essay about nature and human

Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

Students are often asked to write an essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

The bond with nature.

People and nature are interconnected. We rely on the environment for survival, using its resources for food, shelter, and air. Nature, in return, benefits from our care and protection.

Respecting Nature

Respecting nature is essential. By protecting the environment, we ensure our own survival. We must recycle, reduce waste, and conserve energy to maintain this balance.

The Consequences of Neglect

Ignoring nature’s needs leads to problems like climate change and species extinction. These issues affect us directly, threatening our health and lifestyle.

Our relationship with nature is a delicate balance. By respecting and caring for the environment, we ensure a healthier, brighter future for all.

250 Words Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

The intrinsic connection.

The relationship between humans and nature is an intricate, symbiotic bond, profoundly shaped by millions of years of evolution. Humans, as sentient beings, have developed sophisticated cultures and technologies, yet our survival remains inextricably tied to the natural world.

Dependence and Impact

Nature provides essential resources such as air, water, food, and raw materials. These resources are not only crucial for our survival, but they also form the basis of our economic systems. However, our reliance on nature has led to significant environmental impacts. Deforestation, pollution, and climate change are direct consequences of human activities, threatening biodiversity and the stability of ecosystems.

The Reciprocal Relationship

The human-nature relationship is reciprocal. While we shape nature through our actions, nature, in turn, influences human behavior, culture, and mental health. Exposure to natural environments has been linked to reduced stress levels, improved mood, and enhanced cognitive function.

A Need for Rebalance

The current environmental crisis calls for a rebalance in the human-nature relationship. It necessitates a shift from exploitation to sustainable coexistence, where we respect and preserve nature’s intrinsic value. This shift requires a deeper understanding of our interconnectedness with nature and a collective effort to reduce our environmental impact.

In conclusion, the human-nature relationship is a complex and dynamic interaction that has significant implications for both parties. As we move forward, it is essential to foster a relationship of mutual respect and sustainability with nature to ensure the survival and wellbeing of all life on Earth.

500 Words Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

The intricate dance: human and nature.

The relationship between humans and nature is a complex interplay of dependence, respect, exploitation, and evolution. This relationship is not just crucial for our survival, but it also shapes our culture, beliefs, and our very identity.

Dependence: The Lifeline

The most fundamental aspect of our relationship with nature is our dependence on it. We rely on nature for our basic necessities – air, water, food, and shelter. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the materials we use for shelter all come from nature. This dependence is not a one-way street. Nature, in turn, relies on us to maintain its balance. Our actions, whether they involve planting trees or emitting carbon dioxide, have a direct impact on the natural world.

Respect: The Forgotten Virtue

Historically, humans have revered nature. Many ancient cultures worshipped nature deities and respected the land, the sea, and the sky. This respect was born out of an understanding of our dependence on nature, and the need to maintain a harmonious relationship with it. However, with the advent of industrialization and modernization, this respect has often been forgotten. We have begun to see nature as a resource to be exploited, rather than a partner to be respected.

Exploitation: The Double-Edged Sword

Our exploitation of nature has led to unprecedented advancements in technology, medicine, and living standards. However, it has also led to environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and a host of other problems. Our exploitation of nature has become a double-edged sword, providing us with short-term gains but threatening our long-term survival.

Evolution: The Path Forward

The future of our relationship with nature lies in evolution. We must evolve our attitudes and behaviors towards nature. We must move away from a paradigm of exploitation and towards one of sustainability. This involves not just technological innovation, but also a shift in our values and beliefs. We must learn to value nature not just for what it can provide us, but for its intrinsic worth.

Conclusion: Redefining the Relationship

The relationship between humans and nature is at a crossroads. We can continue down the path of exploitation and face the consequences, or we can choose a new path of respect, sustainability, and coexistence. The choice is ours to make. As we stand at this juncture, let us remember that our relationship with nature is not just about survival, but also about who we are as a species. It is about our values, our beliefs, and our legacy. It is about our future.

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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.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

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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Human Nature

Talk of human nature is a common feature of moral and political discourse among people on the street and among philosophers, political scientists and sociologists. This is largely due to the widespread assumption that true descriptive or explanatory claims making use of the concept of human nature have, or would have, considerable normative significance. Some think that human nature excludes the possibility of certain forms of social organisation—for example, that it excludes any broadly egalitarian society. Others make the stronger claim that a true normative ethical theory has to be built on prior knowledge of human nature. Still others believe that there are specific moral prohibitions concerning the alteration of, or interference in, the set of properties that make up human nature. Finally, there are those who argue that the normative significance derives from the fact that merely deploying the concept is typically, or even necessarily, pernicious.

Alongside such varying and frequently conflicting normative uses of the expression “human nature”, there are serious disagreements concerning the concept’s content and explanatory significance—the starkest being whether the expression “human nature” refers to anything at all. Some reasons given for saying there is no human nature are anthropological, grounded in views concerning the relationship between natural and cultural features of human life. Other reasons given are biological, deriving from the character of the human species as, like other species, an essentially historical product of evolution. Whether these reasons justify the claim that there is no human nature depends, at least in part, on what it is exactly that the expression is supposed to be picking out. Many contemporary proposals differ significantly in their answers to this question.

Understanding the debates around the philosophical use of the expression “human nature” requires clarity on the reasons both for (1) adopting specific adequacy conditions for the term’s use and for (2) accepting particular substantial claims made within the framework thus adopted. One obstacle to such clarity is historical: we have inherited from the beginnings of Western philosophy, via its Medieval reception, the idea that talk of human nature brings into play a number of different, but related claims. One such set of claims derives from different meanings of the Greek equivalents of the term “nature”. This bundle of claims, which can be labelled the traditional package , is a set of adequacy conditions for any substantial claim that uses the expression “human nature”. The beginnings of Western philosophy have also handed down to us a number of such substantial claims . Examples are that humans are “rational animals” or “political animals”. We can call these claims the traditional slogans . The traditional package is a set of specifications of how claims along the lines of the traditional slogans are to be understood, i.e., what it means to claim that it is “human nature” to be, for example, a rational animal.

Various developments in Western thought have cast doubt both on the coherence of the traditional package and on the possibility that the adequacy conditions for the individual claims can be fulfilled. Foremost among these developments are the Enlightenment rejection of teleological metaphysics, the Historicist emphasis on the significance of culture for understanding human action and the Darwinian introduction of history into biological kinds. This entry aims to help clarify the adequacy conditions for claims about human nature, the satisfiability of such conditions and the reasons why the truth of claims with the relevant conditions might seem important. It proceeds in five steps. Section 1 unpacks the traditional package, paying particular attention to the importance of Aristotelian themes and to the distinction between the scientific and participant perspectives from which human nature claims can be raised. Section 2 explains why evolutionary biology raises serious problems both for the coherence of this package and for the truth of its individual component claims. Sections 3 and 4 then focus on attempts to secure scientific conceptions of human nature in the face of the challenge from evolutionary biology. The entry concludes with a discussion of accounts of human nature developed from a participant perspective, in particular accounts that, in spite of the evolutionary challenge, are taken to have normative consequences.

1.1 “Humans”

1.2 unpacking the traditional package, 1.3 essentialisms, 1.4 on the status of the traditional slogan, 2.1 the nature of the species taxon, 2.2 the nature of species specimens as species specimens, 2.3 responding to the evolutionary verdict on classificatory essences, 3.1 privileging properties, 3.2 statistical normality or robust causality, 4.1 genetically based psychological adaptations, 4.2 abandoning intrinsicality, 4.3 secondary altriciality as a game-changer, 5.1. human nature from a participant perspective, 5.2.1. sidestepping the darwinian challenge, 5.2.2. human flourishing, 5.3. reason as the unique structural property, other internet resources, related entries, 1. “humans”, slogans and the traditional package.

Before we begin unpacking, it should be noted that the adjective “human” is polysemous, a fact that often goes unnoticed in discussions of human nature, but makes a big difference to both the methodological tractability and truth of claims that employ the expression. The natural assumption may appear to be that we are talking about specimens of the biological species Homo sapiens , that is, organisms belonging to the taxon that split from the rest of the hominin lineage an estimated 150,000 years ago. However, certain claims seem to be best understood as at least potentially referring to organisms belonging to various older species within the subtribe Homo , with whom specimens of Homo sapiens share properties that have often been deemed significant (Sterelny 2018: 114).

On the other hand, the “nature” that is of interest often appears to be that of organisms belonging to a more restricted group. There may have been a significant time lag between the speciation of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) and the evolution of behaviourally modern humans, i.e., human populations whose life forms involved symbol use, complex tool making, coordinated hunting and increased geographic range. Behavioural modernity’s development is often believed only to have been completed by 50,000 years ago. If, as is sometimes claimed, behavioural modernity requires psychological capacities for planning, abstract thought, innovativeness and symbolism (McBrearty & Brooks 2000: 492) and if these were not yet widely or sufficiently present for several tens of thousands of years after speciation, then it may well be behaviourally, rather than anatomically modern humans whose “nature” is of interest to many theories. Perhaps the restriction might be drawn even tighter to include only contemporary humans, that is, those specimens of the species who, since the introduction of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, evolved the skills and capacities necessary for life in large sedentary, impersonal and hierarchical groups (Kappeler, Fichtel, & van Schaik 2019: 68).

It was, after all, a Greek living less than two and a half millennia ago within such a sedentary, hierarchically organised population structure, who could have had no conception of the prehistory of the beings he called anthrôpoi , whose thoughts on their “nature” have been decisive for the history of philosophical reflection on the subject. It seems highly likely that, without the influence of Aristotle, discussions of “human nature” would not be structured as they are until today.

We can usefully distinguish four types of claim that have been traditionally made using the expression “human nature”. As a result of a particular feature of Aristotle’s philosophy, to which we will come in a moment, these four claims are associated with five different uses of the expression. Uses of the first type seem to have their origin in Plato; uses of the second, third and fourth type are Aristotelian; and, although uses of the fifth type have historically been associated with Aristotle, this association seems to derive from a misreading in the context of the religiously motivated Mediaeval reception of his philosophy.

A first , thin, contrastive use of the expression “human nature” is provided by the application of a thin, generic concept of nature to humans. In this minimal variant, nature is understood in purely contrastive or negative terms. Phusis is contrasted in Plato and Aristotle with technē , where the latter is the product of intention and a corresponding intervention of agency. If the entire cosmos is taken to be the product of divine agency, then, as Plato argued (Nadaf 2005: 1ff.), conceptualisations of the cosmos as natural in this sense are mistaken. Absent divine agency, the types of agents whose intentions are relevant for the status of anything as natural are human agents. Applied to humans, then, this concept of nature picks out human features that are not the results of human intentional action. Thus understood, human nature is the set of human features or processes that remain after subtraction of those picked out by concepts of the non-natural, concepts such as “culture”, “nurture”, or “socialisation”.

