Truth of the Myths of Nature :: Philosophy Nature Papers

Truth of the Myths of Nature The term "nature myths" designates narratives presenting what-is as intelligible in terms of value and meaning. Such narratives function to motivate ecological activism by articulating such presuppositions as the conviction that what we do matters, destruction of nature is intrinsically wrong, and the possibility of nondestructive human beings. However, such narratives motivate only if they are regarded in some sense as true. The question is, in what sense? Not in an objectivist sense (e.g. von Ranke), since value-even if intrinsic-is a subject related reality. Not in an idealist sense (e.g. Cassirer), since they respect the autonomy of reality. Nor in a "depth" sense of expressing an alleged "essential condition of guilt" (e.g. Heidegger and Patocka), since this would remain a positivist description, albeit one level removed. Instead, I propose treating nature myths as orienting the world (e.g. Jaspers) and guiding human components therein. As such, nature myths can be said to be tr ue (as in Ricoeur’s "adamic" myth) or false (as in the myth of "Man the Master") inasmuch as they provide or fail to provide adequate guidance for sustainable coexistence with all of the Earth. The purpose of this paper is to ask in what sense, if any, ecological nature myths can be said to be not only ennobling and moving, but also in some significant sense true, able to claim a validity independent of the assent of those who tell and hear them. I wish to use the term myth rather broadly to indicate not only the alleged spontaneous outpourings from the depth of our psyche, dear to romantically inclined philosophers and psychologists, but rather all narratives which describe the cosmos and the place of humans therein in terms of relations of value and meaning rather than in terms of mathematico-causal relations in spacetime. (1) In the quaint terminology of Husserl's Ideen II, they are personalistic narratives, rendering reality intelligible in terms of personal — that is, intrinsically subject-related — categories. (2) Such narratives in fact play a crucial role in the effort to forge a sustainable mode of coexistence between humans and the rest of the creation. Humans may select the means for dealing with ecological damage in the light of natural scientific analysis but they are moved to deal with it at all by mythico-poetic articulation rather than by theoretical reconstruction of their lived experience. Thus Rachel Carson, rigorous analytical chemist, moved her fellow humans by evoking their empathy through value laden poetic imagery.