meaning of nature essay

A Summary and Analysis of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Nature’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Nature’ is an 1836 essay by the American writer and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82). In this essay, Emerson explores the relationship between nature and humankind, arguing that if we approach nature with a poet’s eye, and a pure spirit, we will find the wonders of nature revealed to us.

You can read ‘Nature’ in full here . Below, we summarise Emerson’s argument and offer an analysis of its meaning and context.

Emerson begins his essay by defining nature, in philosophical terms, as anything that is not our individual souls. So our bodies, as well as all of the natural world, but also all of the world of art and technology, too, are ‘nature’ in this philosophical sense of the world. He urges his readers not to rely on tradition or history to help them to understand the world: instead, they should look to nature and the world around them.

In the first chapter, Emerson argues that nature is never ‘used up’ when the right mind examines it: it is a source of boundless curiosity. No man can own the landscape: it belongs, if it belongs to anyone at all, to ‘the poet’. Emerson argues that when a man returns to nature he can rediscover his lost youth, that wide-eyed innocence he had when he went among nature as a boy.

Emerson states that when he goes among nature, he becomes a ‘transparent eyeball’ because he sees nature but is himself nothing: he has been absorbed or subsumed into nature and, because God made nature, God himself. He feels a deep kinship and communion with all of nature. He acknowledges that our view of nature depends on our own mood, and that the natural world reflects the mood we are feeling at the time.

In the second chapter, Emerson focuses on ‘commodity’: the name he gives to all of the advantages which our senses owe to nature. Emerson draws a parallel with the ‘useful arts’ which have built houses and steamships and whole towns: these are the man-made equivalents of the natural world, in that both nature and the ‘arts’ are designed to provide benefit and use to mankind.

The third chapter then turns to ‘beauty’, and the beauty of nature comprises several aspects, which Emerson outlines. First, the beauty of nature is a restorative : seeing the sky when we emerge from a day’s work can restore us to ourselves and make us happy again. The human eye is the best ‘artist’ because it perceives and appreciates this beauty so keenly. Even the countryside in winter possesses its own beauty.

The second aspect of beauty Emerson considers is the spiritual element. Great actions in history are often accompanied by a beautiful backdrop provided by nature. The third aspect in which nature should be viewed is its value to the human intellect . Nature can help to inspire people to create and invent new things. Everything in nature is a representation of a universal harmony and perfection, something greater than itself.

In his fourth chapter, Emerson considers the relationship between nature and language. Our language is often a reflection of some natural state: for instance, the word right literally means ‘straight’, while wrong originally denoted something ‘twisted’. But we also turn to nature when we wish to use language to reflect a ‘spiritual fact’: for example, that a lamb symbolises innocence, or a fox represents cunning. Language represents nature, therefore, and nature in turn represents some spiritual truth.

Emerson argues that ‘the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.’ Many great principles of the physical world are also ethical or moral axioms: for example, ‘the whole is greater than its part’.

In the fifth chapter, Emerson turns his attention to nature as a discipline . Its order can teach us spiritual and moral truths, but it also puts itself at the service of mankind, who can distinguish and separate (for instance, using water for drinking but wool for weaving, and so on). There is a unity in nature which means that every part of it corresponds to all of the other parts, much as an individual art – such as architecture – is related to the others, such as music or religion.

The sixth chapter is devoted to idealism . How can we sure nature does actually exist, and is not a mere product within ‘the apocalypse of the mind’, as Emerson puts it? He believes it doesn’t make any practical difference either way (but for his part, Emerson states that he believes God ‘never jests with us’, so nature almost certainly does have an external existence and reality).

Indeed, we can determine that we are separate from nature by changing out perspective in relation to it: for example, by bending down and looking between our legs, observing the landscape upside down rather than the way we usually view it. Emerson quotes from Shakespeare to illustrate how poets can draw upon nature to create symbols which reflect the emotions of the human soul. Religion and ethics, by contrast, degrade nature by viewing it as lesser than divine or moral truth.

Next, in the seventh chapter, Emerson considers nature and the spirit . Spirit, specifically the spirit of God, is present throughout nature. In his eighth and final chapter, ‘Prospects’, Emerson argues that we need to contemplate nature as a whole entity, arguing that ‘a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments’ which focus on more local details within nature.

Emerson concludes by arguing that in order to detect the unity and perfection within nature, we must first perfect our souls. ‘He cannot be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit’, Emerson urges. Wisdom means finding the miraculous within the common or everyday. He then urges the reader to build their own world, using their spirit as the foundation. Then the beauty of nature will reveal itself to us.

In a number of respects, Ralph Waldo Emerson puts forward a radically new attitude towards our relationship with nature. For example, although we may consider language to be man-made and artificial, Emerson demonstrates that the words and phrases we use to describe the world are drawn from our observation of nature. Nature and the human spirit are closely related, for Emerson, because they are both part of ‘the same spirit’: namely, God. Although we are separate from nature – or rather, our souls are separate from nature, as his prefatory remarks make clear – we can rediscover the common kinship between us and the world.

Emerson wrote ‘Nature’ in 1836, not long after Romanticism became an important literary, artistic, and philosophical movement in Europe and the United States. Like Wordsworth and the Romantics before him, Emerson argues that children have a better understanding of nature than adults, and when a man returns to nature he can rediscover his lost youth, that wide-eyed innocence he had when he went among nature as a boy.

And like Wordsworth, Emerson argued that to understand the world, we should go out there and engage with it ourselves, rather than relying on books and tradition to tell us what to think about it. In this connection, one could undertake a comparative analysis of Emerson’s ‘Nature’ and Wordsworth’s pair of poems ‘ Expostulation and Reply ’ and ‘ The Tables Turned ’, the former of which begins with a schoolteacher rebuking Wordsworth for sitting among nature rather than having his nose buried in a book:

‘Why, William, on that old gray stone, ‘Thus for the length of half a day, ‘Why, William, sit you thus alone, ‘And dream your time away?

‘Where are your books?—that light bequeathed ‘To beings else forlorn and blind! ‘Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed ‘From dead men to their kind.

Similarly, for Emerson, the poet and the dreamer can get closer to the true meaning of nature than scientists because they can grasp its unity by viewing it holistically, rather than focusing on analysing its rock formations or other more local details. All of this is in keeping with the philosophy of Transcendentalism , that nineteenth-century movement which argued for a kind of spiritual thinking instead of scientific thinking based narrowly on material things.

Emerson, along with Henry David Thoreau, was the most famous writer to belong to the Transcendentalist movement, and ‘Nature’ is fundamentally a Transcendentalist essay, arguing for an intuitive and ‘poetic’ engagement with nature in the round rather than a coldly scientific or empirical analysis of its component parts.

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Nature Essay for Students and Children

500+ words nature essay.

Nature is an important and integral part of mankind. It is one of the greatest blessings for human life; however, nowadays humans fail to recognize it as one. Nature has been an inspiration for numerous poets, writers, artists and more of yesteryears. This remarkable creation inspired them to write poems and stories in the glory of it. They truly valued nature which reflects in their works even today. Essentially, nature is everything we are surrounded by like the water we drink, the air we breathe, the sun we soak in, the birds we hear chirping, the moon we gaze at and more. Above all, it is rich and vibrant and consists of both living and non-living things. Therefore, people of the modern age should also learn something from people of yesteryear and start valuing nature before it gets too late.

Significance of Nature

Nature has been in existence long before humans and ever since it has taken care of mankind and nourished it forever. In other words, it offers us a protective layer which guards us against all kinds of damages and harms. Survival of mankind without nature is impossible and humans need to understand that.

If nature has the ability to protect us, it is also powerful enough to destroy the entire mankind. Every form of nature, for instance, the plants , animals , rivers, mountains, moon, and more holds equal significance for us. Absence of one element is enough to cause a catastrophe in the functioning of human life.

We fulfill our healthy lifestyle by eating and drinking healthy, which nature gives us. Similarly, it provides us with water and food that enables us to do so. Rainfall and sunshine, the two most important elements to survive are derived from nature itself.

Further, the air we breathe and the wood we use for various purposes are a gift of nature only. But, with technological advancements, people are not paying attention to nature. The need to conserve and balance the natural assets is rising day by day which requires immediate attention.

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Conservation of Nature

In order to conserve nature, we must take drastic steps right away to prevent any further damage. The most important step is to prevent deforestation at all levels. Cutting down of trees has serious consequences in different spheres. It can cause soil erosion easily and also bring a decline in rainfall on a major level.

Polluting ocean water must be strictly prohibited by all industries straightaway as it causes a lot of water shortage. The excessive use of automobiles, AC’s and ovens emit a lot of Chlorofluorocarbons’ which depletes the ozone layer. This, in turn, causes global warming which causes thermal expansion and melting of glaciers.

Therefore, we should avoid personal use of the vehicle when we can, switch to public transport and carpooling. We must invest in solar energy giving a chance for the natural resources to replenish.

In conclusion, nature has a powerful transformative power which is responsible for the functioning of life on earth. It is essential for mankind to flourish so it is our duty to conserve it for our future generations. We must stop the selfish activities and try our best to preserve the natural resources so life can forever be nourished on earth.

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Summary: “nature”.

“Nature” is an 1836 essay by the American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson . Philosophical in scope, it lays out the tenets of Emerson’s ideas about Transcendentalism, a movement that promoted the virtues of the natural world and the individual and regarded society and organized religion as corrupting forces.

In the Introduction, Emerson complains that his age is “retrospective” in its reverence for the teaching and philosophy of the past (15). His generation ought to have “an original relation to the universe” because this point in history is as good a time as any for gaining insight into the wonders of God’s creation (15). Organized religion, he argues, has done little to further man’s understanding of the truth behind creation. When a “true theory” emerges, it will not need to be mediated through a sacred text or pastor; rather, “it will be its own evidence” (15).

Emerson considers that the universe is composed of nature and the soul. He defines nature as “essences unchanged by man” (16), such as space and trees, which render the works of man insignificant by comparison.

In Chapter 1, “Nature,” Emerson argues that to find true solitude , man must go outdoors and contemplate the vastness of nature until he is awestruck. Nature is egalitarian, as it does not discriminate based on education or riches. The landscape belongs to no one, regardless of people’s property rights. The variety found in nature corresponds to the shifting moods of man, and nature is therefore his fitting companion in good and inclement weather alike.

Man can be restored to a greater sense of self through a contemplation of nature and can even get closer to God. In this state of transcendence, “all mean egotism vanishes” as man becomes “a transparent eye-ball” who is nothing and yet sees all (18).

In Chapter 2, “Commodity,” Emerson explains that commodity is one of the uses of nature. Nature is man’s “provision,” being “at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed” (20). Emerson observes how in his lifetime, which overlapped with the Industrial Revolution, man has harnessed nature to achieve unparalleled technological advancement.

In Chapter 3, “Beauty,” Emerson draws attention to the fact that in ancient Greek, the word for the world— cosmos —is synonymous with beauty. Beauty is thus “the constitution of all things” (22), and all natural things “give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping” (22). However, the presence of “a spiritual element” is necessary to avoid lapsing into sensualism, as Emerson considers beauty the external “mark God sets upon virtue” (24). Another application of beauty is the intellect, which “searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affectation” (26). He argues that this process leads to the making of art, as “the beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind […] for new creation” (26).

In Chapter 4, “Language,” Emerson regards words as “signs of natural facts” and that “every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance” (28). For example, the word “ wrong means twisted ,” while “ supercilious ” suggests “the raising of the eyebrow ” (28). On a further level, “every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact” as “every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of mind” (28). Emerson places man, the maker of language, “in the center of beings” because he is responsible for making meaning (29). Crucially, man and other natural beings have an interdependent relationship, as neither can be understood without the other.