A second component in the package supplies the thin concept with substantial content that confers on it explanatory power. According to Aristotle, natural entities are those that contain in themselves the principle of their own production or development, in the way that acorns contain a blueprint for their own realisation as oak trees ( Physics 192b; Metaphysics 1014b). The “nature” of natural entities thus conceptualised is a subset of the features that make up their nature in the first sense. The human specification of this explanatory concept of nature aims to pick out human features that similarly function as blueprints for something like a fully realised form. According to Aristotle, for all animals that blueprint is “the soul”, that is, the integrated functional capacities that characterise the fully developed entity. The blueprint is realised when matter, i.e., the body, has attained the level of organisation required to instantiate the animal’s living functions (Charles 2000: 320ff.; Lennox 2009: 356).

A terminological complication is introduced here by the fact that the fully developed form of an entity is itself also frequently designated as its “nature” (Aristotle, Physics 193b; Politics 1252b). In Aristotle’s teleological metaphysics, this is the entity’s end, “that for the sake of which a thing is” ( Metaphysics 1050a; Charles 2000: 259). Thus, a human’s “nature”, like that of any other being, may be either the features in virtue of which it is disposed to develop to a certain mature form or, thirdly , the form to which it is disposed to develop.

Importantly, the particularly prominent focus on the idea of a fully developed form in Aristotle’s discussions of humans derives from its dual role. It is not only the form to the realisation of which human neonates are disposed; it is also the form that mature members of the species ought to realise ( Politics 1253a). This normative specification is the fourth component of the traditional package. The second, third and fourth uses of “nature” are all in the original package firmly anchored in a teleological metaphysics. One question for systematic claims about human nature is whether any of these components remain plausible if we reject a teleology firmly anchored in theology (Sedley 2010: 5ff.).

A fifth and last component of the package that has traditionally been taken to have been handed down from antiquity is classificatory. Here, the property or set of properties named by the expression “human nature” is that property or property set in virtue of the possession of which particular organisms belong to a particular biological taxon: what we now identify as the species taxon Homo sapiens . This is human nature typologically understood.

This, then, is the traditional package:

The sort of properties that have traditionally been taken to support the classificatory practices relevant to TP5 are intrinsic to the individual organisms in question. Moreover, they have been taken to be able to fulfil this role in virtue of being necessary and sufficient for the organism’s membership of the species, i.e., “essential” in one meaning of the term. This view of species membership, and the associated view of species themselves, has been influentially dubbed “typological thinking” (Mayr 1959 [1976: 27f.]; cf. Mayr 1982: 260) and “essentialism” (Hull 1965: 314ff.; cf. Mayr 1968 [1976: 428f.]). The former characterisation involves an epistemological focus on the classificatory procedure, the latter a metaphysical focus on the properties thus singled out. Ernst Mayr claimed that the classificatory approach originates in Plato’s theory of forms, and, as a result, involves the further assumption that the properties are unchanging. According to David Hull, its root cause is the attempt to fit the ontology of species taxa to an Aristotelian theory of definition.

The theory of definition developed in Aristotle’s logical works assigns entities to a genus and distinguishes them from other members of the genus, i.e., from other “species”, by their differentiae ( Topics 103b). The procedure is descended from the “method of division” of Plato, who provides a crude example as applied to humans, when he has the Eleatic Stranger in the Statesman characterise them as featherless bipeds (266e). Hull and many scholars in his wake (Dupré 2001: 102f.) have claimed that this simple schema for picking out essential conditions for species membership had a seriously deleterious effect on biological taxonomy until Darwin (cf. Winsor 2006).

However, there is now widespread agreement that Aristotle was no taxonomic essentialist (Balme 1980: 5ff.; Mayr 1982: 150ff.; Balme 1987: 72ff.; Ereshefsky 2001: 20f; Richards 2010: 21ff.; Wilkins 2018: 9ff.). First, the distinction between genus and differentiae was for Aristotle relative to the task at hand, so that a “species” picked out in this manner could then count as the genus for further differentiation. Second, the Latin term “species”, a translation of the Greek eidos , was a logical category with no privileged relationship to biological entities; a prime example in the Topics is the species justice, distinguished within the genus virtue (143a). Third, in a key methodological passage, Parts of Animals , I.2–3 (642b–644b), Aristotle explicitly rejects the method of “dichotomous division”, which assigns entities to a genus and then seeks a single differentia, as inappropriate to the individuation of animal kinds. Instead, he claims, a multiplicity of differentiae should be brought to bear. He emphasises this point in relation to humans (644a).

According to Pierre Pellegrin and David Balme, Aristotle did not seek to establish a taxonomic system in his biological works (Pellegrin 1982 [1986: 113ff.]; Balme 1987, 72). Rather, he simply accepted the everyday common sense partitioning of the animal world (Pellegrin 1982 [1986: 120]; Richards 2010: 24; but cf. Charles 2000: 343ff.). If this is correct, Aristotle didn’t even ask after the conditions for belonging to the species Homo sapiens . So he wasn’t proposing any particular answer, and specifically not the “essentialist” answer advanced by TP5. In as far as such an answer has been employed in biological taxonomy (cf. Winsor 2003), its roots appear to lie in Neoplatonic, Catholic misinterpretations of Aristotle (Richards 2010: 34ff.; Wilkins 2018: 22ff.). Be that as it may, the fifth use of “human nature” transported by tradition—to pick out essential conditions for an organism’s belonging to the species—is of eminent interest. The systematic concern behind Mayr and Hull’s historical claims is that accounts of the form of TP5 are incompatible with evolutionary theory. We shall look at this concern in section 2 of this entry.

Because the term “essentialism” recurs with different meanings in discussions of human nature and because some of the theoretical claims thus summarised are assumed to be Aristotelian in origin, it is worth spending a moment here to register what claims can be singled out by the expression. The first , purely classificatory conception just discussed should be distinguished from a second view that is also frequently labelled “essentialist” and which goes back to Locke’s concept of “real essence” (1689: III, iii, 15). According to essentialism thus understood, an essence is the intrinsic feature or features of an entity that fulfils or fulfil a dual role: firstly, of being that in virtue of which something belongs to a kind and, secondly, of explaining why things of that kind typically have a particular set of observable features. Thus conceived, “essence” has both a classificatory and an explanatory function and is the core of a highly influential, “essentialist” theory of natural kinds, developed in the wake of Kripke’s and Putnam’s theories of reference.

An account of human nature that is essentialist in this sense would take the nature of the human natural kind to be a set of microstructural properties that have two roles: first, they constitute an organism’s membership of the species Homo sapiens . Second, they are causally responsible for the organism manifesting morphological and behavioural properties typical of species members. Paradigms of entities with such natures or essences are chemical elements. An example is the element with the atomic number 79, the microstructural feature that accounts for surface properties of gold such as yellowness. Applied to organisms, it seems that the relevant explanatory relationship will be developmental, the microstructures providing something like a blueprint for the properties of the mature individual. Kripke assumed that some such blueprint is the “internal structure” responsible for the typical development of tigers as striped, carnivorous quadrupeds (Kripke 1972 [1980: 120f.]).

As the first, pseudo-Aristotelian version of essentialism illustrates, the classificatory and explanatory components of what we might call “Kripkean essentialism” can be taken apart. Thus, “human nature” can also be understood in exclusively explanatory terms, viz. as the set of microstructural properties responsible for typical human morphological and behavioural features. In such an account, the ability to pick out the relevant organisms is simply presupposed. As we shall see in section 4 of this entry, accounts of this kind have been popular in the contemporary debate. The subtraction of the classificatory function of the properties in these conceptions has generally seemed to warrant withholding from them the label “essentialist”. However, because some authors have still seen the term as applicable (Dupré 2001: 162), we might think of such accounts as constituting a third , weak or deflationary variant of essentialism.

Such purely explanatory accounts are descendants of the second use of “human nature” in the traditional package, the difference being that they don’t usually presuppose some notion of the fully developed human form. However, where some such presupposition is made, there are stronger grounds for talking of an “essentialist” account. Elliott Sober has argued that the key to essentialism is not classification in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but the postulation of some “privileged state”, to the realisation of which specimens of a species tend, as long as no extrinsic factors “interfere” (Sober 1980: 358ff.). Such a dispositional-teleological conception, dissociated from classificatory ambitions, would be a fourth form of essentialism. Sober rightly associates such an account with Aristotle, citing Aristotle’s claims in his zoological writings that interfering forces are responsible for deviations, i.e., morphological differences, both within and between species. A contemporary account of human nature with this structure will be discussed in section 4 .

A fifth and final form of essentialism is even more clearly Aristotelian. Here, an explicitly normative status is conferred on the set of properties to the development of which human organisms tend. For normative essentialism, “the human essence” or “human nature” is a normative standard for the evaluation of organisms belonging to the species. Where the first, third and fourth uses of the expression have tended to be made with critical intent (for defensive exceptions, see Charles 2000: 348ff.; Walsh 2006; Devitt 2008; Boulter 2012), this fifth use is more often a self-ascription (e.g., Nussbaum 1992). It is intended to emphasise metaethical claims of a specific type. According to such claims, an organism’s belonging to the human species entails or in some way involves the applicability to the organism of moral norms that ground in the value of the fully developed human form. According to one version of this thought, humans ought be, or ought to be enabled to be, rational because rationality is a key feature of the fully developed human form. Such normative-teleological accounts of human nature will be the focus of section 5.2 .

We can summarise the variants of essentialism and their relationship to the components of the traditional package as follows:

Section 2 and section 5 of this entry deal with the purely classificatory and the normative teleological conceptions of human nature respectively, and with the associated types of essentialism. Section 3 discusses attempts to downgrade TP5, moving from essential to merely characteristic properties. Section 4 focuses on accounts of an explanatory human nature, both on attempts to provide a modernized version of the teleological blueprint model ( §4.1 ) and on explanatory conceptions with deflationary intent relative to the claims of TP2 and TP3 ( §4.2 and §4.3 ).

The traditional package specifies a set of conditions some or all of which substantial claims about “human nature” are supposed to meet. Before we turn to the systematic arguments central to contemporary debates on whether such conditions can be met, it will be helpful to spend a moment considering one highly influential substantial claim. Aristotle’s writings prominently contain two such claims that have been handed down in slogan form. The first is that the human being (more accurately: “man”) is an animal that is in some important sense social (“zoon politikon”, History of Animals 487b; Politics 1253a; Nicomachean Ethics 1169b). According to the second, “he” is a rational animal ( Politics 1253a, where Aristotle doesn’t actually use the traditionally ascribed slogan, “zoon logon echon”).

