughly about 1550-1700.  Scientific Revolution is marked by shifts in perspective specifically in how people view the world.  For example, Copernicus introduced the idea that the sun is the center of the universe[1], which contradicted the long-held belief of the medieval scientists and church authorities that the earth is the center of the universe.  This paradigm shift is now known as the Copernican revolution –a 360-degrees shift in perspective.  To have it was really a challenge on the part of Copernicus, owing to the fact that it is a long-held belief and the church, which propounded that idea, was considered infallible in her teachings and doctrines during those times.  In doing so, Copernicus was not only introducing a new idea (or a revolutionary idea) but also construing that the infallible authority of the church as a magistrate can be questioned or can be put into doubt.

It is in this scenario that we can understand the philosophy of Rene Descartes who lived in the middle part of the period known as the Scientific Revolution.  Descartes, a French philosopher, toyed the idea that everything can be doubted –even those ideas held by the church as teachings, dogmas or doctrines.  Yet, there is only one thing that he cannot put into doubt –and that is, he is doubting.  For Descartes, everything is dubitable, except his own doubting.  If he doubts, he thinks.  If he thinks, he exists.  Thus, Descartes is famous of his dictum “I think therefore I am.”  (In Latin phrase, cogito ergo sum.)  What essentially is his philosophy is capsulized in saying that “man, by nature, is a thinking being.”  As a thinking being, he has capabilities to constitute other beings’ existence and its knowledge of them.  In the words of Francis Bacon, “with reason, we can put nature on a rack.” 

This philosophical claim that man is a “thinking being” is not something new, or not a revolutionary idea.  Descartes’ predecessors have similar affirmation, for example Plato, Aristotle, St Thomas to name just a few.  What is revolutionary in this claim is that “as thinking being, man can become the master of nature.”  In the words of Descartes, man can constitute his knowledge of the world, which is entirely different from the way Greeks think of the world.  For the Greeks, the world is naturally “constituted.”  But, since the world can be doubted, it loses its foundation to be the source of knowledge.  Thus, man has to constitute his knowledge of it.  Or, in the words of Bacon, “with reason, we can put nature on a rack,” which is again a contradiction of what ancient philosophers think of nature/environment.  For the medieval people, for example, the world is something “entrusted” to them by God, so they are stewards of it, not masters of it. 

This modern philosophy[2] revolutionizes our view of nature/environment.  In the framework of modern philosophers, experimentation is the key to know the secrets of nature.  If we “put nature on the rack” to study it, which is done in scientific experiments, we force nature to secrete its laws.  If we know nature’s laws, we can control or manipulate it.  Thus, we say, “knowledge is power.”  He who is knowledgeable is powerful –in the sense that he is able to control or manipulate nature.  For example, we know how egg cells and sperm cells work during ejaculation in sexual intercourse of two partners.  Conception starts when egg and sperm cells combine in the uterus.  If there is no meeting of the two cells, there is no conception that will happen.  With this knowledge, we are able to manipulate the behavior of egg and sperm cells, like the use of contraceptives during sexual intercourse hinders the meeting of the cells.  From active experiments, we are able to intervene and even manipulate the process or workings of nature, which we consider as natural or say, “the nature’s way.”  Thus, the difference between natural and man-made or artificial is clearly drawn.  Man’s intervention to processes of environment is considered man-made or artificial.  At the outset, we come to believe that what is man-made is easier and faster, and what is natural is slow-paced.  Today’s motto is “the faster, the better.”

In conclusion, with this modern paradigm, nature/environment is at the mercy man’s thinking power, which most of the time becomes capricious.  With our experiences of calamities brought about by global warming, we’ve now come to realize how much abuses we’ve done to Mother Earth.  And, there is an urgent need to attend to the call to care once more of our environment.  To realize this we need to have another paradigm shift.

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[1] Of course, we have to remember that their idea of universe is not the same idea that we have today.  Maybe, medieval people had only some planets, a moon, and a sun in mind when they talked of universe, and these heavenly bodies are revolving around the earth.  Today, universe is as immense as we can imagine and we think it as boundless.

[2] The philosophy of Rene Descartes is generally regarded as “modern philosophy.”  In fact, Descartes is considered as the Father of Modern Philosophy.