Emerson argues that corruption in men is closely followed by corruption in language, as “secondary desires” such as those for riches or pleasure get in the way of truth, and “old words are perverted to stand for things which are not” (30). He considers that rural poets are less likely to lose the truth of their relationship to nature than those in cities, who stand to be corrupted by crowds and politicians. He thinks that living in harmony with nature, and the subsequent love of truth and virtue, will enable man to better understand the origins of creation (33).

In Chapter 5, “Discipline,” Emerson considers that nature is a discipline, and through it, man can gain a sense of order or hierarchy, as nature is full of examples of how “things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual” (35). Nature can be a moral influence on man because it teaches him truths about the limits and substance of things. A wise individual is as discerning as nature in their judgment of the relative merits of things.

There is a unity in the variety of nature, as harmonies and motifs are repeated in its different elements. Man is the most ordered being in all of Creation; however, every human specimen evinces some flaw or injury. Actions are more capable than words of communicating the “central Unity” of things; they are “the perfection and publication of thought,” while words “break, chop, and impoverish” (39).

In Chapter 6, “Idealism,” Emerson addresses the notion put forth by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato that the perceptual world of nature is a mere shadow of the eternal truthful realm of God and ideas. Emerson concludes that this line of questioning is immaterial: As humans are powerless to test the accuracy of their senses, nature, “be what it may, is ideal to me” (41). However, while man exists entirely within natural laws, “the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open” (41).

Human reason helps to give the material of nature expression and meaning. Poets can utilize natural motifs to express their thoughts as ideas, as their work becomes “the use which Reason makes of the material world” (43). Arguably, the poet only differs from the philosopher in that he seeks beauty before truth, as both subordinate “the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought” and seek constants within the shifting scenes of human experience (45). This search for truth behind the shifting scenes of reality enables men to live without the fear of worldly misfortune, as all worldly problems begin to appear transient to him.

While children begin their lives centered in nature and the truth of the perceptual world, as their reason grows, they stand to live more for the mind and the eternal states within it. For Emerson idealism sees the universe as a unified “picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul” (48). The universal soul can transcend disputes of mankind, especially ecclesiastical ones.

In Chapter 7, “Spirit,” Emerson contends that all the functions of nature can be grouped in the category of spirit, which speaks of God and origins. Spirit is a “perpetual effect,” like “a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us” (50). Without this religious element, idealism “leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander without end” (50).

Rather than building nature around humanity, God “puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old” (51). A man can rely on God just as a plant can rely upon the earth. Through nature, man has access to the mind of the creator and so can become a miniature version of a creator himself.

Man can measure his virtue or degeneration according to how harmoniously he lives with nature, as “we are as much strangers in nature as we are aliens from God” (52). This is because every landscape bears evidence of God and his creative power.

In Chapter 8, “Prospects,” Emerson laments that the empirical sciences are so concerned with the observation and mastery of particular aspects of nature that they lose sight of the whole picture. Instead, the optimal naturalist would see that empiricism is limited, and that the truth of his relationship to the world “is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility” (53). The optimal naturalist focuses on wholes over parts, and spirit over matter.

Emerson quotes Plato when he says that “poetry,” with its contemplation of wholes and universals, “comes nearer to vital truth than history” (55), which studies mankind piecemeal. Emerson considers that man’s present relationship to nature, which is mainly utilitarian, is an impoverished one.

A “redemption of the soul” (57), and a restoration of man’s wholeness, will enable him to perceive a complete vision of nature and himself reflected in it. Importantly, “he cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit” (57). Then all the natural commonplaces that man takes for granted will be restored to him as wonders, as he looks “at the world with new eyes” (57). Emerson ends with a long quotation from the man he calls his Orphic poet—this was Amos Bronson Alcott, a fellow Transcendentalist and friend of Emerson’s—that posits that “nature is not fixed but fluid” and subject to the alterations and molding of spirit (58).

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Ralph Waldo Emerson left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson became one of America's best known and best-loved 19th-century figures. More About Emerson

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This short, mysterious book, s elf-published anonymously in 1836, received high critical praise and kick-started America's first homegrown intellectual movement, Transcendentalism. After defining nature and identifying its purposes in relation to human life, Emerson reveals that it is only through nature that we can understand the world and ourselves.

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Who Was the Author of the Book Nature ?

Nature was the first major publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). In 1836, the 33-year-old Emerson was practically unknown to the world. He had only recently quit his job as a minister after the death of his wife, returned from a tour of Europe, married a second time, and established himself in Concord, a suburb of Boston.

Emerson would go on to achieve worldwide fame as a lecturer, essayist, poet, and one of the founders of a major American intellectual movement, Transcendentalism. In Nature , Emerson introduced important philosophical ideas that he would continue to develop in his later work, and that would inspire generations of writers and intellectuals.

By making nature a point of central spiritual and philosophical concern, Emerson laid the foundation for the 19th-century intellectual movement that would eventually become known as Transcendentalism. Excited by the ideas in Nature , a group of writers and intellectuals, including Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Theodore Parker, Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau, started to visit Emerson's house in Concord regularly. Although they did not necessarily agree with Emerson on all points, they all thought that nature was of utmost importance.

Transcendentalism: an early 19-century intellectual movement that emphasized the importance of the natural world, individual expression, and choice.

What is the Main Message of the Book Nature ?

Nature is a complex book, but its main message is simple: lose yourself in nature! It is only by, in Emerson's words, becoming a "transparent eye-ball" in the forest that we can really understand anything at all. 1

Central Ideas and Summary of Nature

Nature is a long and complex essay that engages with major philosophical, religious, and literary ideas spanning thousands of years. After offering a definition of nature and our place in it, Emerson identifies four purposes of nature in relation to humanity: it exists as a commodity, as a source of beauty and language, and as a course of study. Emerson then applies this expanded definition of nature to philosophy and theology before explaining how understanding nature allows us to understand ourselves, our history, and our place in it.

Introduction

Emerson begins with the declaration that "Our age is retrospective" or backward-looking and obsessed with the past. Why do we feel that no great prophets, poets, or philosophers can exist in our times? He proposes that we look to nature as a kind of common denominator between the past and present to answer this question. If we can discover the purpose of nature, then perhaps we can understand our place in it and in history.

For Emerson, nature is not just the natural world of rivers, trees, and air – this is what he terms the "common sense" of nature. Nature does include these things, but it also includes "art" or human artifacts as well as human bodies. Nature is everything that we don't identify with ourselves.

Chapter I. Nature

Looking out at the evening sky, we may be dazzled by the shining stars that surround us on all sides. But we cannot reach out and touch them or even get any closer to them for a better look. This is not only true of the stars: nature surrounds us everywhere, but it also seems distant and inaccessible. Sometimes we fail to notice it even when we are looking directly at it, for example, when we consider a field only as a farmer's property or a forest as potential lumber. We need "the eye and heart of the child" in order to see nature for what it truly is. Escaping from the town or city into the woods is the best way to accomplish this. In the woods, Emerson famously remarks:

Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all.

Losing our sense of self while observing the natural world, we begin to feel that we are, in fact, a part of it after all.

Working with this definition of nature and with the doubt that humans are separate from nature, the next four chapters identify four "ends" or purposes that nature is used for.

Chapter II. Commodity

The first purpose, commodity, is simply the use of the natural world to satisfy physical needs or desires, such as when we use rocks or trees to build structures or feed ourselves with plants and animals. Emerson doesn't spend much time on this purpose, and he notes that it is not really an end in itself since "A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work."

Chapter III. Beauty

Nature has three distinct purposes in relation to beauty. The first is the simple delight that we take in looking at the natural world. While Emerson thinks that this delight is stronger in rural landscapes, he notes that absolutely anything can be made beautiful under the right lighting conditions (photographers, take note!).

The second is the kind of beauty that arises when the natural world seems to be in harmony with human intentions, such as when a cool and sunny day corresponds with a planned road trip or a sailing expedition falls on a windy day. Emerson thinks that this is especially beautiful when nature cooperates with larger human ambitions, such as those of generals and explorers.

The third purpose of nature in relation to beauty is the inspiration it provides for human art. Taking pleasure in natural beauty, the beauty "reforms itself in the mind" for the purpose of artistic creation. Art is a kind of distillation of nature through the human mind.

Chapter IV. Language

As with beauty, nature also has a threefold purpose in relation to language. The first of these is to provide what Emerson calls "signs," by which he means something like "words." Many words have etymological origins in natural observations: the word "right" comes from an ancient Indo-European word for " straight," the word "spirit" comes from a Latin word meaning "breathe," and so on. Whether we realize it or not, nature provides a great deal of the vocabulary we use on a daily basis.

The second purpose is to provide analogies for human psychological states. Emerson provides a helpful list of examples here:

An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our visible expression for knowledge and ignorance; Visible distance behind and before is respectively our image of memory and hope.

These analogies are so consistent across cultures and so prominent in every language that they could not be the result of chance. Emerson thinks that they demonstrate a fundamental similarity between the human mind and the natural world. He suggests that the mind works best outside of the city, where it can observe and draw inspiration from the natural world for its language and thoughts.

Inspired by the post-Kantian philosophical developments of his time, Emerson drew a distinction between " R eason" and " U nderstanding." Understanding includes the more mechanical processes of the mind, like doing calculations or thinking logically. Reason is a more active, creative process through which we form representations of the outside world.

In Nature , Emerson suggests that Spirit is the same thing as Reason but "considered in relation to nature." In fact, Emerson views Spirit, in particular, as being "the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language."

Because Emerson views both Reason and Spirit as being reflections of God's own processes, they exist throughout the natural world, linking God, humans, and nature together.

The third purpose of nature with respect to language builds directly on the second one. It is not only our common thoughts that are articulated in the natural world but also our very ideas of right and wrong. This is hinted at in popular idioms such as "A rolling stone gathers no moss" or "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," but its deeper articulation has also been the objective of all major philosophies and religions "from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg." Our judgments about right and wrong turn out to be judgments about real, natural facts.

Chapter V. Discipline

By 'discipline,' Emerson means something like an academic or intellectual discipline – a course of study. Combining the purposes of nature that we find in relation to commodity, beauty, and language, we find a full course of study for practical, intellectual, and moral truths.

We have already outlined the lessons that Emerson thinks nature has to teach us. Before reading on, review the sections on "Commodity," "Beauty," and "Language." Do you find anything there that resembles a school curriculum?

The careful observation of nature offers "constant exercise in the lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces." Eventually, this results in the formation of the natural sciences and natural laws. In addition to providing an endless source of intellectual investigation, we also learn about our own willpower through the effects that we produce on the natural world.

Emerson has already noted how the language we use to think about ethics and morality is always drawn from the natural world, but, in this chapter, he takes that argument a step further. Because "the moral law lies at the center of nature and radiates to the circumference," every interaction we have with the natural world is a potential lesson in ethics. The end-point of these moral lessons is an understanding of the "Unity of Nature, –the Unity in Variety, – which meets us everywhere." This truth can be expressed in both language and action, and it is closely related to the realization that "the human form" is predominant in nature.

Chapter VI. Idealism

Emerson's next step is to relate his theory of nature to a long-standing philosophical debate: that between idealism and realism . A central question in the history of Western philosophy has been whether we can really know the world outside of our own consciousness of it and whether the outside world even exists outside of our ideas.

Idealism: the philosophical position that our knowledge of things is limited to our ideas about them. Some idealists go even further and think that nothing exists other than consciousness or ideas.

Realism: the philosophical position that there is a real world of things external to us and that our ideas are just representations of those things in our head, usually formed from our sense perceptions.

Emerson thinks that the importance of the realism versus idealism question is overstated. Real or ideal, nature "is alike useful and venerable to me," and its "stability" and "permanence" are demonstrated to us all on a daily basis. Human beings also need to believe in this stability and permanence if they are to function normally.

