A Philosophical Happy Hour against the Inversion of our Knowledge
What does it mean for something to be natural? We find the word ubiquitous in today’s marketing: all natural bug spray, dog treats, body wash, shampoo, deodorant, laundry detergent, toothpaste, sunscreen. Ironically, of course, none of these products occur by nature. Each is a product of human agency, created through artifice. Likewise, we will see food products advertise all natural flavors, while others admit their flavors to be artificial. What, in truth, is the difference? And why have we come to view nature vs. artifice through the lens of production?
Artificiality and the Operative Imperative
When was the last time you found yourself entirely removed from all products of human artifice? In all likelihood: you never have. Even trekking through the most-remote wilderness, it seems highly unlikely that you were entirely nude. On the typical day, your activities—it seems highly likely—are positively saturated in the artificial, from the beds in which we sleep, to the computers and phones we use (all too often), to at-the-very-least the packaging containing our food, to the books we read: the “all natural” seems, in fact, something we never encounter.
This artificial saturation both shapes our own thinking and reflects the thinking that has become increasingly prevalent over the past several centuries: what Martin Heidegger called the “Enframing” (die Gestell) of technological thinking, or the technique of Jacques Ellul (“the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency… in every field of human activity”). Within these frames of thinking, nature disappears; the lens of technology or technique makes objects appear in terms of their productive potential, and obscures the beings themselves.
Edward Engelmann describes the emergence of this thinking as a shift away, begun in early modernity, from purely theoretical knowledge towards “operative knowledge”. This form of knowledge principally takes on a kind of imperative mood: the knowability of an object is evaluated in terms of its operative functionality. This inverts the relationship between our technical art (techne) and nature (physis). As Engelmann writes:
with the rise of [the] operative imperative, the Aristotelian schema of techne and nature becomes, in a way, inverted: with operativism, it is nature that imitates techne. Indeed, this was always a possibility, insofar as techne and nature are understood in terms of one another. The theoretical inversion whereby techne becomes the schema for nature is not of course a simple substitution; rather, it is a transition involving fundamental changes in the very meanings of “techne” and “nature.” … With the artificial, the deep suppositions that nature is fundamentally operative and so knowledge of nature must also be so are revealed most fully.
Edward Engelmann 2017: Nature and the Artificial: Aristotelian Reflections on the Operative Imperative, 7 & 8.
Can we learn again to see the natural, in this age blinded by the operative imperative of artificial thinking?
The Meaning of Nature
It does not prove difficult to give an articulation of nature by which it may be contrasted against the artificial. Nevertheless, it may prove difficult to understand (to which end, check out this upcoming seminar!). Aristotle, the father of all Western science, writes the following:
Of the things that are, some are by nature, others through other causes: by nature are animals and their parts, plants, and the simple bodies, such as earth, fire, air, and water (for these things and such things we say to be by nature), and all of them obviously differ from the things not put together by nature. For each of these has in itself a source of motion and rest, either in place, or by growth and shrinkage, or by alteration; but a bed or a cloak, or any other such kind of thing there is, in the respect in which it has happened upon each designation [i.e., that we call it a “bed” or a “cloak” instead of “wood” or “sheep’s wool”] and to the extent that it is from art, has no innate impulse of change at all.
Aristotle 330bc: Physics, II.1 (192b 8–20) in Sachs’ translation.
As often the case with Aristotle, what he writes makes a kind of obvious sense: we call natural those things having their own source of motion and rest, and artificial those which do not, but receive their proper ordination from an extrinsic source. But many challenges have been and continue to be levelled against the common-sense answer of Aristotelian wisdom: what do we mean by motion and rest? What are the causes by which things are? Does it not, often, seem as though even natural things are by extrinsic causes?
We know and without needing rigorous discursive reflection that there exists a real difference between the natural and the artificial. But the lines of their distinction have been blurred by the inverted thinking of the operative imperative.
Retrieving Knowledge
To bring clarity to the distinction, please join us this Wednesday (15 May 2024) for our Philosophical Happy Hour (5:45–7:15pm ET; latecomers welcome!) as we discuss the differences between the artificial and the natural! For those wishing to dig a little deeper, we will be reading this article by Edward Engelmann—even if you cannot read the whole thing, it may help to orient our conversation.
Philosophical Happy Hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
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