Aristotle makes both claims in very different theoretical contexts, on the one hand, in his zoological writings and, on the other, in his ethical and political works. This fact, together with the fact that Aristotle’s philosophy of nature and his practical philosophy are united by a teleological metaphysics, may make it appear obvious that the slogans are biological claims that provide a foundation for normative claims in ethics and politics. The slogans do indeed function as foundations in the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics respectively (on the latter, see section 5 of this entry). It is, however, unclear whether they are to be understood as biological claims. Let us focus on the slogan that has traditionally dominated discussions of human nature in Western philosophy, that humans are “rational animals”.

First, if Pellegrin and Balme are right that Aristotelian zoology is uninterested in classifying species, then ascribing the capacity for “rationality” cannot have the function of naming a biological trait that distinguishes humans from other animals. This is supported by two further sets of considerations. To begin with, Aristotle’s explicit assertion that a series of differentiae would be needed to “define” humans ( Parts of Animals 644a) is cashed out in the long list of features he takes to be their distinguishing marks, such as speech, having hair on both eyelids, blinking, having hands, upright posture, breasts in front, the largest and moistest brain, fleshy legs and buttocks (Lloyd 1983: 29ff.). Furthermore, there is in Aristotle no capacity for reason that is both exclusive to, and universal among anthropoi . One part or kind of reason, “practical intelligence” ( phronesis ), is, Aristotle claims, found in both humans and other animals, being merely superior in the former ( Parts of Animals , 687a). Now, there are other forms of reasoning of which this is not true, forms whose presence are sufficient for being human: humans are the only animals capable of deliberation ( History of Animals 488b) and reasoning ( to noein ), in as far as this extends to mathematics and first philosophy. Nevertheless, these forms of reasoning are unnecessary: slaves, who Aristotle includes among humans ( Politics 1255a), are said to have no deliberative faculty ( to bouleutikon ) at all ( Politics 1260a; cf. Richter 2011: 42ff.). Presumably, they will also be without the capacities necessary for first philosophy.

Second, these Aristotelian claims raise the question as to whether the ascription of rationality is even intended as an ascription to an individual in as far as she or he belongs to a biological kind. The answer might appear to be obviously affirmative. Aristotle uses the claim that a higher level of reason is characteristic of humans to teleologically explain other morphological features, in particular upright gait and the morphology of the hands ( Parts of Animals 686a, 687a). However, the kind of reason at issue here is practical intelligence, the kind humans and animals share, not the capacity for mathematics and metaphysics, which among animals is exercised exclusively by humans. In as far as humans are able to exercise this latter capacity in contemplation, Aristotle claims that they “partake of the divine” ( Parts of Animals 656a), a claim of which he makes extensive use when grounding his ethics in human rationality ( Nicomachean Ethics 1177b–1178b). When, in a passage to which James Lennox has drawn attention (Lennox 1999), Aristotle declares that the rational part of the soul cannot be the object of natural science ( Parts of Animals 645a), it seems to be the contemplative part of the soul that is thus excluded from biological investigation, precisely the feature that is named in the influential slogan. If it is the “something divine … present in” humans that is decisively distinctive of their kind, it seems unclear whether the relevant kind is biological.

It is not the aim of this entry to decide questions of Aristotle interpretation. What is important is that the relationship of the question of “human nature” to biology is, from the beginning of the concept’s career, not as unequivocal as is often assumed (e.g., Hull 1986: 7; Richards 2010: 217f.). This is particularly true of the slogan according to which humans are rational animals. In the history of philosophy, this slogan has frequently been detached from any attempt to provide criteria for biological classification or characterisation. When Aquinas picks up the slogan, he is concerned to emphasise that human nature involves a material, corporeal aspect. This aspect is, however, not thought of in biological terms. Humans are decisively “rational substances”, i.e., persons. As such they also belong to a kind whose members also number angels and God (three times) (Eberl 2004). Similarly, Kant is primarily, indeed almost exclusively, interested in human beings as examples of “rational nature”, “human nature” being only one way in which rational nature can be instantiated (Kant 1785, 64, 76, 85). For this reason, Kant generally talks of “rational beings”, rather than of “rational animals” (1785, 45, 95).

There is, then, a perspective on humans that is plausibly present in Aristotle, stronger in Aquinas and dominant in Kant and that involves seeing them as instances of a kind other than the “human kind”, i.e., seeing the human animal “as a rational being” (Kant 1785 [1996: 45]). According to this view, the “nature” of humans that is most worthy of philosophical interest is the one they possess not insofar as they are human, but insofar as they are rational. Where this is the relevant use of the concept of human nature, being a specimen of the biological species is unnecessary for possessing the corresponding property. Specimens of other species, as well as non-biological entities may also belong to the relevant kind. It is also insufficient, as not all humans will have the properties necessary for membership in that kind.

As both a biologist and ethicist, Aristotle is at once a detached scientist and a participant in forms of interpersonal and political interaction only available to contemporary humans living in large, sedentary subpopulations. It seems plausible that a participant perspective may have suggested a different take on what it is to be human, perhaps even a different take on the sense in which humans might be rational animals, to that of biological science. We will return to this difference in section 5 of the entry.

2. The Nature of the Evolutionary Unit Homo sapiens and its Specimens

Detailing the features in virtue of which an organism is a specimen of the species Homo sapiens is a purely biological task. Whether such specification is achievable and, if so how, is controversial. It is controversial for the same reasons for which it is controversial what conditions need to be met for an organism to be a specimen of any species. These reasons derive from the theory of evolution.

A first step to understanding these reasons involves noting a further ambiguity in the use of the expression “human nature”, this time an ambiguity specific to taxonomy. The term can be used to pick out a set of properties as an answer to two different questions. The first concerns the properties of some organism which make it the case that it belongs to the species Homo sapiens . The second concerns the properties in virtue of which a population or metapopulation is the species Homo sapiens . Correspondingly, “human nature” can pick out either the properties of organisms that constitute their partaking in the species Homo sapiens or the properties of some higher-level entity that constitute it as that species. Human nature might then either be the nature of the species or the nature of species specimens as specimens of the species.

It is evolution that confers on this distinction its particular form and importance. The variation among organismic traits, without which there would be no evolution, has its decisive effects at the level of populations. These are groups of organisms that in some way cohere at a time in spite of the variation of traits among the component organisms. It is population-level groupings, taxa, not organisms, that evolve and it is taxa, such as species, that provide the organisms that belong to them with genetic resources (Ghiselin 1987: 141). The species Homo sapiens appears to be a metapopulation that coheres at least in part because of the gene flow between its component organisms brought about by interbreeding (cf. Ereshefsky 1991: 96ff.). Hence, according to evolutionary theory, Homo sapiens is plausibly a higher-level entity—a unit of evolution—consisting of the lower-level entities that are individual human beings. The two questions phrased in terms of “human nature” thus concern the conditions for individuation of the population-level entity and the conditions under which organisms are components of that entity.

The theory of evolution transforms the way we should understand the relationship between human organisms and the species to which they belong. The taxonomic assumption of TP5 was that species are individuated by means of intrinsic properties that are individually instantiated by certain organisms. Instantiating those properties is taken to be necessary and sufficient for those organisms to belong to the species. Evolutionary theory makes it clear that species, as population-level entities, cannot be individuated by means of the properties of lower-level constituents, in our case, of individual human organisms (Sober 1980: 355).

The exclusion of this possibility grounds a decisive difference from the way natural kinds are standardly construed in the wake of Locke and Kripke. Recall that, in this Kripkean construal, lumps of matter are instances of chemical kinds because of their satisfaction of intrinsic necessary and sufficient conditions, viz. their atoms possessing a certain number of protons. The same conditions also individuate the chemical kinds themselves. Chemical kinds are thus spatiotemporally unrestricted sets. This means that there are no metaphysical barriers to the chance generation of members of the kind, independently of whether the kind is instantiated at any contiguous time or place. Nitrogen could come to exist by metaphysical happenstance, should an element with the atomic number 14 somehow come into being, even in a world in which up to that point no nitrogen has existed (Hull 1978: 349; 1984: 22).

In contrast, a species can only exist at time \(t_n\) if either it or a parent species existed at \(t_{n-1}\) and there was some relationship of spatial contiguity between component individuals of the species at \(t_n\) and the individuals belonging to either the same species or the parent species at \(t_{n-1}\). This is because of the essential role of the causal relationship of heredity. Heredity generates both the coherence across a population requisite for the existence of a species and the variability of predominant traits within the population, without which a species would not evolve.

For this reason, the species Homo sapiens , like every other species taxon, must meet a historical or genealogical condition. (For pluralistic objections to even this condition, see Kitcher 1984: 320ff.; Dupré 1993: 49f.) This condition is best expressed as a segment of a population-level phylogenetic tree, where such trees represent ancestor-descendent series (Hull 1978: 349; de Queiroz 1999: 50ff.; 2005). Species, as the point is often put, are historical entities, rather than kinds or classes (Hull 1978: 338ff.; 1984: 19). The fact that species are not only temporally, but also spatially restricted has also led to the stronger claim that they are individuals (Ghiselin 1974; 1997: 14ff.; Hull 1978: 338). If this is correct, then organisms are not members, but parts of species taxa. Independently of whether this claim is true for all biological species, Homo sapiens is a good candidate for a species that belongs to the category individual . This is because the species is characterised not only by spatiotemporal continuity, but also by causal processes that account for the coherence between its component parts. These processes plausibly include not only interbreeding, but also conspecific recognition and particular forms of communication (Richards 2010: 158ff., 218).

Importantly, the genealogical condition is only a necessary condition, as genealogy unites all the segments of one lineage. The segment of the phylogenetic tree that represents some species taxon begins with a node that represents a lineage-splitting or speciation event. Determining that node requires attention to general speciation theory, which has proposed various competing criteria (Dupré 1993: 48f.; Okasha 2002: 201; Coyne & Orr 2004). In the case of Homo sapiens , it requires attention to the specifics of the human case, which are also controversial (see Crow 2003; Cela-Conde & Ayala 2017: 11ff.). The end point of the segment is marked either by some further speciation event or, as may seem likely in the case of Homo sapiens , by the destruction of the metapopulation. Only when the temporal boundaries of the segment have become determinate would it be possible to adduce sufficient conditions for the existence of such a historical entity. Hence, if “human nature” is understood to pick out the necessary and sufficient conditions that individuate the species taxon Homo sapiens , its content is not only controversial, but epistemically unavailable to us.