How, then, do we come to doubt the existence of the reality of the world in the first place? Emerson points to four broad causes: "motion, poetry, physical and intellectual science, and religion." While moving in, for example, a car, train, boat, or airplane, we seem to be a fixed point that the world moves around. This is what first causes us to think that there must be a difference between ourselves, as the observer, and the world, as the observed thing changing rapidly around us. Poetry has a similar effect, but purely in the imagination: it can bring up images of "air, the sun, the mountain, the camp, the city, the hero, the maiden" from both the present and from different historical periods. These images "float before the eye" in a way that reinforces the difference between the individual and the world.

Philosophy and science raise doubts about the external world in a different way. Both of them focus on abstract ideas, laws, and absolute truths. This means that even the sciences, such as physics, which are dependent on our observations of the world around us, come to rely on logical and mathematical principles – on ideas rather than things. In a similar way, religion teaches us to focus on the eternal afterlife rather than the physical world. Since a common religious message is that "the things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal," it often results in the devaluing of the physical, material world in contrast with the spiritual one.

Despite the common-sense appeal of realism, Emerson thinks that the weight of the evidence from our experience of travel, poetry, philosophy, science, and religion – in short, from nearly every cultural advancement – suggests the truth of idealism. Idealism, perhaps more importantly, "sees the world in God." Here, Emerson is invoking a type of idealism that sees reality as existing not just in the human mind but in God's mind, too. In this way, we seem to be able to save the common-sense view that nature is permanent and stable while still holding that there is no reality outside of (God's) ideas. What concerns Emerson most is the effect that this has on our mindset: since it allows us to see everything as "one vast picture, which God paints on the instant of eternity," it gives us a better perspective on nature, history, and our place in them.

Chapter VII. Spirit

If idealism is the answer to the question "What is matter?", then two important questions still remain: where did matter come from, and where is it going? To answer these questions, Emerson thinks that we need the idea of a "spirit" or "Supreme Being." This is an active, creative force that "is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely," and which is the cause of both the origin and continuing existence of everything. Since it is "one and not compound" it must include everything – even ourselves. This spirit is literally a part of us, giving human beings "access to the entire mind of the Creator." It speaks through us, but we cannot impose our will on it. Instead, we have to work to understand it, and we can only do this by understanding nature:

We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of the birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine.

Nature, then, turns out to be our access point to understanding God, the universe, and ourselves. If we fail to understand it, and can only understand ourselves in contrast to it, then we lose all possibility of meaningful knowledge.

Chapter VIII. Prospects

In this concluding section, Emerson elaborates on what he means by understanding nature. It is not so much the collection of natural facts or the identification of different species of plants and animals that interests him. While these activities are important, they are just one means to an end. Emerson emphasizes the importance of seeing nature with a sense of wonder and paying attention to dreams, guesses, and hunches in our attempt to understand the natural world. Given that nature speaks through us, it should perhaps be no surprise that these can provide just as much insight as scientific observation.

Returning to his introductory theme of our backward-looking age, Emerson calls on us to rise to the occasion. Armed with the knowledge of our place in God's "vast picture," we must realize that:

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you, perhaps, call yours a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line, and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs...Build, therefore your own world.

No matter how humble or unimportant our ordinary lives may seem, they are continuous with all of nature and history. It is up to us to realize this fact and act accordingly.

Emerson's Philosophy of Nature

Philosophy can be broadly divided into three distinct categories based on what type of questions it answers: metaphysics , epistemology , and ethics. Emerson is interested in all these branches of philosophy, and his conception of nature has a central role in how he develops them.

Epistemology: the branch of philosophy that asks what we can know and how we can know it.

Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that is interested in what exists (if anything).

According to Emerson, our brains work in ways that are fundamentally analogous to other natural processes. Nature forms our language and our thoughts themselves. It is only through nature that we can have knowledge of anything – including ourselves.

Emerson also thinks that only one thing exists and that it is called nature. He is also an idealist and believes that everything exists only as an idea or as consciousness (see the definition of idealism above). It is the consciousness of God, however, which guarantees the stability and permanence of reality. While Emerson states that everything, including ourselves, is part of this unity of nature, he also often speaks as if individual humans are in some sense separate from nature. Nature speaks through us, and we can fail to listen or try to understand. Individual people, then, also exist and have free will in Emerson's philosophy.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned with what is good, bad, right, or wrong. Nature provides the answer to all this information for Emerson. Every natural fact, no matter how unimportant it appears on the surface, contains a potential moral lesson. This is tied in with Emerson's epistemological and metaphysical conclusions about nature. Since nature, God, and humanity are all aspects of the same basic unity, that unity must also contain all goodness, virtue, and rightness. It has been the ambition of all of the world's greatest religions and philosophies to find the ethical facts embedded in the natural world.

Remember that for Emerson, all existence is unified. This means that answers to the questions of what exists, what we know and what is right and wrong can all be found in the same place: nature.

Nature - Key takeaways

• Nature , Ralph Waldo Emerson's first major publication in 1836, introduced ideas he would continue to develop for the rest of his career and attracted a group of like-minded writers and intellectuals to his circle who would eventually form the movement known as Transcendentalism.
• Emerson begins Nature by asking why his age is so focused on great historical events rather than what is happening in the present, suggesting that a theory of nature may be the solution to this unhealthy fixation on the past.
• Emerson laments the difficulty we have in properly seeing nature, and famously suggests that we must become a "transparent eye-ball," losing all sense of self while observing everything.
• In his development of the four "purposes" in nature, which are commodity, beauty, language, and discipline, Emerson argues for philosophical idealism and unity but leaves space for the individual.
• The work concludes by urging us to understand nature and our place in it and not to see our ordinary lives as insignificant in comparison to those of Adam or Caesar.

1. Baym, N, The Norton Anthology of American Literature , Volume B 1820-1865, Norton, 2007.

Flashcards in Nature 12

Become a transparent eye-ball.

Commodity, beauty, language, and discipline.

Only ideas exist or can be known.

It was unpopular, but attracted a small number of enthusiastic followers.

It was backward-looking and focused on the past.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Nature

Who wrote about nature?

While many people have written about nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about it particularly frequently, and made it the centerpiece of his philosophy.

What is the main point of Nature by Emerson?

The main point of Nature is that we can only really understand the world and ourselves when we lose ourselves in nature.

What is the central idea of the essay, Nature ?

The central idea of Nature is that we need to lose ourselves in nature if we are to understand the world and accomplish anything great. 

What does Emerson believe about nature?

Emerson believes that nature is of central importance to every aspect of human life, from meeting our physical needs to shaping the way we speak and think.

How was nature analyzed by Ralph Waldo Emerson?

Emerson's analysis discovers four purposes of nature: as commodity, as beauty, as a source of language, and as an intellectual discipline.

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• Published: 31 January 2020

What does ‘nature’ mean?

• Frédéric Ducarme 1 &
• Denis Couvet 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  6 , Article number:  14 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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• Environmental studies
• Language and linguistics

The idea of ‘nature’ is at the very core of science, considered as its flagship and deepest link with human societies. However, while nature preservation has become a major social concern, the idea of nature remains elusive. We examine here the origins, etymology, and historical semantics of this word and its different meanings in contemporary European languages. It appears that this word aggregated successively different and sometimes conflicting meanings throughout its history. One of the main present occidental meanings of “nature”, designating what is opposed to humans, currently used in public policies, conservation science, or environmental ethics, hence appears rare and recent, and contradictory with most other visions of nature, including former European representations and contemporary foreign ones. Nature preservation ought to take into account this semantic diversity when proposing policies, integrating the relativity and potential inaccuracy of the currently dominating occidental definition.

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Introduction.

Since at least the 1970s, a wide scientific, political, and public consensus has emerged about the crucial necessity of “protecting nature” (Worster, 1994 ). Since early whistle-blowers such as John Muir or Rachel Carson to the theorization of a whole scientific discipline coined as “conservation biology” (Soulé, 1985 ), the conservation of nature has reached both wide popular concern and scientific maturity. Intense debates, significant thinkers and prominent scientific advances have made this field one of the most important socially in contemporary science, having a strong influence on national and international politics. However, the appealing concept of “nature” has never been really theorized during all this time, and has been used to name more and more diverse things, as well as their opposite, at the risk of becoming another meaningless panchreston (Simberloff, 2014 ). As scientific knowledge of nature is (and will always remain) incomplete, scientists have to rely on mental representations and theoretical concepts, but these must be identified as such, and clearly defined (Demeritt, 2002 ). Many close and successful new technical words have been born in the same lexical field, such as “ecosystem”, “biodiversity”, “biosphere”, and even “Gaia”, but none of them ever really supplanted “nature”, even in scientific literature, and it is still the title of one of the most important scientific journals. However, “nature” is not such an easy word, and it actually fits the definition of an abstract concept , hence a mental construction rather than a concrete notion, which is situated both historically and geographically, and needs definition in context (Ellen, 1996 ), just like what has been done about “wilderness” (Rolston III, 1997 , Callicott & Nelson, 1998 , Callicott, 2008a ) or more recently about the idea of a “balance [of nature]” (Simberloff, 2014 ).

Hence, studying the concept of “nature” itself and its relationship with practical objects and social projects is crucial for conservation sciences and derived policies: many linguists, philosophers, and historians have already shown that its meaning is far from being unified or self-evident (Larrère and Larrère, 2015 ), but such works have had little popularization in biological sciences so far. Nevertheless, these works have already stressed out that the word “nature” is very difficult to define, and has gone through many changes of meaning during its history (Lenoble, 1969 ). Moreover, some punctual studies showed that, as for “wilderness” (Callicott, 2000), the word “nature” does not always have a translation in other languages (Philippe Descola, 2005 ), or can embody different meanings within a language.

In this study, we analyze the origins and evolution of the word “nature” in European languages, from its ancient Greek equivalent to Latin and then to modern meanings, showing that this word, already deemed vague and ambiguous since its most ancient uses, overwhelmingly changed in meaning several times in its history, which is at the basis of its current vagueness and ambiguity. Such ambiguity may constitute the very source of many raging debates among ecologists, such as the “balance of nature” debate (Simberloff, 2014 ) and many others. As a conslusion, we compare the semantic clusters stemming from these analyses with the contemporary scientific vision of nature in conservation science, in order to see how this semantic diversity can be an obstacle or a chance for the global conservation of “nature”.

Origins and development of an abstract concept

Ancient greece.

The apparition of the word translating the idea of “nature” has been traced back by linguists in many languages: at least Latin (Pellicer, 1966 ; Rolston, 1997 ), ancient Greek (Benveniste, 1948 ) and Chinese (Zhang, 2011 ), but also some less widespread languages such as Finnish (Jämsä, 1999 ). Surprisingly enough, this word seems in every case to be quite “recent”, which means that its most ancient records for this meaning are present mostly in classical texts, but never in archaic ones. Both the Greek and Latin words all seem to have come into use when all these languages had already reached their linguistic and philosophical maturity (Berque, 2014 ).

In Greek, the word that later got translated into “nature” is phusis (φύσις), based on the verbal root for “growing, producing”, phuein (derived from the Indo-European root bheu , ancestor of the English verb “be”), with a suffix indicating the “objective realization of an abstract concept” (Benveniste, 1948 ). Its oldest known mention is in the Odysseus , but still with a primitive meaning (“appearance”); the classical meanings seemed to appear between Heraclitus (sixth century BC) and Aristotle (fourth century BC), already with an ambiguity between the process of growth and its result (Hadot, 2004 ). Pre-socratic uses such as Heraclitus’, known only from short fragments of text, and the actual meaning of phusis at that time are still unclear (from Heidegger, 1922 to Hadot, 2004 ) all the more so that it appears as a widely inclusive concept, difficult to render in any other language but referring to a general property of being (Heidegger, 1935 ), linked to religion and metaphysics in such a way that it could be compared to some modern usages of “ N ature” with a capital N.

