Abstract
The term natural is effective in the marketing of a wide variety of foods. This ambiguous term carries important meaning in Western culture. To challenge an uncritical understanding of natural with respect to food and to explore the ambiguity of the term, the development of Western ideas of nature is first discussed. Personification and hypostasization of nature are given special emphasis. Leo Marx’s idea of the pastoral design in literature is then used to explore the meaning of natural as applied to food, emphasizing Marx’s distinction between a sentimental and a complex pastoral. The latter is applied to natural as a means of collapsing a dichotomy of man and nature to the idea of second nature. From this perspective an understanding of the industrialization of the food system and the importance of local and organic food are considered. The extent to which processed foods might properly be considered natural is raised and discussed for several common foods. Although marketing of natural foods might make us think that we consume nature, I suggest that what is consumed is more appropriately second nature. I suggest that in order to maintain a critical perspective about one’s relationship to the natural world, everyone should make an attempt to experience the complex pastoral with respect to at least something that is consumed as food. When nature is understood as second nature in the context of a complex pastoral, the question of whether a food or ingredient is to be considered natural is replaced by deliberative thought based on our best knowledge and judgment, and the result will be less constrained by ideology.
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Notes
Smith (2008) says, “Nature is material and it is spiritual, it is given and it is made, pure and undefiled; nature is order and it is disorder, sublime and secular, dominated and victorious; it is a totality and a series of parts, woman and object, organism and machine. Nature is the gift of God and it is the product of its own evolution; it is a universal outside history and also the product of history, accidental and designed, wilderness and garden. In our range of conceptions of nature, all these meanings survive today, but even in their complexity they are organized into an essential dualism that dominates the conception of nature.”
Cicero may have been the first to apply more broadly the idea of second nature inherent in Aristotle, apparently metaphorically. Smith (2008) cites Cicero's usage of the phrase in De Natura Deorum (The Nature of the Gods). Although he cites Cicero for the phrase, Cicero emphasized the material changes brought about by man’s labors, not social institutions; in contrast, Smith emphasizes the idea that social institutions should be considered as a form of second nature. Smith quotes a translation of Cicero by MacGregor as follows: “One may say that we seek with our human hands to create a second nature in the natural world.” A different translation by Brooks (1896), reads: “—in short, by means of our hands we endeavor to create in nature a kind of second nature.” Hunt's translation (quoted by Spirn (1997)) reads, "In short, by means of our hands we try to create as it were a second nature within the natural world." The metaphor of the hand is an important one in Book II, as the divine handiwork (the divine is the theme of the book) is explicitly said to include the human hand, which for Cicero is thus a sort of second-order agent of the divine in the creation of "a kind of second nature." When the translation includes "a kind of" or "as it were," a metaphoric meaning is suggested. Production of a kind of second nature by means of the mechanical arts, perhaps by an artisan or a technologist, might or might not lead to a product deemed artificial, just as a well-mannered person might or might not be thought to be inauthentic, not true to his or her first nature.
Jencks (2004) has suggested that we may also speak of a third nature. Wilderness and productive fields would be described as first, second natures, respectively. Gardens would be a third nature. Boland (2001) mentions the possibility of a fourth nature: an artful simulation of first nature as an ecological park.
In Nature and the Greeks Schrodinger (1996) argues that Democritus had a proper scientific approach to the theory of atomism, an approach that was later perverted by Lucretius and Epicurus when they could not accept its implications and attempted to interject ideas that had no observational basis. In Schroedinger's opinion, confounding science and ethics thus set back the development of scientific thought. Schroedinger says that to argue about ethics from nature we must hypostasize (sic; from the context he apparently means reify) the world as an object, a move with no scientific foundation. He prefers that we simply accept that “the scientific world-view contains of itself no ethical values.”
Williams (1980) refers to personification in what seems stronger than as a rhetorical device; it appears that he may be describing what might better be described as hypostasization. I argue that it is important to distinguish personification as a rhetorical device from hypostasization, which entails a changed understanding.
Reification would seem to be a particular type of objectification.
Nevertheless, in spite of this proscription it is interesting that today it is not uncommon for some scientists to employ a personified nature figuratively (one assumes) in simplified explanations for the general public about how molecular mechanisms "work." Although this figurative usage seems to be self-consciously ironic, one wonders how this usage might subtly influence thought in this field. Even Darwin’s term natural selection, based on the metaphor of the plant or animal breeder, suggests through the metaphor an agent working with a purpose.
As an example, here is an excerpt of Olivia Judson's on-line New York Times blog from July 7, (2009): "… This has led some to speculate that these plants have actually evolved to cause fires: that they “want” fire, and have evolved features that make it more likely that a spark will become a flame, and a flame will become a fire. I call this the torch-me hypothesis. The argument goes like this. Many plants depend on fire for their propagation. Indeed, without fire, these plants disappear. If, for example, longleaf pine forests do not burn regularly, the pines will be replaced by water oaks and other species. So—runs the argument—fires are desirable because they kill the competition. Plants that enhance fires may thus have an evolutionary advantage: they murder the competition while creating the right circumstances for their own seeds to sprout." The italics in this quotation are mine. In this not particularly egregious example we see personification in the context of evolution. The example illustrates another interesting point, that teleological thinking may lead to formulation of hypotheses that are not necessarily teleological and that may guide a useful scientific advance.
Smith (2008) notes (on p.12) that Kant was influential with respect to dichotomous thinking about nature, as internal nature and external nature. Kant's full description (1891) is found in his Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. It is apparent that Kant distinguishes the formal and the material significance of nature, and then goes onto divide the material significance of nature into outer and inner, corresponding to the extensive and intensive perspectives of a person.