If we take such a view of the individuating conditions for the species Homo sapiens , what are the consequences for the question of which organisms belong to the species? It might appear that it leaves open the possibility that speciation has resulted in some intrinsic property or set of properties establishing the cohesion specific to the taxon and that such properties count as necessary and sufficient for belonging to it (cf. Devitt 2008: 17ff.). This appearance would be deceptive. To begin with, no intrinsic property can be necessary because of the sheer empirical improbability that all species specimens grouped together by the relevant lineage segment instantiate any such candidate property. For example, there are individuals who are missing legs, inner organs or the capacity for language, but who remain biologically human (Hull 1986: 5). Evolutionary theory clarifies why this is so: variability, secured by mechanisms such as mutation and recombination, is the key to evolution, so that, should some qualitative property happen to be universal among all extant species specimens immediately after the completion of speciation, that is no guarantee that it will continue to be so throughout the lifespan of the taxon (Hull 1984: 35; Ereshefsky 2008: 101). The common thought that there must be at least some genetic property common to all human organisms is also false (R. Wilson 1999a: 190; Sterelny & Griffiths 1999: 7; Okasha 2002: 196f.): phenotypical properties that are shared in a population are frequently co-instantiated as a result of the complex interaction of differing gene-regulatory networks. Conversely, the same network can under different circumstances lead to differing phenotypical consequences (Walsh 2006: 437ff.). Even if it should turn out that every human organism instantiated some property, this would be a contingent, rather than a necessary fact (Sober 1980: 354; Hull 1986: 3).

Moreover, the chances of any such universal property also being sufficient are vanishingly small, as the sharing of properties by specimens of other species can result from various mechanisms, in particular from the inheritance of common genes in related species and from parallel evolution. This doesn’t entail that there may be no intrinsic properties that are sufficient belonging to the species. There are fairly good candidates for such properties, if we compare humans with other terrestrial organisms. Language use and a self-understanding as moral agents come to mind. However, whether non-terrestrial entities might possess such properties is an open question. And decisively, they are obviously hopeless as necessary conditions (cf. Samuels 2012: 9).

This leaves only the possibility that the conditions for belonging to the species are, like the individuating conditions for the species taxon, relational. Lineage-based individuation of a taxon depends on its component organisms being spatially and temporally situated in such a way that the causal processes necessary for the inheritance of traits can take place. In the human case, the key processes are those of sexual reproduction. Therefore, being an organism that belongs to the species Homo sapiens is a matter of being connected reproductively to organisms situated unequivocally on the relevant lineage segment. In other words, the key necessary condition is having been sexually reproduced by specimens of the species (Kronfeldner 2018: 100). Hull suggests that the causal condition may be disjunctive, as it could also be fulfilled by a synthetic entity created by scientists that produces offspring with humans who have been generated in the standard manner (Hull 1978: 349). Provided that the species is not in the throes of speciation, such direct descent or integration into the reproductive community, i.e., participation in the “complex network […] of mating and reproduction” (Hull 1986: 4), will also be sufficient.

The lack of a “human essence” in the sense of intrinsic necessary and sufficient conditions for belonging to the species taxon Homo sapiens , has led a number of philosophers to deny that there is any such thing as human nature (Hull 1984: 19; 1986; Ghiselin 1997: 1; de Sousa 2000). As this negative claim concerns properties intrinsic both to relevant organisms and to the taxon, it is equally directed at the “nature” of the organisms as species specimens and at that of the species taxon itself. An alternative consists in retracting the condition that a classificatory essence must be intrinsic, a move which allows talk of a historical or relational essence and a corresponding relational conception of taxonomic human nature (Okasha 2002: 202).

Which of these ways of responding to the challenge from evolutionary theory appears best is likely to depend on how one takes it that the classificatory issues relate to the other matters at stake in the original human nature package. These concern the explanatory and normative questions raised by TP1–TP4. We turn to these in the following three sections of this article.

An exclusively genealogical conception of human nature is clearly not well placed to fulfil an explanatory role comparable to that envisaged in the traditional package. What might have an explanatory function are the properties of the entities from which the taxon or its specimens are descended. Human nature, genealogically understood, might serve as the conduit for explanations in terms of such properties, but will not itself explain anything. After all, integration in a network of sexual reproduction will be partly definitive of the specimens of all sexual species, whilst what is to be explained will vary enormously across taxa.

This lack of fit between classificatory and explanatory roles confronts us with a number of further theoretical possibilities. For example, one might see this incompatibility as strengthening the worries of eliminativists such as Ghiselin and Hull: even if the subtraction of intrinsicality were not on its own sufficient to justify abandoning talk of human nature, its conjunction with a lack of explanatory power, one might think, certainly is (Dupré 2003: 109f.; Lewens 2012: 473). Or one might argue that it is the classificatory ambitions associated with talk of human nature that should be abandoned. Once this is done, one might hope that certain sets of intrinsic properties can be distinguished that figure decisively in explanations and that can still justifiably be labelled “human nature” (Roughley 2011: 15; Godfrey-Smith 2014: 140).

Taking this second line in turn raises two questions: first, in what sense are the properties thus picked out specifically “human”, if they are neither universal among, nor unique to species specimens? Second, in what sense are the properties “natural”? Naturalness as independence from the effects of human intentional action is a key feature of the original package (TP1). Whether some such conception can be coherently applied to humans is a challenge for any non-classificatory account.

3. Characteristic Human Properties

The answer given by TP2 to the first question was in terms of the fully developed human form, where “form” does not refer solely to observable physical or behavioural characteristics, but also includes psychological features. This answer entails two claims: first, that there is one single such “form”, i.e., property or set of properties, that figures in explanations that range across individual human organisms. It also entails that there is a point in human development that counts as “full”, that is, as development’s goal or “telos”. These claims go hand in hand with the assumption that there is a distinction to be drawn between normal and abnormal adult specimens of the species. There is, common sense tells us, a sense in which normal adult humans have two legs, two eyes, one heart and two kidneys at specific locations in the body; they also have various dispositions, for instance, to feel pain and to feel emotions, and a set of capacities, such as for perception and for reasoning. And these, so it seems, may be missing, or under- or overdeveloped in abnormal specimens.

Sober has influentially described accounts that work with such teleological assumptions as adhering to an Aristotelian “Natural State Model” (Sober 1980: 353ff.). Such accounts work with a distinction that has no place in evolutionary biology, according to which variation of properties across populations is the key to evolution. Hence, no particular end states of organisms are privileged as “natural” or “normal” (Hull 1986: 7ff.). So any account that privileges particular morphological, behavioural or psychological human features has to provide good reasons that are both non-evolutionary and yet compatible with the evolutionary account of species. Because of the way that the notion of the normal is frequently employed to exclude and oppress, those reasons should be particularly good (Silvers 1998; Dupré 2003: 119ff.; Richter 2011: 43ff.; Kronfeldner 2018: 15ff.).

The kinds of reasons that may be advanced could either be internal to, or independent of the biological sciences. If the former, then various theoretical options may seem viable. The first grounds in the claim that, although species are not natural kinds and are thus unsuited to figuring in laws of nature (Hull 1987: 171), they do support descriptions with a significant degree of generality, some of which may be important (Hull 1984: 19). A theory of human nature developed on this basis should explain the kind of importance on the basis of which particular properties are emphasised. The second theoretical option is pluralism about the metaphysics of species: in spite of the fairly broad consensus that species are defined as units of evolution, the pluralist can deny the primacy of evolutionary dynamics, arguing that other epistemic aims allow the ecologist, the systematist or the ethologist to work with an equally legitimate concept of species that is not, or not exclusively genealogical (cf. Hull 1984: 36; Kitcher 1986: 320ff.; Hull 1987: 178–81; Dupré 1993: 43f.). The third option involves a relaxation of the concept of natural kinds, such that it no longer entails the instantiation of intrinsic, necessary, sufficient and spatiotemporally unrestricted properties, but is nevertheless able to support causal explanations. Such accounts aim to reunite taxonomic and explanatory criteria, thus allowing species taxa to count as natural kinds after all (Boyd 1999a; R. Wilson, Barker, & Brigandt 2007: 196ff.). Where, finally , the reasons advanced for privileging certain properties are independent of biology, these tend to concern features of humans’—“our”—self-understanding as participants in, rather than observers of, a particular form of life. These are likely to be connected to normative considerations. Here again, it seems that a special explanation will be required for why these privileged properties should be grouped under the rubric “human nature”.

The accounts to be described in the next subsection (3.2) of this entry are examples of the first strategy. Section 4 includes discussion of the relaxed natural kinds strategy. Section 5 focuses on accounts of human nature developed from a participant perspective and also notes the support that the pluralist metaphysical strategy might be taken to provide.

Begin, then, with the idea that to provide an account of “human nature” is to circumscribe a set of generalisations concerning humans. An approach of this sort sees the properties thus itemised as specifically “human” in as far as they are common among species specimens. So the privilege accorded to these properties is purely statistical and “normal” means statistically normal. Note that taking the set of statistically normal properties of humans as a non-teleological replacement for the fully developed human form retains from the original package the possibility of labelling as “human nature” either those properties themselves (TP3) or their developmental cause (TP2). Either approach avoids the classificatory worries dealt with in section 2 : it presupposes that those organisms whose properties are relevant are already distinguished as such specimens. What is to be explained is, then, the ways humans generally, though not universally, are. And among these ways are ways they may share with most specimens of some other species, in particular those that belong to the same order (primates) and the same class (mammals).

One should be clear what follows from this interpretation of “human”. The organisms among whom statistical frequency is sought range over those generated after speciation around 150,000 years ago to those that will exist immediately prior to the species’ extinction. On the one hand, because of the variability intrinsic to species, we are in the dark as to the properties that may or may not characterise those organisms that will turn out to be the last of the taxon. On the other hand, the time lag of around 100,000 years between the first anatomically modern humans and the general onset of behavioural modernity around the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic means that there are likely to be many widespread psychological properties of contemporary humans that were not possessed by the majority of the species’ specimens during two thirds of the species’ history. This is true even if the practices seen as the signatures of behavioural modernity (see §1.1 ) developed sporadically, disappeared and reappeared at far removed points of time and space over tens of thousands of years before 50,000 ka (McBrearty & Brooks 2000; Sterelny 2011).