Aristotle (384–322 BC) is known as one of the world’s most influential thinkers, and the founder of most academic disciplines, including “natural sciences” such as biology (through his treatises on animals, plants, the human body…) as well as earth sciences, and coined, though unintentionally, physical sciences, in his major opus Physics , entitled long after his death on the basis of the same word phusis , which was probably the main source of success for this word given the importance of this book in western philosophy and sciences. Surprisingly, Aristotle, who was not born Greek, obviously struggles with this word in his texts, especially in several extensive sections dedicated to the numerous, often contradictory and sometimes obscure meanings and uses of this word, for example the beginning of the second book of Physics (II, 1). In this book, he defines nature as the essence of things, what they are made of and entail their destiny: the nature of a bed or of a tree is wood (here this meaning is close to substance and entelechy). However, he concedes that this definition is only partial, and that the word is used in many very different meanings, often contradictory such as “the form and the matter”, or an abstract principle and its concrete realization. In his Metaphysics (Δ4, 1014b), he goes even further and proposes four different definitions: the generation of what grows (as a process), the primordial element from which things grow (as a principle), the principle of movement (a spontaneous cause), and the matter from which things are made (substance). Here, phusis already appears as a panchreston , “a term that means so many different things to different people that it is useless as a theoretical framework or explanatory device” (Simberloff, 2014 ): this text is hence the source of a long-lasting tradition of suspicion of philosophers towards this word. More importantly, Aristotle talks in these two books about theoretical physics and metaphysics, and these two books are not the most closely related to what we now call “nature”: on the contrary, we find only very few theoretical uses of this word in his numerous treatises on animals, plants and ecosystems. More generally, phusis is a philosophical and nearly technical word, mostly used by scholars in an urbanistic context, but does not appear to be widely used in other contexts, especially in the rural world or in nature-influenced poetry. To finish, it is noteworthy that most definitions of phusis do not exclude mankind. Only one—and the most famous—of Aristotle’s definitions opposes phusis to tecnè (technique, artifice), but mankind remains a part of nature, though able of making artifices. An opposed concept to nature would rather be chaos (as there is order in nature) : hence, civilized men are more “natural” in this point of view, as they live under laws, than “barbarian” peoples, submitted to disorder and then oblivious of their human nature (a man living like a beast is as unnatural as a beast living like a man) (Lenoble, 1969 ). This is why “nature” is not a synonym of wild, wildness or wilderness: it is initially not a state, but a spontaneous process. From this point of view, the epicurean and stoic traditions will add a moral vision of nature as a model to follow (Hadot, 2004 ), an idea still present nowadays through accusations of “un-natural” deeds (Dagognet, 1990 ).

Ancient Rome

The Latin word natura is quite recent in Roman history (Ernout and Meillet, 1994 ), and was still only seldom used at the time of Terence (second century BC), with a concrete, primitive meaning of “birth, initial character” (its etymological meaning, derived from the verb nascor , “to get born”), still far from modern uses (Gaffiot, 2000 ). It got its philosophical, Greek-influenced meaning at the classical period (first century BC) while used by Greece-inspired philosophers such as Cicero (first century BC), translating the Greek word (Pellicer, 1966 ). Hence, the idea stays quite the same between Greece and Rome, but the word changes—and will stay the same until today. The change of word allows new plays on words: especially, Cicero introduces a classical opposition between nature and culture, the first being an initial state devoid of human influence, and the second one corresponding to an appropriation by human societies. The Romans did not share the same vision of cities as the Greeks: cities (and especially Rome) were seen as places of filth and sin, and the “good life” was in the countryside villas (an ideal of bucolics), in a manner surprisingly close to the modern American view of insane cities contrasting with safe residential suburbs. When the Christian view of the perverted Babylon, opposed to the enchanting wilderness as the place of encounter with God, spread in the Roman culture, this stark opposition between evil cities and holy nature got even more fortified. However, nature and culture were still seen as dynamic processes rather than fixed states: nature in a spatial view was still the place where nature as a process happened.

Semantic evolution in Christian societies

Of course, such a worldview was linked by critics (such as White, 1966 ) to behaviors that induced ecological disasters, such as species extinctions and extirpations, ecosystem malfunction, and eventually climate change and the global biodiversity crisis, all these being gathered in what is now called “Anthropocene” (Lewis and Maslin, 2015 ). Therefore it is not surprising if the countercurrent romantic vision of Nature was born in the most industrial cities of the 18th and 19th centuries (Worster, 1994 ), be it in England (Gilbert White) France (Rousseau), Germany (Goethe, Schelling), and later America, first with arts (from W. Wordsworth to the Hudson River School) and then with philosophy, notably through the transcendentalist movement, as illustrated by Emerson and Thoreau, who influenced seminal conservationists like John Muir (Callicott, 1990 ). Interestingly enough, some kind of moral valuation of the “material” nature recently seemed to enter Catholicism, through the ecologically aware encyclical Laudato si’ from Pope Francis (Francis, 2015 ), proving that conceptions are still evolving, even in religions.

The modern ages and the withdrawal of academics

In parallel with this linguistic evolution in popular language, scientists and philosophers often remained remarkably cautious with this word, and many of them repeated Aristotle’s suspicion. Hence, in Three Essays on Religion , John Stuart Mill laments “it is unfortunate that a set of terms, which play so great a part in moral and metaphysical speculation, should have acquired many meanings different from the primary one, yet sufficiently allied to it to admit of confusion […] and which have made them one of the most copious sources of false taste, false philosophy, false morality and even bad law” (Mill, 1874 ). Similar warnings were given in the Encyclopedia (“this rather vague word, often used but hardly defined, that philosophers tend to use too much”, D’Alembert et al., 1765 ), by the famous French naturalist Buffon (Buffon, 1770 ) or by philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty, 1957 ). Some authors tried to establish unequivocal definitions of nature, such as René Descartes (“matter itself”, Descartes 1664 ) and Charles Darwin (“I mean by Nature only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us”, Darwin 1861 ), but even them did not manage to widespread their use of this word, which kept its fuzzy semantic cloud until today (Lenoble, 1969 ).

As a consequence, “nature”, which used to be the core concept of philosophy and science, is nowadays not considered as a philosophical concept or a scientific term any more. Strikingly, it is absent from most lists of philosophical concept in high school and academic programs and manuals (such as Zarader, 2015 ), maybe because it was neglected by Plato, and in the mere handful of manuals giving it a shy try, the authors seem as despaired by its absence of consensual definition as Aristotle seemed to be two millennia ago, and most of them recommend not using it in serious academic contexts (see for example Lalande, 2010 ). Furthermore and ironically enough, even specialized encyclopedic dictionaries of environmental sciences carefully avoid any entry to “nature” (even Callicott, 2008b ) and once again the few environmental encyclopedias who dare confronting with nature shrug it off awkwardly and recommend using more “serious” terms (such as Ramade, 2002 ). In parallel, most famous milestone writings in scientific ecology during the twentieth century paid much attention to circumvent this cursed word (from Tansley, 1935 to Soulé, 1985 ).

This withdrawal can also be interpreted as a result of an academic compromise around a “great divide” (Charbonnier, 2015 ) stemming from the first definition of nature: sciences were divided between researchers focused exclusively on “nature” (“natural sciences”, also known as “hard sciences” or “sciences of matter”), and on the other hand researchers focused only on non-nature, i.e., metaphysics and social sciences (called “humanities”, “social sciences” or “cultural sciences”). Nature was then not a concern any more, as it was literally everything for some academics (hence massively converted to the second definition, see below), and nearly nothing of concern for the others.

However, this withdrawal of scholars did not entail the disappearance of the word from popular language, quite the contrary. It rather acted a kind of acknowledgement of failure. In the same time, the bulk of scientists did not always prove as careful as the above-mentioned authors: “nature” still appears in 7291 scientific papers titles between 1990 and 2015 according to Web of Science . One can bet they do not all share the same definition of this concept, especially between different disciplines, but this hypothesis cannot be answered as none of these papers dare providing a definition of this word, or even a mere bibliographical reference giving a hint of their point of view on it. Hence, thousands of scientists still claim to work on “nature”, but none of them defines it. There is, once again, a lot to bet on the fact that divergences on their representation of nature feed many controversies in the field of nature conservation.

Contemporary definitions of nature

Nowadays, several conflicting meanings of the word “nature” are recorded together in European dictionaries, as a heritage of this history: they are synthetized in four great categories in Table 1 .

These four definitions are exclusive of each other, according to many parameters. We identified in particular the inclusion of mankind or not (explicitly excluded from 1, included in all others), its dynamic or static quality (fundamentally dynamic in 3) and its inclusivity (including the whole of reality only in 2 and 3).

The idea of “protecting nature” seldom uses the second definition, as the universe itself is not under threat (and is beyond man’s protection), and physical properties of material things are not changing. This definition, already provided by Aristotle, is by far the most inclusive, and hence supposed to be the least political one, as we cannot act on it. However, this definition can be used in political controversies, be it by people saying that “saving nature” is beyond our reach, or by biotechnology advocates arguing that, in a Cartesian point of view, nothing is “against nature” and it is “natural” to manipulate life, according to its laws (such as synthetic genetics), as long as “everything which is artificial is natural” (Mill, 1874 ). Regarding this definition, both these claims are perfectly right (“arts is but the employment of the powers of nature for an end” (Mill, 1874 )), even if, given so, this constitutes a non-information as nothing real at all can be against nature in this meaning, losing any moral validity of such claim.

The idea of “protecting nature” dwells on the 3 other meanings, but entails very different conceptions of this protection: in the first definition, nature is a series of material things devoid of human influence that can be conserved through preservation against such corruption. In the second one, nature is a process of change, which can be conserved by a proper understanding of its mechanisms, including eventually an active participation in its dynamic. If a great divide was to be found in this definition, it would be less between mankind and nature than between life (including mankind) and the mineral world: the protection of deserts or high mountains in the name of “nature” appears pointless in this regard. The last one implies an idea of fundamental character, which is to protect against any denaturation or distortion. These definitions hence imply very different conservation policies, which can hardly be merged. For example, when the aim is conserving nature as a non-human natural heritage, there is need to limit as much as possible human intervention, such intervention being done mostly in order to remove previous human disturbance (restoration ecology). At the opposite, when the aim is conserving processes, human intervention can be needed for ensuring their good functioning (especially in a time of global change), including sometimes affirmative action such as species translocations, or ecosystem engineering : such ecosystem would be more “natural” in this meaning as it can shelter and produce more “nature”. Last but not least, if the aim is to conserve the fundamental character of a space, there is a theoretical idea of this place to showcase, in spite of its actual material reality.

One will recognize here echoes of the classical conservationist debate between preservationists and conservationists (Callicott and Nelson, 1998 ), or between conservation and restoration ecology (Wiens and Hobbs, 2015 ), which both may also be seen as incarnations of the more general scientific opposition between patterns and processes (Underwood et al., 2000 ) or between idealism and pragmatism. Each of these positions adopts a specific vision of nature (including the “great divide” between nature and culture, or not), and fights other groups with another vision. This has already been pointed out in related concerns such as the more classical “balance of nature” debate, which has been analyzed in terms of confrontation of different world views as well (Simberloff, 2014 ). The opposition between static and dynamic nature has been well-identified in philosophical tradition long before it was in biology, for example by Merleau-Ponty who commented around 1957 “The concept of nature does not evoke only the residue of what had not been constructed by me, but also a productivity, which is not ours, although we can use it—that is, an originary productivity that continues [to operate] beneath the artificial creations of man. It both partakes of the most ancient, and is something always new [...] Nature is not exhausted or used up by the very fact that endures” (cited by Rotundo, 2013 ). Furthermore, whether we include man as a part of nature—be them “traditional” populations or not—is also determinant in the way we fix conservation priorities (Wiens and Hobbs, 2015 ): this question is at the very core of the “land sparing vs land sharing” debate (Kumaraswamy and Kunte, 2013 ), but also in the “new conservation” debate (Kareiva and Marvier, 2012 ; Doak et al., 2014 ). Last but not least, many debates about ecological restoration actually rely mostly on conflicting definitions of nature (obvious in works such as Katz, 1992 ), while this particular issue is rarely put in light. An extreme interpretation of ecological restoration is the American rewilding movement, in which some people advocate for the reintroduction of lions and elephants in northern America (or the resurrection of long-extinct species), in order to “restore” its ecosystems in its pre-human, Pleistocene state (Seddon et al., 2014 ): this idea clearly stems from the fourth definition, in which there is a state of ecosystem considered as the most legitimate and constituting the aim of environmental management. As these debates all participate in political decision about conservation, there is a capital need of a clear definition of the vision of nature at the basis of each speech.

