Mutability and Diversity in the Biological Sciences: A Pagan Perception of Nature (1996)

MUTABILITY AND DIVERSITY IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES: A PAGAN PERCEPTION OFNATURE KENNETH A. RICE'' Introduction The biological sciences are a principal means bywhich our culture apprehends and interacts with wild, living nature. Why, then, are working biologists ' perceptions of nature so often barren and impoverished? Why is biological inquiry so often posed in reductive terms that deny or diminish nature's diversity? Why, when nature is so diverse and polymorphous, is the scientific perception of nature so sanitized and civilized? A civilized perception of nature has long been associated with the scientific method, for much of the progress ofscience has been made by city dwellers; but the link between science and civilization is neither intrinsic nor inescapable. Biology's estrangement from nature does not follow from a methodical employment of experiment, but from a methodical impoverishment of experience at the levels of sensation and perception. To create a biology that is friendly to natural diversity, we must change biological practice at the level of sensation and perception, for a perceptual appreciation of natural diversity cannot be conferred solely by means of cognition. We must learn to perceive nature differently, not merely to think differently about nature. A Pagan Perception of Nature I will call a perception ofnature which rejoices in diversity and mutability a "pagan" perception of nature. Paganus meant both "rustic" and "civilian " to the fourth-century Romans, and it is commonly said that paganism became a derogatory name for the nature religions of the countryside after Christianity converted the cities of the Empire. In this context, it appears * Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 22 Divinity Avenue , Cambridge, MA 02138. The author acknowledges the helpful comments of Peter Godfrey-Smith, Lisa Vater and Edward O. Wilson.© 1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/96/3903-0957$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 39, 4 ¦ Summer 1996 491 antithetically with urbanus, and thus meant "bumpkin"; but paganus also appears in contrast with miles, and in that context meant "rabble". The current meaning, "heathen," is likely to have originated with fourthcentury Christians, who used the word pagani to label those who would not enlist as soldiers of Christ (miles christi) in the church militant's struggle against the horned god of the European nature religions [I]. To have a pagan perception of nature, in the sense intended here, is to stand apart from civilization and its focus on order, compactness, and sharp demarcation. It is to stand with nature's rich disorder and to refuse enlistment in civilization's war on the unsanitized phenomenon. An individual's perception of nature is said to be pagan if primitive, undeveloped nature constitutes the taken-for-granted ground from which perceptual figures arise. Havingwild nature as the expected background in figure-ground relationships gives one a new perspective on civilization. To acquire such a perspective, one must spend a relatively long time in a diverse and primitive landscape, apart from civilization and from the civilized nature ofpark and farm. For example, a primitive landscape such as a tropical rain forest overloads the senses of a newcomer. If the visitor stays for a time in the woods, the formerly overwhelming forest environment becomes perceptually transparent , and smaller details become figurai against the nearly invisible ground of the forest. The visitor begins to experience the forest in detail only after the initial sensory confusion subsides. After weeks or months in the wild, the complex and disorderly natural environment becomes the perceptual norm. Here is the salvation of biological perception: returning to civilization from a sustained visit to the wilderness causes the formerly transparent background of civilization to appear noticeably barren by comparison with the wild environment. Merely becoming accustomed to the wilderness does not confer a pagan perspective. A logger who works in the old woods is unlikely to acquire such a perspective, because the logger is in some sense a militant who wars against the forest. Logging creates its own environment, full of the sounds of chainsaws and the smell of burning petroleum. The logger's perceptual background is therefore not wild nature, but nature-being-tamed, and a logger is unlikely to acquire a pagan perception...