According to several authors (Machery 2008; 2018; Samuels 2012; Ramsey 2013), the expression “human nature” should be used to group properties that are the focus of much current behavioural, psychological and social science. However, as the cognitive and psychological sciences are generally interested in present-day humans, there is a mismatch between scientific focus and a grouping criterion that takes in all the properties generally or typically instantiated by specimens of the entire taxon. For this reason, the expression “human nature” is likely to refer to properties of an even more temporally restricted set of organisms belonging to the species. That restriction can be thought of in indexical terms, i.e., as a restriction to contemporary humans. However, some authors claim explicitly that their accounts entail that human nature can change (Ramsey 2013: 992; Machery 2018: 20). Human nature would then be the object of temporally indexed investigations, as is, for example, the weight of individual humans in everyday contexts. (Without temporal specification, there is no determinate answer to a question such as “How much did David Hume weigh?”) An example of Machery’s is dark skin colour. This characteristic, he claims, ceased to be a feature of human nature thus understood 7,000 years ago, if that was when skin pigmentation became polymorphic. The example indicates that the temporal range may be extremely narrow from an evolutionary point of view.

Such accounts are both compatible with evolutionary theory and coherent. However, in as far as they are mere summary or list conceptions, it is unclear what their epistemic value might be. They will tend to accord with everyday common sense, for which “human nature” may in a fairly low-key sense simply be the properties that (contemporary) humans generally tend to manifest (Roughley 2011: 16). They will also conform to one level of the expression’s use in Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), which, in an attempt to provide a human “mental geography” (1748 [1970: 13]), lists a whole series of features, such as prejudice (1739–40, I,iii,13), selfishness (III,ii,5), a tendency to temporal discounting (III,ii,7) and an addiction to general rules (III,ii,9).

Accounts of this kind have been seen as similar in content to field guides for other animals (Machery 2008: 323; Godfrey-Smith 2014: 139). As Hull points out, within a restricted ecological context and a short period of evolutionary time, the ascription of readily observable morphological or behavioural characteristics to species specimens is a straightforward and unproblematic enterprise (Hull 1987: 175). However, the analogy is fairly unhelpful, as the primary function of assertions in field guides is to provide a heuristics for amateur classification. In contrast, a list conception of the statistically normal properties of contemporary humans presupposes identification of the organisms in question as humans. Moreover, such accounts certainly do not entail easy epistemic access to the properties in question, which may only be experimentally discovered. Nevertheless, there remains something correct about the analogy, as such accounts are a collection of assertions linked only by the fact that they are about the same group of organisms (Sterelny 2018: 123).

More sophisticated nature documentaries may summarise causal features of the lives of animals belonging to specific species. An analogous conception of human nature has also been proposed, according to which human nature is a set of pervasive and robust causal nexuses amongst humans. The list that picks out this set would specify causal connections between antecedent properties, such as having been exposed to benzene or subject to abuse as a child, and consequent properties, such as developing cancer or being aggressive towards one’s own children (Ramsey 2013: 988ff.). Human nature thus understood would have an explanatory component, a component internal to each item on the list. Human nature itself would, however, not be explanatory, but rather the label for a list of highly diverse causal connections.

An alternative way to integrate an explanatory component in a statistical normality account involves picking out that set of statistically common properties that have a purely evolutionary explanation (Machery 2008; 2018). This reinterpretation of the concept of naturalness that featured in the original package (TP1) involves a contrast with social learning. Processes grouped together under this latter description are taken to be alternative explanations to those provided by evolution. However, learning plays a central role, not only in the development of individual humans, but also in the iterated interaction of entire populations with environments structured and restructured through such interaction (Stotz 2010: 488ff.; Sterelny 2012: 23ff.). Hence, the proposal raises serious epistemic questions as to how the distinction is precisely to be drawn and operationalised. (For discussion, see Prinz 2012; Lewens 2012: 464ff.; Ramsey 2013: 985; Machery 2018: 15ff.; Sterelny 2018: 116; Kronfeldner 2018: 147ff.).

4. Explanatory Human Properties

The replacement of the concept of a fully developed form with a statistical notion yields a deflationary account of human nature with, at most, restricted explanatory import. The correlative, explanatory notion in the original package, that of the fully developed form’s blueprint (TP2), has to some authors seemed worth reframing in terms made possible by advances in modern biology, particularly in genetics.

Clearly, there must be explanations of why humans generally walk on two legs, speak and plan many of their actions in advance. Genealogical, or what have been called “ultimate” (Mayr) or “historical” (Kitcher) explanations can advert to the accumulation of coherence among entrenched, stable properties along a lineage. These may well have resulted from selection pressures shared by the relevant organisms (cf. Wimsatt 2003; Lewens 2009). The fact that there are exceptions to any generalisations concerning contemporary humans does not entail that there is no need for explanations of such exception-allowing generalisations. Plausibly, these general, though not universal truths will have “structural explanations”, that is, explanations in terms of underlying structures or mechanisms (Kitcher 1986: 320; Devitt 2008: 353). These structures, so seems, might to a significant degree be inscribed in humans’ DNA.

The precise details of rapidly developing empirical science will improve our understanding of the extent to which there is a determinate relationship between contemporary humans’ genome and their physical, psychological and behavioural properties. There is, however, little plausibility that the blueprint metaphor might be applicable to the way DNA is transcribed, translated and interacts with its cellular environment. Such interaction is itself subject to influence by the organism’s external environment, including its social environment (Dupré 2001: 29ff.; 2003: 111ff.; Griffiths 2011: 326; Prinz 2012: 17ff.; Griffiths & Tabery 2013: 71ff.; Griffiths & Stotz 2013: 98ff., 143ff.). For example, the feature of contemporary human life for which there must according to Aristotle be some kind of blueprint, viz. rational agency, is, as Sterelny has argued, so strongly dependent on social scaffolding that any claim to the effect that human rationality is somehow genetically programmed ignores the causal contributions of manifestly indispensable environmental factors (Sterelny 2018: 120).

Nevertheless, humans do generally develop a specific set of physiological features, such as two lungs, one stomach, one pancreas and two eyes. Moreover, having such a bodily architecture is, according to the evidence from genetics, to a significant extent the result of developmental programmes that ground in gene regulatory networks (GRNs). These are stretches of non-coding DNA that regulate gene transcription. GRNs are modular, more or less strongly entrenched structures. The most highly conserved of these tend to be the phylogenetically most archaic (Carroll 2000; Walsh 2006: 436ff.; Willmore 2012: 227ff.). The GRNs responsible for basic physiological features may be taken, in a fairly innocuous sense, to belong to an evolved human nature.

Importantly, purely morphological features have generally not been the explananda of accounts that have gone under the rubric “human nature”. What has frequently motivated explanatory accounts thus labelled is the search for underlying structures responsible for generally shared psychological features. “Evolutionary Psychologists” have built a research programme around the claim that humans share a psychological architecture that parallels that of their physiology. This, they believe, consists of a structured set of psychological “organs” or modules (Tooby & Cosmides 1990: 29f.; 1992: 38, 113). This architecture is, they claim, in turn the product of developmental programmes inscribed in humans’ DNA (1992: 45). Such generally distributed developmental programmes they label “human nature” (1990: 23).

This conception raises the question of how analogous the characteristic physical and psychological “architectures” are. For one thing, the physical properties that tend to appear in such lists are far more coarse-grained than the candidates for shared psychological properties (D. Wilson 1994: 224ff.): the claim is not just that humans tend to have perceptual, desiderative, doxastic and emotional capacities, but that the mental states that realise these capacities tend to have contents of specific types. Perhaps an architecture of the former kind—of a formal psychology—is a plausible, if relatively unexciting candidate for the mental side of what an evolved human nature should explain. Either way, any such conception needs to adduce criteria for the individuation of such “mental organs” (D. Wilson 1994: 233). Relatedly, if the most strongly entrenched developmental programmes are the most archaic, it follows that, although these will be species-typical, they will not be species-specific. Programmes for the development of body parts have been identified for higher taxa, rather than for species.

A further issue that dogs any such attempts to explicate the “human” dimension of human nature in terms of developmental programmes inscribed in human DNA concerns Evolutionary Psychologists’ assertion that the programmes are the same in every specimen of the species. This assertion goes hand in hand with the claim that what is explained by such programmes is a deep psychological structure that is common to almost all humans and underlies the surface diversity of behavioural and psychological phenomena (Tooby & Cosmides 1990: 23f.). For Evolutionary Psychologists, the (near-)universality of both developmental programmes and deep psychological structure has an ultimate explanation in evolutionary processes that mark their products as natural in the sense of TP1. Both, they claim, are adaptations. These are features that were selected for because their possession in the past conferred a fitness advantage on their possessors. Evolutionary Psychologists conceive that advantage as conferred by the fulfilment of some specific function. They summarise selection for that function as “design”, which they take to have operated equally on all species specimens since the Pleistocene. This move reintroduces the teleological idea of a fully developed form beyond mere statistical normality (TP3).

This move has been extensively criticised. First, selection pressures operate at the level of groups and hence need not lead to the same structures in all a group’s members (D. Wilson 1994: 227ff.; Griffiths 2011: 325; Sterelny 2018: 120). Second, other evolutionary mechanisms than natural selection might be explanatorily decisive. Genetic drift or mutation and recombination might, for example, also confer “naturalness” in the sense of evolutionary genesis (Buller 2000: 436). Third, as we have every reason to assume that the evolution of human psychology is ongoing, evolutionary biology provides little support for the claim that particular programmes and associated traits evolved to fixity in the Pleistocene (Buller 2000: 477ff.; Downes 2010).

Perhaps, however, there might turn out to be gene control networks that do generally structure certain features of the psychological development of contemporary humans (Walsh 2006: 440ff.). The quest for such GNRs can, then, count as the search for an explanatory nature of contemporary humans, where the explanatory function thus sought is divorced from any classificatory role.

There has, however, been a move in general philosophy of science that, if acceptable, would transform the relationship between the taxonomic and explanatory features of species. This move was influentially initiated by Richard Boyd (1999a). It begins with the claim that the attempt to define natural kinds in terms of spatiotemporally unrestricted, intrinsic, necessary and sufficient conditions is a hangover from empiricism that should be abandoned by realist metaphysics. Instead, natural kinds should be understood as kinds that support induction and explanation, where generalisations at work in such processes need not be exceptionless. Thus understood, essences of natural kinds, i.e., their “natures”, need be neither intrinsic nor be possessed by all and only members of the kinds. Instead, essences consist of property clusters integrated by stabilising mechanisms (“homeostatic property clusters”, HPCs). These are networks of causal relations such that the presence of certain properties tends to generate or uphold others and the workings of underlying mechanisms contribute to the same effect. Boyd names storms, galaxies and capitalism as plausible examples (Boyd 1999b: 82ff.). However, he takes species to be the paradigmatic HPC kinds. According to this view, the genealogical character of a species’ nature does not undermine its causal role. Rather, it helps to explain the specific way in which the properties cohere that make up the taxon’s essence. Moreover, these can include extrinsic properties, for example, properties of constructed niches (Boyd 1991: 142, 1999a: 164ff.; Griffiths 1999: 219ff.; R. Wilson et al. 2007: 202ff.).