Commenting on this issue, Larrère and Larrère ( 2015 ) use the example of the Christmas tree: “the plastic tree is more artificial than the spruce planted in order to get collected before Christmas, which in turn is less natural than one from a regenerated spruce forest, which is itself less natural than would be a spruce from a primary forest. […] Adepts of a sharp separation between natural and artificial such as Elliot and Katz will consider that only the spruce from a primary forest is natural. Less dualist (and more logical) aristotelicians would say that, as long as the spruce is growing by itself, it is natural: only the plastic tree is artificial because the result is external to the activity that produced it”—we could add that in a Cartesian point of view, the plastic tree is made of the same atoms as a live tree. Hence, both positions are “true”, according to their own definition of nature: the problem remains that such definition is never openly formulated, whereas this could simplify many scientific debates and allow a better understanding between different traditions of thought. To take another example, Hegel’s vision of nature is close to both the Cartesian and vitalist definitions, as it is both dynamic and holistic. This is why protecting nature from humans may seem pointless in the Hegelian tradition, as Man himself is the truest incarnation of nature: nature converted by Man becomes even more “natural” this way (Sessions, 2006 )—this idea could even make us see the Anthropocene event as a “natural thing” (which is true, in this regard). Such conception cannot be erased with the sweep of the hand just because they are opposed to more mainstream ecological world views, but they need to be put in perspective with other widespread conceptions, and discussed on the basis on their own principles. For example, the impoverishment of biodiversity and the decay of ecosystem services decrease the human capability (Holland, 2008 ) of deploying its progress; hence conservation biology is meaningful even for Hegelians (Hösle, 1991 ).

Modern biologists’ view of nature

The diversity of meanings of nature also depends on who is using it and in what context (Rolston III, 1997 ). An extensive study of all these sub-variations inside each sociolinguistic jargon is obviously beyond the scope of the present work, but there is at least one specific vision, which deserves particular attention: the modern biologists’ definition of nature. As said in the introduction, whereas all dictionaries emphasize the semantic ambiguity of this word, there is currently no standard definition of “nature” in the biological literature, and no author appears to cite any reference when using this concept, whereas its use remains widespread, including as a keyword. Hundreds of studies focus on the best ways to protect or to value nature, but none of them deign providing a definition of it: maybe it is precisely because this word is difficult to define that some prominent papers such as Soulé 1985 pay particular attention at not giving it too much importance. Hence, only an interpretative method can allow us to have a glance at conservation biologists’ vision of nature.

We have said before how the “great divide” between nature and culture in European academics had locked natural scientists in nature, working on a material reality artificially devoid of human influence. Even XXth century academic ecologists have long tried to pretend not to consider mankind in their models, entailing a deep division between scientific and political ecologists (Latour, 1999 )— there are even two different words in several languages : in French, “écologue” (scientist) and “écologiste” (political activist). However, ecology in the Anthropocene cannot behave as if mankind did not exist. Hence, conservation biology stands as a revolutionary discipline in that it is both a natural and a social science (Soulé, 1985 ), breaking the good old academic divide and asking again the question of nature.

Among more “classical” biologists, four of the main specializations can potentially lead to particular visions of nature: ecologists, evolutionists, molecular biologists and conservationists. Conservationists have long had a very “fixed” vision of nature, seen as an heritage to preserve from human disturbance (definition no. 1), and a set of fragile equilibriums that need to stay balanced for life to exist (Simberloff, 2014 ). However, as conservation dwells on culture, the conservationist tradition has often been conserving cultural representations, seen as the “true” essence of natural places (definition no. 4): this has been particularly discussed about the American concept of wilderness (Nelson and Callicott, 2008 ), which has long been the main object of protection in America and Australia, in opposition to a more European view of nature as a set of self-producing resources. Such vision has been embodied by Gifford Pinchot in the US, seen as opposed to John Muir’s vision of nature as God’s temple, devoted to remain pristine and free from material relationships with mankind. On the contrary, for XXth century ecologists since Aldo Leopold (Leopold, 1949 ), and even more for evolutionary biologist, nature can be seen as a stream, closer to the idea of a “specific force at the core of life” (definition no. 3)—at higher scales, paleontology and geology share similar patterns. Such vision entails very specific conceptions of conservation (Sarrazin and Lecomte, 2016 ). Contemporary ecologists, lastly, have an analytic vision of nature: their aim is to divide it in units and relationships, so the holistic concept appears less useful as nature is mostly an abstract network of many scientific objects. Molecular biologists are close to this approach, as they work at a scale where the difference between humans and nature or even organic and mineral often loses grounding (for example with viruses or molecular engineering): this conception has clear affinities with Descartes’ one (definition no. 2). Hence, it is not surprising if the “Gaia hypothesis” was formulated by a chemist (James Lovelock), as with such point of view a planet and a living being can be considered as virtually indistinguishable.

Once again, none of these definitions is right or wrong: they all stem from the history of sciences, and share analogies with philosophical traditions (Callicott and Ames, 1989 ), hence the standardization of one synthetic definition for all sciences and publics would probably entail a loss of scientific richness, as no definition is more legitimate than any other, and all possess their particular scientific, intellectual and political fecundity. This idea was formulated by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss: “the scientist never interacts with the “pure” nature, but with a certain state of the relationship between nature and culture, definable by the historical period in which he is living, his civilization, and his material means” (Lévi-Strauss, 1962 ). Of course, there has often been a dominant representation in the history of European sciences, in particular the Christian vision (close to the first definition), which may still be dominant in American-influenced conservation (though conservation itself has now moved away from a too naïve, fixist vision of ecosystems, see Robert et al., 2017 ). However, with the progress of evolution sciences in ecology and conservation, along with global change as a dynamic evolutionary pressure on life, the evolutionist vision of nature may soon spread to other sciences and popular conceptions. However, such shift must be conscious: it is not about erasing an obsolete vision and replacing it by a more accurate one, but what is at stake is the evolution of a philosophical trend that must keep all of its potential new ways open for future science.

Biological and cultural diversity: how to protect one nature with several representations?

The wide semantic diversity of “nature” obviously makes this word stand out of the scientific lexicon, as it is extremely vague and ambiguous, and lacks any standard definition: all this tend to make it a panchreston (Simberloff, 2014 ). Hence, using it without any definition or context can be pointless when the deal is about proposing a concrete scientific or social project - the “appeal to nature” can even be suspicious in political contexts (Steinbock, 2011 ). On the other hand, trying to avoid it in conservation sciences seems unrealistic, and even dangerous, as it could make ecologists cutting themselves off from their popular support and flagship. We rather advocate a “wise use” of the term, in the light of its semantic complexity, backed up with clear definition in context and, when needed, replaced by more precise scientific concepts such as “biodiversity”, “evolution”, “ecosystem”, “landscape”, “wildness”, “population”, “community”, etc.

One of the few major works to have taken into account the diversity of natures in the process of nature conservation appears to be the IUCN, through the IUCN protected area categories, first established in 1994 and revised in 2008 (IUCN, 2008 ). The seven IUCN categories (6 + “1b”) all refer to particular representations of nature. For example, the first category (“strict nature reserve”) spares its areas from human disturbance, hence leaving it to nature considered as in definition no. 1. The category Ib, designated explicitly to accommodate the American concept of “wilderness”, adds an essentialist view as in definition no. 4. The category II (“national park”) aims at “protecting functioning ecosystems”, hence a more dynamic view as in definition no. 3. The category III (“natural monument”) refers to places of spectacular visual interest for mankind, considering natural features in the same way as human achievements. Such vision of conservation is by nature static and fixist, and aims at transmitting such features to the next generations in the same state, hence closer to the fourth definition; it is noteworthy that many places protected under this category shelter hardly any biodiversity (volcanoes, caves, high mountains, etc), diverging with a vitalist vision of nature (as in the third definition). Considering that the vast majority of American protected areas are deserts or high mountains (protected mostly for esthetical reasons), one can say that there is very little “nature” protected in the US by such framework in this regard. Category IV (“Habitat/Species Management Area”) focuses on particular flagship species (Ducarme et al., 2013 ) as embodiments of nature, and imply, when needed, an active intervention on such species (predator and pest control, translocation, demographic management…), excluding the first definition and approaching more the third and fourth ones. Categories V (“Protected Landscape/Seascape/Area”) and IV (“Protected Area with sustainable use of natural resources”) integrate both quite a fixist vision (helping an object remaining quite the same) but also human use, under some conditions: here again, in opposition to the first definition (and category I), Man is considered as a part of nature, and his activities as objects worth of protection.

This pluralistic grid is especially useful to protect a wide array of very different places, adapting to the numerous conceptions of nature and of its protection. The dualistic American vision of wilderness VS man-devoted places is quite efficient and culturally significant in the US (and a handful of other countries such as Australia), but has neither biological nor cultural groundings in most countries, especially western Europe or India (Guha, 1989 ). Therefore, sticking artificially such culturally situated grid on inappropriate places or situations has very little chances of success, and faces local population incomprehension or opposition (Campbell et al., 2012 ) if nothing is done to adapt the methods of nature conservation to what local people think nature is, and what needs to be protected. It is then paramount to document local visions of nature before trying to protect it, if we are to avoid any neo-colonial spirit.

Indeed, if the concept of “nature” is more complex and abstract than it seems, the ecological crisis remains a concrete and empirical reality, now affecting everybody whatever be their vision of nature. Then, encompassing the different visions of nature rather than conflicting them appears as one of the seminal challenges to conservationists if they want to bring together as much people as possible under their flag.

There have always been many different policies of nature, and the main reason appears that there are many different conceptions of nature, which do not entail the same priorities, objects, and methods. These conceptions change with philosophical groundings, and are then deeply rooted in people. Hence, science cannot (and must not) artificially standardize them, all the more that science also experiences such philosophical discrepancies. However, this diversity of conceptions of nature can also be seen as a chance for conservation, as it can anchor inspiration for public action, help defining accurate environmental policies and set objectives in human–nature relationship, which are difficult to determine on a strictly scientific point of view. Actually, public policies are probably more inspired by cultural conceptions of nature than by scientific arguments: if conservation gained so much success in the US at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is probably mostly thanks to cultural and religious reasons (Nash, 1967 ). Hence, a better comprehension of local visions of nature is necessary for local protection of nature, both as a concept and as a reality: semantic and ecological dynamics must converge in order to build relevant scenarios for public policies. On the other hand, more than just forcing different conceptions of nature to cohabit, there may also be a need to engage them in a kind of dialogue. Once the different definitions are clearly stated, each of them can be understood by everyone, and these can be seen as complementary rather than conflicting, putting in light the gray areas of each conception, and helping resolving each other’s issue.