"If the word Nature be merely taken in its formal signification, there may be as many natural sciences as there are specifically different things (for each must contain the inner principle special to the determinations pertaining to its existence), inasmuch as it [Nature] signifies the primal inner principle of all that belongs to the existence of a thing. But Nature, regarded in its material significance, means not a quality, but the sum total of all things, in so far as they can be objects of our senses, and therefore of experience; in short, the totality of all phenomena—the sense-world, exclusive of all non-sensuous objects. Now Nature, in this sense of the word, has two main divisions, in accordance with the main distinction of our sensibility, one of which comprises the objects of the outer, the other the object of the inner sense; thus rendering possible a two-fold doctrine of Nature, the doctrine of body and the doctrine of soul, the first dealing with extended, and the second with thinking, Nature."
The idea of unspoiled nature has been problematic for millenia. Cicero observed, even 2,000 years ago, that man's hand had produced a kind of second nature in the world. Today it is hard to find wilderness that was not at one time altered by man and that is not being effectively managed as wilderness.
Haila and Levins (1992) note (page 214) that, “Food production may consist of gathering what is already present, or of the deliberate growing of plants or animals. Whatever the initial stags in the production of food, the final stages require the transformation of the inedible into edible material. This may be simply peeling or cutting, or it may involve cooking, grinding, fermenting, etc. These latter stages prior to eating are usually included under consumption rather than production. However, from an ecological point of view, production and consumption are different aspects of the same process. The consumption of primary production is at the same time secondary production. … Whatever the final way in which food is produced, the final stages of consumptive production of food usually take place on a small scale, within households, and have generally been carried out by women. Since this productive capacity is engaged in directly for consumption it takes place outside of what is thought of as the economy and is often ignored.”
Production in the traditional sense of consumption of commodities by preparing food from them is less and less done in the home; prepared "food products" are generally purchased at the supermarket or at a restaurant. This fundamental social change may be viewed as problematic or as progress, depending upon one's perspective.
By this phrase I mean to express the paradox that man has a relationship to the rest of the biological and physical world even as he himself is part of it.
Haila and Levins (1992) state (page 10) that “… the idea of nature accepted in a society is a reflection of the human relationships prevailing in that society. … if views of ‘nature’ are primarily constituted within society, if our conceptions of the relationship of human culture to nature are not produced by objectivist scientific thinking, then we need to reflect upon the system of values underlying these conceptions.”
Leo Marx calls attention to the "natural man" described by Ortega y Gassset.
As noted above, the original use of the phrase second nature (alteram naturam) is by Cicero. In De Natura Deorum the phrase appears to be a metaphor for human improvements, based on the second nature of the human described by Aristotle.
Pollan’s (1991) book Second Nature describes his experiences as a gardener; although he does not explicitly address his choice of title, it seems clear that the garden represents a second nature as Cronon uses the phrase in Nature's Metropolis. In his introduction Pollan acknowledges the influence of Cronon.
The harmonious and stable qualities call to mind an ideal of sustainability of what is traditionally valued.
Smith (2008) speaks of nature as a socially constructed concept, and he refers explicitly to the force of the social aspects of second nature. He distinguishes internal vs. external nature and also external vs. universal nature. The incongruity of holding to these two dichotomies simultaneously he calls "the ideology of nature."
Thompson (2000) says, "Ironically, the writings [Jefferson's] on science and education foretell Dewey's pragmatism far more than Jefferson's agrarian canon."
From within the perspective of a European economy dominated by the forces of industrial capitalism, Karl Marx argued for a resolution of the alienation of the industrial worker from the natural world, even as this worker was engaged in the transformation of the natural world.
This relationship drives Pollan's thinking in later works, in particular his (2008) In Defense of Food. An Eater's Manifesto, where an ideological perspective is indicated by the word manifesto in the title.
Nevertheless, the common public response seems to be to concerns about food per se, not to the broader cultural critique. In this, the response calls to mind the public response to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: the result was new food laws but little or no effect on the plight of the worker, Sinclair's apparent main concern.
I mean in an aesthetic sense here. However, the idea of art in the sense of techne also suggests that the technologist plays a role in cultural expression.
See the recent work of Edwards-Jones et al. (2008), describing the tenuous and complex nature of the argument that the idea of the carbon footprint and the idea of food miles may be combined to achieve a justification for valuing local food.
The use of the idea of the natural to sort people into two categories in a moralizing way, into groups of people who are right thinking and those who are not, has a long and troubled history. See for example Wolschke-Bulmahn (1997b).
I realize that that term has so much theological baggage that I run a risk in using it here. Nevertheless, it is worth noting, and not a coincidence I think, that the example of bread, as well as the example of wine below, are the elements of the Christian Eucharist. Because molecular structure could be considered another level of form of matter, we might consider the process molecular transformation instead.
Haila and Levins (1992) conclude their book making a similar point on pages 249 and 252: “Our relationship with nature must be developed thoughtfully and consciously as a principal human objective.” And we should “avoid those abstractions which, presenting themselves as universal and self evident, merely disguise the particularities of their origin.”
This suggestion is in some ways similar to Heldke's (1992) application of Dewey's concept of “thoughtful practice” to the making of food, except that the engagement would be more Deweyan in that it would entail not only an appreciation for embodied satisfactions but theoretical self-reflection concerning the meaning of the activity.
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I am grateful to several anonymous reviewers who made helpful suggestions in an earlier version of this paper.
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Thompson, D.B. Natural Food and the Pastoral: A Sentimental Notion?. J Agric Environ Ethics 24, 165–194 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-010-9245-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-010-9245-7