Whether such an account can indeed adequately explain taxonomic practice for species taxa is a question that can be left open here (see Ereshefsky & Matthen 2005: 16ff.). By its own lights the account does not identify conditions for belonging to a species such as Homo sapiens (Samuels 2012: 25f.). Whether it enables the identification of factors that play the explanatory roles that the term “human nature” might be supposed to pick out is perhaps the most interesting question. Two ways in which an account of human nature might be developed from such a starting point have been sketched.

According to Richard Samuels’ proposal, human nature should be understood as the empirically discoverable proximal mechanisms responsible for psychological development and for the manifestation of psychological capacities. These will include physiological mechanisms, such as the development of the neural tube, as well as environmentally scaffolded learning procedures; they will also include the various modular systems distinguished by cognitive science, such as visual processing and memory systems (Samuels 2012: 22ff.). Like mere list conceptions (cf. §3.2 ), such an account has a precedent in Hume, for whom human nature also includes causal “principles” that structure operations of the human mind (1739–40, Intro.), for example, the mechanisms of sympathy (III,iii,1; II,ii,6). Hume, however, thought of the relevant causal principles as intrinsic.

A second proposal, advanced by Paul Griffiths and Karola Stotz, explicitly suggests taking explanandum and explanans to be picked out by different uses of the expression "human nature". In both cases, the “nature” in question is that of the taxon, not of individual organisms. The former use simply refers to “what human beings are like”, where “human beings” means all species specimens. Importantly, this characterisation does not aim at shared characteristics, but is open for polymorphisms both across a population and across life stages of individual organisms. The causal conception of human nature, what explains this spectrum of similarity and difference in life histories, is equated by Griffiths and Stotz with the organism-environment system that supports human development. It thus includes all the genetic, epigenetic and environmental resources responsible for varying human life cycles (Griffiths 2011: 319; Stotz & Griffiths 2018, 66f.). It follows that explanatory human nature at one point in time can be radically different from human nature at some other point in time.

Griffiths and Stotz are clear that this account diverges significantly from traditional accounts, as it rejects assumptions that human development has a goal, that human nature is possessed by all and only specimens of the species and that it consists of intrinsic properties. They see these assumptions as features of the folk biology of human nature that is as scientifically relevant as are folk conceptions of heat for its scientific understanding (Stotz 2010: 488; Griffiths 2011: 319ff.; Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 60ff.). This raises the question as to whether such a developmental systems account should not simply advocate abandoning the term, as is suggested by Sterelny (2018) on the basis of closely related considerations. A reason for not doing so might lie in the fact that, as talk of “human nature” is often practised with normative intent or at least with normative consequences (Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 71f.), use of the term to pick out the real, complex explanatory factors at work might help to counter those normative uses that employ false, folk biological assumptions.

Explanatory accounts that emphasise developmental plasticity in the products of human DNA, in the neural architecture of the brain and in the human mind tend to reject the assumption that explanations of what humans are like should focus on intrinsic features. It should, however, be noted that such accounts can be interpreted as assigning the feature of heightened plasticity the key role in such explanations (cf. Montagu 1956: 79). Accounts that make plasticity causally central also raise the question as to whether there are not biological features that in turn explain it and should therefore be assigned a more central status in a theory of explanatory human nature.

A prime candidate for this role is what the zoologist Adolf Portmann labelled human “secondary altriciality”, a unique constellation of features of the human neonate relative to other primates: human neonates are, in their helplessness and possession of a relatively undeveloped brain, neurologically and behaviourally altricial, that is, in need of care. However they are also born with open and fully functioning sense organs, otherwise a mark of precocial species, in which neonates are able to fend for themselves (Portmann 1951: 44ff.). The facts that the human neonate brain is less than 30% of the size of the adult brain and that brain development after birth continues at the fetal rate for the first year (Walker & Ruff 1993, 227) led the anthropologist Ashley Montagu to talk of “exterogestation” (Montagu 1961: 156). With these features in mind, Portmann characterised the care structures required by prolonged infant helplessness as the “social uterus” (Portmann 1967: 330). Finally, the fact that the rapid development of the infant brain takes place during a time in which the infant’s sense organs are open and functioning places an adaptive premium on learning that is unparalleled among organisms (Gould 1977: 401; cf. Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 70).

Of course, these features are themselves contingent products of evolution that could be outlived by the species. Gould sees them as components of a general retardation of development that has characterised human evolution (Gould 1977: 365ff.), where “human” should be seen as referring to the clade—all the descendants of a common ancestor—rather than to the species. Anthropologists estimate that secondary altriciality characterised the lineage as from Homo erectus 1.5 million years ago (Rosenberg & Trevathan 1995: 167). We are, then, dealing with a set of deeply entrenched features, features that were in place long before behavioural modernity.

It is conceivable that the advent of secondary altriciality was a key transformation in generating the radical plasticity of human development beginning with early hominins. However, as Sterelny points out, there are serious difficulties with isolating any particular game changer. Secondary altriciality, or the plasticity that may in part be explained by it, would thus seem to fall victim to the same verdict as the game changers named by the traditional human nature slogans. However, maybe it is more plausible to think in terms of a matrix of traits: perhaps a game-changing constellation of properties present in the population after the split from pan can be shown to have generated forms of niche construction that fed back into and modified the original traits. These modifications may in turn have had further psychological and behavioural consequences in steps that plausibly brought selective advantages (Sterelny 2018: 115).

5. Human Nature, the Participant Perspective and Morality

In such a culture-mind coevolutionary account, there may be a place for the referents of some of the traditional philosophical slogans intended to pin down “the human essence“ or “human nature”—reason, linguistic capacity ( “ the speaking animal”, Herder 1772 [2008: 97]), a more general symbolic capacity ( animal symbolicum , Cassirer 1944: 44), freedom of the will (Pico della Mirandola 1486 [1965: 5]; Sartre 1946 [2007: 29, 47]), a specific, “political” form of sociality, or a unique type of moral motivation (Hutcheson 1730: §15). These are likely, at best, to be the (still evolving) products in contemporary humans of processes set in motion by a trait constellation that includes proto-versions of (some of) these capacities. Such a view may also be compatible with an account of “what contemporary humans are like” that abstracts from the evolutionary time scale of eons and focuses instead on the present (cf. Dupré 1993: 43), whilst neither merely cataloguing widely distributed traits ( §3.2 ) nor attempting explanations in terms of the human genome ( §4.1 ). The traditional slogans appear to be attempts to summarise some such accounts. It seems clear, though, that their aims are significantly different from those of the biologically, or otherwise scientifically orientated positions thus far surveyed.

Two features of such accounts are worth emphasising, both of which we already encountered in Aristotle’s contribution to the original package. The first involves a shift in perspective from that of the scientific observer to that of a participant in a contemporary human life form. Whereas the human—or non-human—biologist may ask what modern humans are like, just as they may ask what bonobos are like, the question that traditional philosophical accounts of human nature are plausibly attempting to answer is what it is like to live one’s life as a contemporary human. This question is likely to provoke the counter-question as to whether there is anything that it is like to live simply as a contemporary human, rather than as a human-in-a-specific-historical-and-cultural context (Habermas 1958: 32; Geertz 1973: 52f.; Dupré 2003: 110f.). For the traditional sloganeers, the answer is clearly affirmative. The second feature of such accounts is that they tend to take it that reference to the capacities named in the traditional slogans is in some sense normatively , in particular, ethically significant .

The first claim of such accounts, then, is that there is some property of contemporary humans that is in some way descriptively or causally central to participating in their form of life. The second is that such participation involves subjection to normative standards rooted in the possession of some such property. Importantly, there is a step from the first to the second form of significance, and justification of the step requires argument. Even from a participant perspective, there is no automatic move from explanatory to normative significance.

According to an “internal”, participant account of human nature, certain capacities of contemporary, perhaps modern humans unavoidably structure the way they (we) live their (our) lives. Talk of “structuring” refers to three kinds of contributions to the matrix of capacities and dispositions that both enable and constrain the ways humans live their lives. These are contributions, first, to the specific shape other features of humans lives have and, second, to the way other such features hang together (Midgley 2000: 56ff.; Roughley 2011: 16ff.). Relatedly, they also make possible a whole new set of practices. All three relations are explanatory, although their explanatory role appears not necessarily to correspond to the role corresponding features, or earlier versions of the features, might have played in the evolutionary genealogy of contemporary human psychology. Having linguistic capacities is a prime candidate for the role of such a structural property: human perception, emotion, action planning and thought are all plausibly transformed in linguistic creatures, as are the connections between perception and belief, and the myriad relationships between thought and behaviour, connections exploited and deepened in a rich set of practices unavailable to non-linguistic animals. Similar things could be claimed for other properties named by the traditional slogans.

In contrast to the ways in which such capacities have frequently been referred to in the slogan mode, particularly to the pathos that has tended to accompany it, it seems highly implausible that any one such property will stand alone as structurally significant. It is more likely that we should be picking out a constellation of properties, a constellation that may well include properties variants of which are possessed by other animals. Other properties, including capacities that may be specific to contemporary humans, such as humour, may be less plausible candidates for a structural role.

Note that the fact that such accounts aim to answer a question asked from the participant perspective does not rule out that the features in question may be illuminated in their role for human self-understanding by data from empirical science. On the contrary, it seems highly likely that disciplines such as developmental and comparative psychology, and neuroscience will contribute significantly to an understanding of the possibilities and constraints inherent in the relevant capacities and in the way they interact.

5.2. Human Nature and the Human ergon

The paradigmatic strategy for deriving ethical consequences from claims about structural features of the human life form is the Platonic and Aristotelian ergon or function argument. The first premise of Aristotle’s version ( Nicomachean Ethics 1097b–1098a) connects function and goodness: if the characteristic function of an entity of a type X is to φ, then a good entity of type X is one that φs well. Aristotle confers plausibility on the claim by using examples such as social roles and bodily organs. If the function of an eye as an exemplar of its kind is to enable seeing, then a good eye is one that enables its bearer to see well. The second premise of the argument is a claim we encountered in section 1.4 of this entry, a claim we can now see as predicating a structural property of human life, the exercise of reason. According to this claim, the function or end of individual humans as humans is, depending on interpretation (Nussbaum 1995: 113ff.), either the exercise of reason or life according to reason. If this is correct, it follows that a good human being is one whose life centrally involves the exercise of, or life in accordance with, reason.