This echoes with what Michael Rosenzweig coined as « reconciliation ecology » (Rosenzweig, 2003 ), postulating that nature can, in some contexts, coexist with some degree of human presence and activity, and that sometimes such presence can even be favorable to biodiversity (Couvet and Ducarme, 2014 ). Quite different from the traditional American conception of conservation often limited to the preservation of some remote sanctuaries of pristine wilderness (most often rather poorly productive biologically speaking), reconciliation ecology proposes to develop coexistence conditions between human groups and ecosystems, hence rethinking the direct relationship between mankind and nature. Such idea does not imply the end of the current network of protected areas or the exploitation of wildernesses, as they do embody a conception of nature and a way of conserving a part of this paradigm, but the idea is to add new means of conservation to the current system, embodying other values and protecting other parts of “nature”, such as important farmland species and landscapes, socio-ecosystem processes or local crop varieties. Apart from IUCN categories, another example of this reconciliation strategy could be found in the network of UNESCO “Biosphere reserves”, which proposes to highlight places where the conservation of biodiversity meets a sustainable use of nature (Batisse, 1982 ). Some sustainable agriculture labels go the same way, trying to conciliate biological processes with food production, and considering that the reasoned anthropization of an environment is not always its corruption (Doxa et al., 2010 ). The idea of “cultural ecosystem services” was also coined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Watson et al., 2005 ), but still lacks proper exploitation for conservation (just like the related concept of “cultural diversity”, but see works by Kai Chan and Ban et al., 2013 ): yet it could find proper theoretical grounding in the participation of a wider array of populations to conservation policies. The elusive character of nature as a concept may be a fundamental part of its identity (Hadot, 2004 ): this has long been an issue, but it may turn into an opportunity.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for their help and insights to Fabrice Flipo, Catherine Larrère, Vincent Devictor, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Philippe Huneman, and all the CESCO lab. Many thanks also to Hélène Sauvageot, who proof-read the manuscript.

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Ducarme, F., Couvet, D. What does ‘nature’ mean?. Palgrave Commun 6 , 14 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0390-y

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• Nature Essay

Essay About Nature

Nature refers to the interaction between the physical surroundings around us and the life within it like atmosphere, climate, natural resources, ecosystem, flora, fauna, and humans. Nature is indeed God’s precious gift to Earth. It is the primary source of all the necessities for the nourishment of all living beings on Earth. Right from the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the house we live in is provided by nature. Nature is called ‘Mother Nature’ because just like our mother, she is always nurturing us with all our needs. 

Whatever we see around us, right from the moment we step out of our house is part of nature. The trees, flowers, landscapes, insects, sunlight, breeze, everything that makes our environment so beautiful and mesmerizing are part of Nature. In short, our environment is nature. Nature has been there even before the evolution of human beings. 

Importance of Nature

If not for nature then we wouldn’t be alive. The health benefits of nature for humans are incredible. The most important thing for survival given by nature is oxygen. The entire cycle of respiration is regulated by nature. The oxygen that we inhale is given by trees and the carbon dioxide we exhale is getting absorbed by trees. 

The ecosystem of nature is a community in which producers (plants), consumers, and decomposers work together in their environment for survival. The natural fundamental processes like soil creation, photosynthesis, nutrient cycling, and water cycling, allow Earth to sustain life. We are dependent on these ecosystem services daily whether or not we are aware.

Nature provides us services round the clock: provisional services, regulating services, and non-material services. Provisional services include benefits extracted from nature such as food, water, natural fuels and fibres, and medicinal plants. Regulating services include regulation of natural processes that include decomposition, water purification, pollution, erosion and flood control, and also, climate regulation. Non-material services are the non-material benefits that improve the cultural development of humans such as recreation, creative inspiration from interaction with nature like art, music, architecture, and the influence of ecosystems on local and global cultures. 

The interaction between humans and animals, which are a part of nature, alleviates stress, lessens pain and worries. Nature provides company and gives people a sense of purpose. 

Studies and research have shown that children especially have a natural affinity with nature. Regular interaction with nature has boosted health development in children. Nature supports their physical and mental health and instills abilities to access risks as they grow. 

Role and Importance of Nature

The natural cycle of our ecosystem is vital for the survival of organisms. We all should take care of all the components that make our nature complete. We should be sure not to pollute the water and air as they are gifts of Nature.

Mother nature fosters us and never harms us. Those who live close to nature are observed to be enjoying a healthy and peaceful life in comparison to those who live in urban areas. Nature gives the sound of running fresh air which revives us, sweet sounds of birds that touch our ears, and sounds of breezing waves in the ocean makes us move within.

All the great writers and poets have written about Mother Nature when they felt the exceptional beauty of nature or encountered any saddening scene of nature. Words Worth who was known as the poet of nature, has written many things in nature while being in close communion with nature and he has written many things about Nature. Nature is said to be the greatest teacher as it teaches the lessons of immortality and mortality. Staying in close contact with Nature makes our sight penetrative and broadens our vision to go through the mysteries of the planet earth. Those who are away from nature can’t understand the beauty that is held by Nature. The rise in population on planet earth is leading to a rise in consumption of natural resources.  Because of increasing demands for fuels like Coal, petroleum, etc., air pollution is increasing at a rapid pace.  The smoke discharged from factory units and exhaust tanks of cars is contaminating the air that we breathe. It is vital for us to plant more trees in order to reduce the effect of toxic air pollutants like Carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc. 

Save Our Nature

Earth’s natural resources are not infinite and they cannot be replenished in a short period. The rapid increase in urbanization has used most of the resources like trees, minerals, fossil fuels, and water. Humans in their quest for a comfortable living have been using the resources of nature mindlessly. As a result, massive deforestation, resultant environmental pollution, wildlife destruction, and global warming are posing great threats to the survival of living beings. 

Air that gives us oxygen to breathe is getting polluted by smoke, industrial emissions, automobile exhaust, burning of fossil fuels like coal, coke and furnace oil, and use of certain chemicals. The garbage and wastes thrown here and there cause pollution of air and land. 

Sewage, organic wastage, industrial wastage, oil spillage, and chemicals pollute water. It is causing several water-borne diseases like cholera, jaundice and typhoid. 

The use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in agriculture adds to soil pollution. Due to the mindless cutting of trees and demolition of greeneries for industrialization and urbanization, the ecological balance is greatly hampered. Deforestation causes flood and soil erosion.

Earth has now become an ailing planet panting for care and nutrition for its rejuvenation. Unless mankind puts its best effort to save nature from these recurring situations, the Earth would turn into an unfit landmass for life and activity. 

We should check deforestation and take up the planting of trees at a massive rate. It will not only save the animals from being extinct but also help create regular rainfall and preserve soil fertility. We should avoid over-dependence on fossil fuels like coal, petroleum products, and firewood which release harmful pollutants to the atmosphere. Non-conventional sources of energy like the sun, biogas and wind should be tapped to meet our growing need for energy. It will check and reduce global warming. 

Every drop of water is vital for our survival. We should conserve water by its rational use, rainwater harvesting, checking the surface outflow, etc. industrial and domestic wastes should be properly treated before they are dumped into water bodies. 

Every individual can do his or her bit of responsibility to help save the nature around us. To build a sustainable society, every human being should practice in heart and soul the three R’s of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. In this way, we can save our nature.  

Nature Conservation

Nature conservation is very essential for future generations, if we will damage nature our future generations will suffer.

Nowadays, technological advancement is adversely affecting our nature. Humans are in the quest and search for prosperity and success that they have forgotten the value and importance of beautiful Nature around. The ignorance of nature by humans is the biggest threat to nature. It is essential to make people aware and make them understand the importance of nature so that they do not destroy it in the search for prosperity and success.

On high priority, we should take care of nature so that nature can continue to take care of us. Saving nature is the crying need of our time and we should not ignore it. We should embrace simple living and high thinking as the adage of our lives.  

FAQs on Nature Essay

1. How Do You Define Nature?

Nature is defined as our environment. It is the interaction between the physical world around us and the life within it like the atmosphere, climate, natural resources, ecosystem, flora, fauna and humans. Nature also includes non-living things such as water,  mountains, landscape, plants, trees and many other things. Nature adds life to mother earth. Nature is the treasure habitation of every essential element that sustains life on this planet earth. Human life on Earth would have been dull and meaningless without the amazing gifts of nature. 

2. How is Nature Important to Us?

Nature is the only provider of everything that we need for survival. Nature provides us with food, water, natural fuels, fibres, and medicinal plants. Nature regulates natural processes that include decomposition, water purification, pollution, erosion, and flood control. It also provides non-material benefits like improving the cultural development of humans like recreation, etc. 

An imbalance in nature can lead to earthquakes, global warming, floods, and drastic climate changes. It is our duty to understand the importance of nature and how it can negatively affect us all if this rapid consumption of natural resources, pollution, and urbanization takes place.

3. How Should We Save Our Nature?

We should check deforestation and take up the planting of trees at a massive rate. It will save the animals from being extinct but also help create regular rainfall and preserve soil fertility. We should avoid over-dependence on fossil fuels like coal, petroleum products, and firewood which release harmful pollutants to the atmosphere. We should start using non-conventional sources of energy like the sun, biogas, and wind to meet our growing need for energy. It will check and reduce global warming. Water is vital for our survival and we should rationalize our use of water. 

What is Nature Writing?

Definition and Examples

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Nature writing is a form of creative nonfiction in which the natural environment (or a narrator 's encounter with the natural environment) serves as the dominant subject.

"In critical practice," says Michael P. Branch, "the term 'nature writing' has usually been reserved for a brand of nature representation that is deemed literary, written in the speculative personal voice , and presented in the form of the nonfiction essay . Such nature writing is frequently pastoral or romantic in its philosophical assumptions, tends to be modern or even ecological in its sensibility, and is often in service to an explicit or implicit preservationist agenda" ("Before Nature Writing," in Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism , ed. by K. Armbruster and K.R. Wallace, 2001).

Examples of Nature Writing:

• At the Turn of the Year, by William Sharp
• The Battle of the Ants, by Henry David Thoreau
• Hours of Spring, by Richard Jefferies
• The House-Martin, by Gilbert White
• In Mammoth Cave, by John Burroughs
• An Island Garden, by Celia Thaxter
• January in the Sussex Woods, by Richard Jefferies
• The Land of Little Rain, by Mary Austin
• Migration, by Barry Lopez
• The Passenger Pigeon, by John James Audubon
• Rural Hours, by Susan Fenimore Cooper
• Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, by Henry David Thoreau

Observations:

• "Gilbert White established the pastoral dimension of nature writing in the late 18th century and remains the patron saint of English nature writing. Henry David Thoreau was an equally crucial figure in mid-19th century America . . .. "The second half of the 19th century saw the origins of what we today call the environmental movement. Two of its most influential American voices were John Muir and John Burroughs , literary sons of Thoreau, though hardly twins. . . . "In the early 20th century the activist voice and prophetic anger of nature writers who saw, in Muir's words, that 'the money changers were in the temple' continued to grow. Building upon the principles of scientific ecology that were being developed in the 1930s and 1940s, Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold sought to create a literature in which appreciation of nature's wholeness would lead to ethical principles and social programs. "Today, nature writing in America flourishes as never before. Nonfiction may well be the most vital form of current American literature, and a notable proportion of the best writers of nonfiction practice nature writing." (J. Elder and R. Finch, Introduction, The Norton Book of Nature Writing . Norton, 2002)

"Human Writing . . . in Nature"

• "By cordoning nature off as something separate from ourselves and by writing about it that way, we kill both the  genre and a part of ourselves. The best writing in this genre is not really 'nature writing' anyway but human writing that just happens to take place in nature. And the reason we are still talking about [Thoreau's] Walden 150 years later is as much for the personal story as the pastoral one: a single human being, wrestling mightily with himself, trying to figure out how best to live during his brief time on earth, and, not least of all, a human being who has the nerve, talent, and raw ambition to put that wrestling match on display on the printed page. The human spilling over into the wild, the wild informing the human; the two always intermingling. There's something to celebrate." (David Gessner, "Sick of Nature." The Boston Globe , Aug. 1, 2004)

Confessions of a Nature Writer

• "I do not believe that the solution to the world's ills is a return to some previous age of mankind. But I do doubt that any solution is possible unless we think of ourselves in the context of living nature "Perhaps that suggests an answer to the question what a 'nature writer' is. He is not a sentimentalist who says that 'nature never did betray the heart that loved her.' Neither is he simply a scientist classifying animals or reporting on the behavior of birds just because certain facts can be ascertained. He is a writer whose subject is the natural context of human life, a man who tries to communicate his observations and his thoughts in the presence of nature as part of his attempt to make himself more aware of that context. 'Nature writing' is nothing really new. It has always existed in literature. But it has tended in the course of the last century to become specialized partly because so much writing that is not specifically 'nature writing' does not present the natural context at all; because so many novels and so many treatises describe man as an economic unit, a political unit, or as a member of some social class but not as a living creature surrounded by other living things." (Joseph Wood Krutch, "Some Unsentimental Confessions of a Nature Writer." New York Herald Tribune Book Review , 1952)
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• The Title in Composition
• A Fable by Mark Twain
• 20 Quotes on the Nature of Writing
• What's the Secret of Good Writing?
• Prewriting for Composition
• Defining Nonfiction Writing
• What Is Prose?
• Definition and Examples of Online Writing
• Creative Nonfiction
• Best Practices for Business Writing
• Unity in Composition
• Tips on Great Writing: Setting the Scene
• Invention (Composition and Rhetoric)

Nature vs. Nurture Debate In Psychology

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

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The nature vs. nurture debate in psychology concerns the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities (nature) versus personal experiences (nurture) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits. While early theories favored one factor over the other, contemporary views recognize a complex interplay between genes and environment in shaping behavior and development.