In the light of the discussion so far, it ought to be clear that, as it stands, the second premise of this argument is incompatible with the evolutionary biology of species. It asserts that the exercise of reason is not only the key structural property of human life, but also the realization of the fully developed human form. No sense can be made of this latter notion in evolutionary terms. Nevertheless, a series of prominent contemporary ethicists—Alasdair MacIntyre (1999), Rosalind Hursthouse (1999), Philippa Foot (2001) and Martha Nussbaum (2006)—have all made variants of the ergon argument central to their ethical theories. As each of these authors advance some version of the second premise, it is instructive to examine the ways in which they aim to avoid the challenge from evolutionary biology.

Before doing so, it is first worth noting that any ethical theory or theory of value is engaged in an enterprise that has no clear place in an evolutionary analysis. If we want to know what goodness is or what “good” means, evolutionary theory is not the obvious place to look. This is particularly clear in view of the fact that evolutionary theory operates at the level of populations (Sober 1980: 370; Walsh 2006: 434), whereas ethical theory operates, at least primarily, at the level of individual agents. However, the specific conflict between evolutionary biology and neo-Aristotelian ethics results from the latter’s constructive use of the concept of species and, in particular, of a teleological conception of a fully developed form of individual members of the species “ qua members of [the] species” (MacIntyre 1999: 64, 71; cf. Thompson 2008: 29; Foot 2001: 27). The characterisation of achieving that form as fulfilling a “function”, which helps the analogy with bodily organs and social roles, is frequently replaced in contemporary discussions by talk of “flourishing” (Aristotle’s eudaimonia ). Such talk more naturally suggests comparisons with the lives of other organisms (although Aristotle himself excludes other animals from eudaimonia ; cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1009b). The concept of flourishing in turn picks out biological—etymologically: botanical—processes, but again not of a sort that play a role in evolutionary theory. It also seems primarily predicated of individual organisms. It may play a role in ecology; it is, however, most clearly at home in practical applications of biological knowledge, as in horticulture. In this respect, it is comparable to the concept of health.

Neo-Aristotelians claim that to describe an organism, whether a plant or a non-human or human animal, as flourishing is to measure it against a standard that is specific to the species to which it belongs. To do so is to evaluate it as a more or less good “specimen of its species (or sub-species)” (Hursthouse 1999: 198). The key move is then to claim that moral evaluation is, “quite seriously” (Foot 2001: 16), evaluation of the same sort: just as a non-defective animal or plant exemplifies flourishing within the relevant species’ life form, someone who is morally good is someone who exemplifies human flourishing, i.e., the fully developed form of the species. This metaethical claim has provoked the worry as to whether such attributions to other organisms are really anything more than classifications, or at most evaluations of “stretched and deflated” kinds that are missing the key feature of authority that we require for genuine normativity (Lenman 2005: 46ff.).

Independently of questions concerning their theory of value, ethical Neo-Aristotelians need to respond to the question of how reference to a fully developed form of the species can survive the challenge from evolutionary theory. Three kinds of response may appear promising.

The first adverts to the plurality of forms of biological science, claiming that there are life sciences, such as physiology, botany, zoology and ethology in the context of which such evaluations have a place (Hursthouse 1999: 202; 2012: 172; MacIntyre 1999: 65). And if ethology can legitimately attribute not only characteristic features, but also defects or flourishing to species members, in spite of species not being natural kinds, then there is little reason why ethics shouldn’t do so too. This strategy might ground in one of the moves sketched in section 3.1 of this entry. It might be argued, with Kitcher and Dupré, that such attributions are legitimate in other branches of biological science because there is a plurality of species concepts, indeed of kinds of species, where these are relative to epistemic interests. Or the claim might simply rest on a difference in what is taken to be the relevant time frame, where temporal relevance is indexed relative to the present. In ethics we are, it might be claimed, interested in humans as they are “at the moment and for a few millennia back and for maybe not much longer in the future” (Hursthouse 2012: 171).

This move amounts to the concession that talk of “the human species” is not to be understood literally. Whether this concession undermines the ethical theories that use the term is perhaps unclear. It leaves open the possibility that, as human nature may change significantly, there may be significant changes in what it means for humans to flourish and therefore in what is ethically required. This might be seen as a virtue, rather than a vice of the view.

A second response to the challenge from evolutionary biology aims to draw metaphysical consequences from epistemic or semantic claims. Michael Thompson has argued that what he calls alternatively “the human life form” and “the human species” is an a priori category. Thompson substantiates this claim by examining forms of discourse touched on in section 3.2 , forms of discourse that are generally taken to be of mere heuristic importance for amateur practices of identification, viz. field guides or animal documentaries. Statements such as “The domestic cat has four legs, two eyes, two ears and guts in its belly”, are, Thompson claims, instances of an important kind of predication that is neither tensed nor quantifiable. He calls these “natural historical descriptions” or “Aristotelian categoricals” (Thompson 2008: 64ff.). Such generic claims are not, he argues, made false where what is predicated is less than universal, or even statistically rare. Decisively, according to Thompson, our access to the notion of the human life form is non-empirical. It is, he claims, a presupposition of understanding ourselves from the first-person perspective as breathing, eating or feeling pain (Thompson 2004: 66ff.). Thus understood, the concept is independent of biology and therefore, if coherent, immune to problems raised by the Darwinian challenge.

Like Foot and Hursthouse, Thompson thinks that his Aristotelian categoricals allow inferences to specific judgments that members of species are defective (Thompson 2004: 54ff.; 2008: 80). He admits that such judgments in the case of the human life form are likely to be fraught with difficulties, but nevertheless believes that judgments of (non-)defective realization of a life form are the model for ethical evaluation (Thompson 2004: 30, 81f.). It may seem unclear how this might be the case in view of the fact that access to the human life form is supposed to be given as a presupposition of using the concept of “I”. Another worry is that the everyday understanding on which Thompson draws may be nothing other than a branch of folk biology. The folk tendency to ascribe teleological essences to species, as to “races” and genders, is no indication of the reality of such essences (Lewens 2012: 469f.; Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 60ff.; cf. Pellegrin 1982 [1986: 16ff., 120] and Charles 2000: 343ff., 368, on Aristotle’s own orientation to the usage of “the people”).

A final response to evolutionary biologists’ worries aims equally to distinguish the Neo-Aristotelian account of human nature from that of the sciences. However, it does so not by introducing a special metaphysics of “life forms”, but by explicitly constructing an ethical concept of human nature. Martha Nussbaum argues that the notion of human nature in play in what she calls “Aristotelian essentialism” is, as she puts it, “internal and evaluative”. It is a hermeneutic product of “human” self-understanding, constructed from within our best ethical outlook: “an ethical theory of human nature”, she claims,

should force us to answer for ourselves, on the basis of our very own ethical judgment, the question which beings are fully human ones. (Nussbaum 1995: 121f.; cf. Nussbaum 1992: 212ff.; 2006: 181ff.; McDowell 1980 [1998: 18ff.]; Hursthouse 1999: 229; 2012: 174f.)

There can be no question here of moving from a biological “is” to an ethical “ought”; rather, which features are taken to belong to human nature is itself seen as the result of ethical deliberation. Such a conception maintains the claim that the key ethical standard is that of human flourishing. However, it is clear that what counts as flourishing can only be specified on the basis of ethical deliberation, understood as striving for reflective equilibrium (Nussbaum 2006: 352ff.). In view of such a methodological proposal, there is a serious question as to what work is precisely done by the concept of human nature.

Neo-Aristotelians vary in the extent to which they flesh out a conception of species-specific flourishing. Nussbaum draws up a comprehensive, open-ended catalogue of what she calls “the central human capacities”. These are in part picked out because of their vulnerability to undermining or support by political measures. They include both basic bodily needs and more specifically human capacities, such as for humour, play, autonomy and practical reason (Nussbaum 1992: 216ff.; 2006: 76ff.). Such a catalogue allows the setting of three thresholds, below which a human organism would not count as living a human life at all (anencephalic children, for instance), as living a fully human life or as living a good human life (Nussbaum 2006: 181). Nussbaum explicitly argues that being of human parents is insufficient for crossing the first, evaluatively set threshold. Her conception is partly intended to provide guidelines as to how societies should conceive disability and as to when it is appropriate to take political measures in order to enable agents with nonstandard physical or mental conditions to cross the second and third thresholds.

Nussbaum has been careful to insist that enabling independence, rather than providing care, should be the prime aim. Nevertheless, the structure of an account that insists on a “species norm”, below which humans lacking certain capacities count as less than fully flourishing, has prompted accusations of illiberality. According to the complaint, it disrespects the right of members of, for example, deaf communities to set the standards for their own forms of life (Glackin 2016: 320ff.).

Other accounts of species-specific flourishing have been considerably more abstract. According to Hursthouse, plants flourish when their parts and operations are well suited to the ends of individual survival and continuance of the species. In social animals, flourishing also tends to involve characteristic pleasure and freedom from pain, and a contribution to appropriate functioning of relevant social groups (Hursthouse 1999: 197ff.). The good of human character traits conducive to pursuit of these four ends is transformed, Hursthouse claims, by the addition of “rationality”. As a result, humans flourish when they do what they correctly take themselves to have reason to do—under the constraint that they do not thereby cease to foster the four ends set for other social animals (Hursthouse 1999: 222ff.). Impersonal benevolence is, for example, because of this constraint, unlikely to be a virtue. In such an ethical outlook, what particular agents have reason to do is the primary standard; it just seems to be applied under particular constraints. A key question is thus whether the content of this primary standard is really determined by the notion of species-specific flourishing.

Where Hursthouse’s account builds up to, and attempts to provide a “natural” framework for, the traditional Aristotelian ergon of reason, MacIntyre builds his account around the claim that flourishing specific to the human “species” is essentially a matter of becoming an “independent practical reasoner” (MacIntyre 1999: 67ff.). It is because of the central importance of reasoning that, although human flourishing shares certain preconditions with the flourishing, say, of dolphins, it is also vulnerable in specific ways. MacIntyre argues that particular kinds of social practices enable the development of human reasoning capacities and that, because independent practical reasoning is, paradoxically, at core cooperatively developed and structured, the general aim of human flourishing is attained by participation in networks in local communities (MacIntyre 1999: 108). “Independent practical reasoners” are “dependent rational animals”. MacIntyre’s account thus makes room on an explanatory level for the evolutionary insight that humans can only become rational in a socio-cultural context which provides scaffolding for the development and exercise of rationality ( §4 ). Normatively, however, this point is subordinated to the claim that, from the point of view of participation in the contemporary human life form, flourishing corresponds to the traditional slogan.