Key Takeaways

• Nature is what we think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors.
• Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception, e.g., the product of exposure, life experiences, and learning on an individual.
• Behavioral genetics has enabled psychology to quantify the relative contribution of nature and nurture concerning specific psychological traits.
• Instead of defending extreme nativist or nurturist views, most psychological researchers are now interested in investigating how nature and nurture interact in a host of qualitatively different ways.
• For example, epigenetics is an emerging area of research that shows how environmental influences affect the expression of genes.

The nature-nurture debate is concerned with the relative contribution that both influences make to human behavior, such as personality, cognitive traits, temperament and psychopathology.

Examples of Nature vs. Nurture

Nature vs. nurture in child development.

In child development, the nature vs. nurture debate is evident in the study of language acquisition . Researchers like Chomsky (1957) argue that humans are born with an innate capacity for language (nature), known as universal grammar, suggesting that genetics play a significant role in language development.

Conversely, the behaviorist perspective, exemplified by Skinner (1957), emphasizes the role of environmental reinforcement and learning (nurture) in language acquisition.

Twin studies have provided valuable insights into this debate, demonstrating that identical twins raised apart may share linguistic similarities despite different environments, suggesting a strong genetic influence (Bouchard, 1979)

However, environmental factors, such as exposure to language-rich environments, also play a crucial role in language development, highlighting the intricate interplay between nature and nurture in child development.

Nature vs. Nurture in Personality Development

The nature vs. nurture debate in personality psychology centers on the origins of personality traits. Twin studies have shown that identical twins reared apart tend to have more similar personalities than fraternal twins, indicating a genetic component to personality (Bouchard, 1994).

However, environmental factors, such as parenting styles, cultural influences, and life experiences, also shape personality.

For example, research by Caspi et al. (2003) demonstrated that a particular gene (MAOA) can interact with childhood maltreatment to increase the risk of aggressive behavior in adulthood.

This highlights that genetic predispositions and environmental factors contribute to personality development, and their interaction is complex and multifaceted.

Nature vs. Nurture in Mental Illness Development

The nature vs. nurture debate in mental health explores the etiology of depression. Genetic studies have identified specific genes associated with an increased vulnerability to depression, indicating a genetic component (Sullivan et al., 2000).

However, environmental factors, such as adverse life events and chronic stress during childhood, also play a significant role in the development of depressive disorders (Dube et al.., 2002; Keller et al., 2007)

The diathesis-stress model posits that individuals inherit a genetic predisposition (diathesis) to a disorder, which is then activated or exacerbated by environmental stressors (Monroe & Simons, 1991).

This model illustrates how nature and nurture interact to influence mental health outcomes.

Nature vs. Nurture of Intelligence

The nature vs. nurture debate in intelligence examines the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to cognitive abilities.

Intelligence is highly heritable, with about 50% of variance in IQ attributed to genetic factors, based on studies of twins, adoptees, and families (Plomin & Spinath, 2004).

Heritability of intelligence increases with age, from about 20% in infancy to as high as 80% in adulthood, suggesting amplifying effects of genes over time.

However, environmental influences, such as access to quality education and stimulating environments, also significantly impact intelligence.

Shared environmental influences like family background are more influential in childhood, whereas non-shared experiences are more important later in life.

Research by Flynn (1987) showed that average IQ scores have increased over generations, suggesting that environmental improvements, known as the Flynn effect , can lead to substantial gains in cognitive abilities.

Molecular genetics provides tools to identify specific genes and understand their pathways and interactions. However, progress has been slow for complex traits like intelligence. Identified genes have small effect sizes (Plomin & Spinath, 2004).

Overall, intelligence results from complex interplay between genes and environment over development. Molecular genetics offers promise to clarify these mechanisms. The nature vs nurture debate is outdated – both play key roles.

Nativism (Extreme Nature Position)

It has long been known that certain physical characteristics are biologically determined by genetic inheritance.

Color of eyes, straight or curly hair, pigmentation of the skin, and certain diseases (such as Huntingdon’s chorea) are all a function of the genes we inherit.

These facts have led many to speculate as to whether psychological characteristics such as behavioral tendencies, personality attributes, and mental abilities are also “wired in” before we are even born.

Those who adopt an extreme hereditary position are known as nativists.  Their basic assumption is that the characteristics of the human species as a whole are a product of evolution and that individual differences are due to each person’s unique genetic code.

In general, the earlier a particular ability appears, the more likely it is to be under the influence of genetic factors. Estimates of genetic influence are called heritability.

Examples of extreme nature positions in psychology include Chomsky (1965), who proposed language is gained through the use of an innate language acquisition device. Another example of nature is Freud’s theory of aggression as being an innate drive (called Thanatos).

Characteristics and differences that are not observable at birth, but which emerge later in life, are regarded as the product of maturation. That is to say, we all have an inner “biological clock” which switches on (or off) types of behavior in a pre-programmed way.

The classic example of the way this affects our physical development are the bodily changes that occur in early adolescence at puberty.

However, nativists also argue that maturation governs the emergence of attachment in infancy , language acquisition , and even cognitive development .

Empiricism (Extreme Nurture Position)

At the other end of the spectrum are the environmentalists – also known as empiricists (not to be confused with the other empirical/scientific  approach ).

Their basic assumption is that at birth, the human mind is a tabula rasa (a blank slate) and that this is gradually “filled” as a result of experience (e.g., behaviorism ).

From this point of view, psychological characteristics and behavioral differences that emerge through infancy and childhood are the results of learning.  It is how you are brought up (nurture) that governs the psychologically significant aspects of child development and the concept of maturation applies only to the biological.

For example, Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory states that aggression is learned from the environment through observation and imitation. This is seen in his famous bobo doll experiment (Bandura, 1961).

Also, Skinner (1957) believed that language is learned from other people via behavior-shaping techniques.

Evidence for Nature

• Biological Approach
• Biology of Gender
• Medical Model

Freud (1905) stated that events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our personality.

He thought that parenting is of primary importance to a child’s development , and the family as the most important feature of nurture was a common theme throughout twentieth-century psychology (which was dominated by environmentalists’ theories).

Behavioral Genetics

Researchers in the field of behavioral genetics study variation in behavior as it is affected by genes, which are the units of heredity passed down from parents to offspring.

“We now know that DNA differences are the major systematic source of psychological differences between us. Environmental effects are important but what we have learned in recent years is that they are mostly random – unsystematic and unstable – which means that we cannot do much about them.” Plomin (2018, xii)

Behavioral genetics has enabled psychology to quantify the relative contribution of nature and nurture with regard to specific psychological traits. One way to do this is to study relatives who share the same genes (nature) but a different environment (nurture). Adoption acts as a natural experiment which allows researchers to do this.

Empirical studies have consistently shown that adoptive children show greater resemblance to their biological parents, rather than their adoptive, or environmental parents (Plomin & DeFries, 1983; 1985).

Another way of studying heredity is by comparing the behavior of twins, who can either be identical (sharing the same genes) or non-identical (sharing 50% of genes). Like adoption studies, twin studies support the first rule of behavior genetics; that psychological traits are extremely heritable, about 50% on average.

The Twins in Early Development Study (TEDS) revealed correlations between twins on a range of behavioral traits, such as personality (empathy and hyperactivity) and components of reading such as phonetics (Haworth, Davis, Plomin, 2013; Oliver & Plomin, 2007; Trouton, Spinath, & Plomin, 2002).

Implications

Jenson (1969) found that the average I.Q. scores of black Americans were significantly lower than whites he went on to argue that genetic factors were mainly responsible – even going so far as to suggest that intelligence is 80% inherited.

The storm of controversy that developed around Jenson’s claims was not mainly due to logical and empirical weaknesses in his argument. It was more to do with the social and political implications that are often drawn from research that claims to demonstrate natural inequalities between social groups.

For many environmentalists, there is a barely disguised right-wing agenda behind the work of the behavioral geneticists.  In their view, part of the difference in the I.Q. scores of different ethnic groups are due to inbuilt biases in the methods of testing.

More fundamentally, they believe that differences in intellectual ability are a product of social inequalities in access to material resources and opportunities.  To put it simply children brought up in the ghetto tend to score lower on tests because they are denied the same life chances as more privileged members of society.

Now we can see why the nature-nurture debate has become such a hotly contested issue.  What begins as an attempt to understand the causes of behavioral differences often develops into a politically motivated dispute about distributive justice and power in society.

What’s more, this doesn’t only apply to the debate over I.Q.  It is equally relevant to the psychology of sex and gender , where the question of how much of the (alleged) differences in male and female behavior is due to biology and how much to culture is just as controversial.

Polygenic Inheritance

Rather than the presence or absence of single genes being the determining factor that accounts for psychological traits, behavioral genetics has demonstrated that multiple genes – often thousands, collectively contribute to specific behaviors.

Thus, psychological traits follow a polygenic mode of inheritance (as opposed to being determined by a single gene). Depression is a good example of a polygenic trait, which is thought to be influenced by around 1000 genes (Plomin, 2018).

This means a person with a lower number of these genes (under 500) would have a lower risk of experiencing depression than someone with a higher number.

While still limited in predictive power, polygenic risk scores provide a way to quantify innate genetic risk, allowing researchers to study how this interacts with environmental factors to influence outcomes.

The high polygenicity of psychiatric disorders (many genes each contributing small effects) revealed by genetic architecture studies shows that there isn’t a simple genetic determinism for most psychiatric conditions. 

This complexity is further increased when you consider how these genes might interact with each other (epistasis) and with environmental factors. The same genetic profile might lead to different outcomes in different environments.

The Nature of Nurture

Nurture assumes that correlations between environmental factors and psychological outcomes are caused environmentally. For example, how much parents read with their children and how well children learn to read appear to be related. Other examples include environmental stress and its effect on depression.

However, behavioral genetics argues that what look like environmental effects are to a large extent really a reflection of genetic differences (Plomin & Bergeman, 1991).

People select, modify and create environments correlated with their genetic disposition. This means that what sometimes appears to be an environmental influence (nurture) is a genetic influence (nature).

So, children that are genetically predisposed to be competent readers, will be happy to listen to their parents read them stories, and be more likely to encourage this interaction.

Interaction Effects

However, in recent years there has been a growing realization that the question of “how much” behavior is due to heredity and “how much” to the environment may itself be the wrong question.

Take intelligence as an example. Like almost all types of human behavior, it is a complex, many-sided phenomenon which reveals itself (or not!) in a great variety of ways.

The “how much” question assumes that psychological traits can all be expressed numerically and that the issue can be resolved in a quantitative manner.

Heritability statistics revealed by behavioral genetic studies have been criticized as meaningless, mainly because biologists have established that genes cannot influence development independently of environmental factors; genetic and nongenetic factors always cooperate to build traits. The reality is that nature and culture interact in a host of qualitatively different ways (Gottlieb, 2007; Johnston & Edwards, 2002).

Instead of defending extreme nativist or nurturist views, most psychological researchers are now interested in investigating how nature and nurture interact.

For example, in psychopathology , this means that both a genetic predisposition and an appropriate environmental trigger are required for a mental disorder to develop. For example, epigenetics state that environmental influences affect the expression of genes.

What is Epigenetics?

Epigenetics is the term used to describe inheritance by mechanisms other than through the DNA sequence of genes. For example, features of a person’s physical and social environment can effect which genes are switched-on, or “expressed”, rather than the DNA sequence of the genes themselves.

Epigenetics refers to changes in gene expression that don’t involve alterations to the DNA sequence itself. Instead, these changes affect how genes are read and translated into proteins.

Mechanisms of Epigenetic Modification

Epigenetic modifications provide a direct biological mechanism by which environmental experiences (nurture) can alter how our genes (nature) function. This challenges the idea of genes as a fixed, unchangeable blueprint.

Epigenetic changes can occur throughout life, but certain periods (like early development or adolescence) may be particularly sensitive to these modifications.

There are several ways epigenetic changes can occur:

• DNA methylation : Adding methyl groups to DNA, typically suppressing gene expression.
• Histone modification : Changes to the proteins that DNA wraps around, affecting how tightly or loosely genes are packaged.
• Non-coding RNA : RNA molecules that can regulate gene expression.

Environmental Stressors

Environmental stressors have been shown to induce epigenetic changes, with substantial evidence from both animal and human studies (Klengel et al., 2016).

These stressors can include malnutrition, exposure to toxins, extreme stress, or trauma, leading to alterations in DNA methylation patterns, histone modifications, and changes in non-coding RNA expression (Bale, 2015).

Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance

Some epigenetic modifications may be passed down to future generations, suggesting that environmental influences on one generation could affect the genetic expression of subsequent generations.

One such example is what is known as the Dutch Hunger Winter, during last year of the Second World War. What they found was that children who were in the womb during the famine experienced a life-long increase in their chances of developing various health problems compared to children conceived after the famine.

Epigenetic effects can sometimes be passed from one generation to the next, although the effects only seem to last for a few generations. There is some evidence that the effects of the Dutch Hunger Winter affected grandchildren of women who were pregnant during the famine.

Therefore, it makes more sense to say that the difference between two people’s behavior is mostly due to hereditary factors or mostly due to environmental factors.

This realization is especially important given the recent advances in genetics, such as polygenic testing.  The Human Genome Project, for example, has stimulated enormous interest in tracing types of behavior to particular strands of DNA located on specific chromosomes.

If these advances are not to be abused, then there will need to be a more general understanding of the fact that biology interacts with both the cultural context and the personal choices that people make about how they want to live their lives.

There is no neat and simple way of unraveling these qualitatively different and reciprocal influences on human behavior.

The Concept of “Memories” Being Passed Down

While there’s evidence that environmental stressors can induce epigenetic changes that might affect future generations, the concept of specific “memories” being passed down is not supported by current scientific evidence.

This concept often stems from misinterpretation of studies showing behavioral or physiological changes in offspring related to parental experiences.

Some animal studies have demonstrated that offspring of stressed parents exhibit altered stress responses or behavioral changes.

For example, Dias and Ressler (2014) showed in mice that fear responses to specific odors can be passed down to subsequent generations. However, these are not “memories” in the conventional sense, but rather alterations in stress response systems or sensory sensitivities.

Human studies in this area are much more complex and limited. Research has examined children of trauma survivors (e.g., Holocaust survivors, 9/11 survivors) and found differences in stress hormone levels or risk for PTSD (Yehuda et al., 2016).

However, these studies face significant challenges in separating genetic, epigenetic, and social/cultural factors.

The challenges in interpreting human studies are substantial. Humans have complex social structures and cultural transmission of information, making it often impossible to separate the effects of biological inheritance from social learning and shared environments (Heard & Martienssen, 2014).

The longer lifespan and generation time in humans also make it challenging to study transgenerational effects. What’s often observed is not the transmission of specific memories, but rather altered predispositions or sensitivities.

For example, children of trauma survivors might have an altered stress response system, making them more sensitive to stress, but they don’t inherit specific memories of the trauma (Bowers & Yehuda, 2016).

While specific memories aren’t passed down, changes in gene expression related to stress response systems could potentially be inherited. These could affect how future generations respond to stress or process sensory information (Zannas et al., 2015).

Epigenetics: Licking Rat Pups

Michael Meaney and his colleagues at McGill University in Montreal, Canada conducted the landmark epigenetic study on mother rats licking and grooming their pups.

This research found that the amount of licking and grooming received by rat pups during their early life could alter their epigenetic marks and influence their stress responses in adulthood.

Pups that received high levels of maternal care (i.e., more licking and grooming) had a reduced stress response compared to those that received low levels of maternal care.

Meaney’s work with rat maternal behavior and its epigenetic effects has provided significant insights into the understanding of early-life experiences, gene expression, and adult behavior.

It underscores the importance of the early-life environment and its long-term impacts on an individual’s mental health and stress resilience.

Epigenetics: The Agouti Mouse Study

Waterland and Jirtle’s 2003 study on the Agouti mouse is another foundational work in the field of epigenetics that demonstrated how nutritional factors during early development can result in epigenetic changes that have long-lasting effects on phenotype.

In this study, they focused on a specific gene in mice called the Agouti viable yellow (A^vy) gene. Mice with this gene can express a range of coat colors, from yellow to mottled to brown.

This variation in coat color is related to the methylation status of the A^vy gene: higher methylation is associated with the brown coat, and lower methylation with the yellow coat.

Importantly, the coat color is also associated with health outcomes, with yellow mice being more prone to obesity, diabetes, and tumorigenesis compared to brown mice.

Waterland and Jirtle set out to investigate whether maternal diet, specifically supplementation with methyl donors like folic acid, choline, betaine, and vitamin B12, during pregnancy could influence the methylation status of the A^vy gene in offspring.

Key findings from the study include:

Dietary Influence : When pregnant mice were fed a diet supplemented with methyl donors, their offspring had an increased likelihood of having the brown coat color. This indicated that the supplemented diet led to an increased methylation of the A^vy gene.

Health Outcomes : Along with the coat color change, these mice also had reduced risks of obesity and other health issues associated with the yellow phenotype.

Transgenerational Effects : The study showed that nutritional interventions could have effects that extend beyond the individual, affecting the phenotype of the offspring.

The implications of this research are profound. It highlights how maternal nutrition during critical developmental periods can have lasting effects on offspring through epigenetic modifications, potentially affecting health outcomes much later in life.

The study also offers insights into how dietary and environmental factors might contribute to disease susceptibility in humans.

Challenges in Epigenetic Research:

• Epigenetic changes can be tissue-specific, making it challenging to study in the living human brain
• The causal direction (whether epigenetic changes cause disorders or result from them) is often unclear
• The complexity of interactions between multiple epigenetic mechanisms and genetic variants

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Further Information

• Genetic & Environmental Influences on Human Psychological Differences

Evidence for Nurture

• Classical Conditioning
• Little Albert Experiment
• Operant Conditioning
• Behaviorism
• Social Learning Theory
• Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory
• Social Roles
• Attachment Styles
• The Hidden Links Between Mental Disorders
• Visual Cliff Experiment
• Behavioral Genetics, Genetics, and Epigenetics
• Epigenetics
• Is Epigenetics Inherited?
• Physiological Psychology
• Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis
• So is it nature not nurture after all?

Evidence for an Interaction

• Genes, Interactions, and the Development of Behavior
• Agouti Mouse Study
• Biological Psychology

What does nature refer to in the nature vs. nurture debate?

In the nature vs. nurture debate, “nature” refers to the influence of genetics, innate qualities, and biological factors on human development, behavior, and traits. It emphasizes the role of hereditary factors in shaping who we are.

What does nurture refer to in the nature vs. nurture debate?

In the nature vs. nurture debate, “nurture” refers to the influence of the environment, upbringing, experiences, and social factors on human development, behavior, and traits. It emphasizes the role of external factors in shaping who we are.

Why is it important to determine the contribution of heredity (nature) and environment (nurture) in human development?

Determining the contribution of heredity and environment in human development is crucial for understanding the complex interplay between genetic factors and environmental influences. It helps identify the relative significance of each factor, informing interventions, policies, and strategies to optimize human potential and address developmental challenges.

Beauty of Nature Essay

It is hard for one to witness the beauty of nature and not fall for it. Whether we listen to the mesmerising sounds of birds in the morning or love to watch the brilliant sunset in the evening, there is something beautiful about nature that fills us with joy. We are extremely lucky beings that we get to enjoy the beauty of nature every day. Let us discuss the different things that nature provides us through this short essay on beauty of nature.

When we describe the beauty of nature, several aspects like trees, plants, animals, water, hills and weather come into play. Through essay writing on beauty of nature, your kids will be able to express what they admire about nature clearly. Moreover, this essay will reveal how kids pay close attention to things that we hardly notice or care about.

Experience with the Beauty of Nature

During the mid-summer season, I went to a beautiful hill station with my family. Even though the ride was long, the beautiful scenery on the way kept me entertained. I could see deep forests and misty mountains as we went higher and higher. The winding roads also fascinated me, and I felt as if I had entered a different world. Upon our arrival at the place, I immediately fell in love with nature as it was preserved as such with fresh fragrant flowers of different kinds, cool weather and lush greenery. I found all my worries melting away as I walked amidst this wonderful nature.

Nature offers limitless happiness and satisfaction to us. As a nature enthusiast, one would find joy in the calm breeze, flowing streams or dancing flowers. From the little pebbles to sturdy rocks, everything is part of nature, which adds charm to it. Even nature creates music through the running rivers, twittering birds and gentle winds. When the sun sets and the moon takes its place, the whole sky is lit, and there is nothing more dreamlike than sleeping under the starry sky.

The seasons change, and each has its distinct beauty that cannot be matched. While spring brings in the best of nature through its vibrant greenery, winter calls for a misty and foggy beauty of nature. Autumn covers nature with a golden carpet of leaves and flowers, and summer witnesses the brightest days with delicious fruits. Besides, there are many living creatures, like birds, insects, fish, etc., in varying shape, size and colour that makes nature lively. A single peek through the window of your house would help you understand the true beauty of nature, which will surely lighten your mood.

Moral of the Essay

Each one of us will have a unique feeling when we look at nature. You can know what your child likes about nature through this essay writing on beauty of nature. We can see, feel and hear the glamour of nature in every step that we take and the air we breathe. This short essay on beauty of nature would inspire your kids to look around and take delight in its different forms so that they will be energised and enthusiastic.

How to enjoy the beauty of nature?

All of us can enjoy the beauty of nature in the ways we see it. You could either go for an early morning walk or jog in the evening, where you could be close to nature, thus imbibing its beauty. Travel with your friends and family to hill stations, beaches and exotic places, and enjoy the beautiful sunrise or sunset.

What are the factors that affect the beauty of nature?

Although nature maintains its beauty, human exploitation has caused serious threats to nature. The excessive cutting down of trees for industry and home purposes and the pollution of water, air and land through the dumping of waste from factories are the main factors that threaten the beauty of nature.

How to preserve the beauty of nature?

Nature is an invaluable gift given to us, and we must not involve in any activity that would diminish its beauty. By planting more trees, avoiding the use of plastic, and reusing and recycling things, we can maintain the beauty of nature as it is.

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