MacIntyre, Hursthouse and Nussbaum (Nussbaum 2006: 159f.) all aim to locate the human capacity for reasoning within a framework that encompasses other animals. Each argues that, although the capacities to recognise reasons as reasons and for deliberation on their basis transform the needs and abilities humans share with other animals, the reasons in question remain in some way dependent on humans’ embodied and social form of life. This emphasis is intended to distinguish an Aristotelian approach from other approaches for which the capacity to evaluate reasons for action as reasons and to distance oneself from ones desires is also the “central difference” between humans and other animals (Korsgaard 2006: 104; 2018: 38ff.; cf. MacIntyre 1999: 71ff.). According to Korsgaard’s Kantian interpretation of Aristotle’s ergon argument, humans cannot act without taking a normative stand on whether their desires provide them with reasons to act. This she takes to be the key structural feature of their life, which brings with it “a whole new way of functioning well or badly” (Korsgaard 2018: 48; cf. 1996: 93). In such an account, “human nature” is monistically understood as this one structural feature which is so transformative that the concept of life applicable to organisms that instantiate it is no longer that applicable to organisms that don’t. Only “humans” live their lives, because only they possess the type of intentional control over their bodily movements that grounds in evaluation of their actions and self-evaluation as agents (Korsgaard 2006: 118; 2008: 141ff.; cf. Plessner 1928 [1975: 309f.]).

We have arrived at an interpretation of the traditional slogan that cuts it off from a metaphysics with any claims to be “naturalistic”. The claim now is that the structural effect of the capacity for reasoning transforms those features of humans that they share with other animals so thoroughly that those features pale into insignificance. What is “natural” about the capacity for reasoning for humans here is its unavoidability for contemporary members of the species, at least for those without serious mental disabilities. Such assertions also tend to shade into normative claims that discount the normative status of “animal” needs in view of the normative authority of human reasoning (cf. McDowell 1996 [1998: 172f.]).

The most radical version of this thought leads to the claim encountered towards the end of section 1.4 : that talk of “human nature” involves no essential reference at all to the species Homo sapiens or to the hominin lineage. According to this view, the kind to which contemporary humans belong is a kind to which entities could also belong who have no genealogical relationship to humans. That kind is the kind of entities that act and believe in accordance with the reasons they take themselves to have. Aliens, synthetically created agents and angels are further candidates for membership in the kind, which would, unlike biological taxa, be spatiotemporally unrestricted. The traditional term for the kind, as employed by Aquinas and Kant, is “person” (cf. Hull 1986: 9).

Roger Scruton has recently taken this line, arguing that persons can only be adequately understood in terms of a web of concepts inapplicable to other animals, concepts whose applicability grounds in an essential moral dimension of the personal life form. The concepts pick out components of a life form that is permeated by relationships of responsibility, as expressed in reactive attitudes such as indignation, guilt and gratitude. Such emotions he takes to involve a demand for accountability, and as such to be exclusive to the personal life form, not variants of animal emotions (Scruton 2017: 52). As a result, he claims, they situate their bearers in some sense “outside the natural order” (Scruton 2017: 26). According to such an account, we should embrace a methodological dualism with respect to humans: as animals, they are subject to the same kinds of biological explanations as all other organisms, but as persons, they are subject to explanations that are radically different in kind. These are explanations in terms of reasons and meanings, that is, exercises in “Verstehen”, whose applicability Scruton takes to be independent of causal explanation (Scruton 2017: 30ff., 46).

Such an account demonstrates with admirable clarity that there is no necessary connection between a theory of “human nature” and metaphysical naturalism. It also reinforces the fact, emphasised throughout this entry, that discussions of “human nature” require both serious conceptual spadework and explicit justification of the use of any one such concept rather than another.

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Aquinas, Thomas | Aristotle, General Topics: biology | Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | ethics: virtue | evolution | Kant, Immanuel | Locke, John: on real essence | naturalism: moral | natural kinds | psychology: evolutionary | species

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Michelle Hooge, Maria Kronfeldner, Nick Laskowski and Hichem Naar for their comments on earlier drafts.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

What Happens When We Reconnect With Nature

Humans have long intuited that being in nature is good for the mind and body. From indigenous adolescents completing rites of passage in the wild, to modern East Asian cultures taking “forest baths,” many have looked to nature as a place for healing and personal growth.

Why nature? No one knows for sure; but one hypothesis derived from evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson’s “ biophilia ” theory suggests that there are evolutionary reasons people seek out nature experiences. We may have preferences to be in beautiful, natural spaces because they are resource-rich environments—ones that provide optimal food, shelter, and comfort. These evolutionary needs may explain why children are drawn to natural environments and why we prefer nature to be part of our architecture.

Now, a large body of research is documenting the positive impacts of nature on human flourishing—our social, psychological, and emotional life. Over 100 studies have shown that being in nature, living near nature, or even viewing nature in paintings and videos can have positive impacts on our brains, bodies, feelings, thought processes, and social interactions. In particular, viewing nature seems to be inherently rewarding, producing a cascade of position emotions and calming our nervous systems. These in turn help us to cultivate greater openness, creativity, connection, generosity, and resilience.

In other words, science suggests we may seek out nature not only for our physical survival, but because it’s good for our social and personal well-being.

How nature helps us feel good and do good

The naturalist John Muir once wrote about the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California: “We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.” Clearly, he found nature’s awe-inspiring imagery a positive, emotive experience.

But what does the science say? Several studies have looked at how viewing awe-inspiring nature imagery in photos and videos impacts emotions and behavior. For example, in one study participants either viewed a few minutes of the inspiring documentary Planet Earth , a neutral video from a news program, or funny footage from Walk on the Wild Side . Watching a few minutes of Planet Earth led people to feel 46 percent more awe and 31 percent more gratitude than those in the other groups. This study and others like it tell us that even brief nature videos are a powerful way to feel awe , wonder, gratitude , and reverence—all positive emotions known to lead to increased well-being and physical health.

Positive emotions have beneficial effects upon social processes, too—like increasing trust, cooperation, and closeness with others. Since viewing nature appears to trigger positive emotions, it follows that nature likely has favorable effects on our social well-being.

This has been robustly confirmed in research on the benefits of living near green spaces. Most notably, the work of Frances Kuo and her colleagues finds that in poorer neighborhoods of Chicago people who live near green spaces—lawns, parks, trees—show reductions in ADHD symptoms and greater calm, as well as a stronger sense of connection to neighbors, more civility, and less violence in their neighborhoods. A later analysis confirmed that green spaces tend to have less crime.

Viewing nature in images and videos seems to shift our sense of self, diminishing the boundaries between self and others, which has implications for social interactions. In one study , participants who spent a minute looking up into a beautiful stand of eucalyptus trees reported feeling less entitled and self-important. Even simply viewing Planet Earth for five minutes led participants to report a greater sense that their concerns were insignificant and that they themselves were part of something larger compared with groups who had watched neutral or funny clips.

Need a dose of nature?

A version of this essay was produced in conjunction with the BBC's newly released Planet Earth II : an awe-inspiring tour of the world from the viewpoint of animals.

Several studies have also found that viewing nature in images or videos leads to greater “prosocial” tendencies—generosity, cooperation, and kindness. One illustrative study found that people who simply viewed 10 slides of really beautiful nature (as opposed to less beautiful nature) gave more money to a stranger in an economic game widely used to measure trust.

All of these findings raise the intriguing possibility that, by increasing positive emotions, experiencing nature even in brief doses leads to more kind and altruistic behavior.

How nature helps our health

Besides boosting happiness, positive emotion, and kindness, exposure to nature may also have physical and mental health benefits.

The benefits of nature on health and well-being have been well-documented in different European and Asian cultures. While Kuo’s evidence suggests a particular benefit for those from nature-deprived communities in the United States, the health and wellness benefits of immersion in nature seem to generalize across all different class and ethnic backgrounds.

Why is nature so healing? One possibility is that having access to nature—either by living near it or viewing it—reduces stress. In a study by Catharine Ward Thompson and her colleagues, the people who lived near larger areas of green space reported less stress and showed greater declines in cortisol levels over the course of the day.

In another study , participants who viewed a one-minute video of awesome nature rather than a video that made them feel happy reported feeling as though they had enough time “to get things done” and did not feel that “their lives were slipping away.” And studies have found that people who report feeling a good deal of awe and wonder and an awareness of the natural beauty around them actually show lower levels of a biomarker (IL-6) that could lead to a decreased likelihood of cardiovascular disease, depression, and autoimmune disease. 

Though the research is less well-documented in this area than in some others, the results to date are promising. One early study by Roger Ulrich found that patients recovered faster from cardiovascular surgery when they had a view of nature out of a window, for example.

A more recent review of studies looking at different kinds of nature immersion—natural landscapes during a walk, views from a window, pictures and videos, and flora and fauna around residential or work environments—showed that nature experiences led to reduced stress, easier recovery from illness, better physical well-being in elderly people, and behavioral changes that improve mood and general well-being.

Why we need nature

All of these findings converge on one conclusion: Being close to nature or viewing nature improves our well-being. The question still remains…how?

There is no question that being in nature—or even viewing nature pictures—reduces the physiological symptoms of stress in our bodies. What this means is that we are less likely to be anxious and fearful in nature, and thereby we can be more open to other people and to creative patterns of thought.

Also, nature often induces awe, wonder, and reverence, all emotions known to have a variety of benefits, promoting everything from well-being and altruism to humility to health.

There is also some evidence that exposure to nature impacts the brain. Viewing natural beauty (in the form of landscape paintings and video, at least) activates specific reward circuits in the brain associated with dopamine release that give us a sense of purpose, joy, and energy to pursue our goals.

But, regrettably, people seem to be spending less time outdoors and less time immersed in nature than before. It is also clear that, in the past 30 years, people’s levels of stress and sense of “busyness” have risen dramatically. These converging forces have led environmental writer Richard Louv to coin the term “ nature deficit disorder ”—a form of suffering that comes from a sense of disconnection from nature and its powers.

Perhaps we should take note and try a course corrective. The 19th century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote about nature, “There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.” The science speaks to Emerson’s intuition. It’s time to realize nature is more than just a material resource. It’s also a pathway to human health and happiness.

About the Authors

Kristophe Green

Uc berkeley.

Kristophe Green is a senior Psychology major at UC Berkeley. He is fascinated with the study of positive emotions and how they inform pro-social behavior such as empathy, altruism and compassion.

Dacher Keltner

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. , is the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence and Born to Be Good , and a co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct .

You May Also Enjoy

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How nature can make you kinder, happier, and more creative.

The Benefits of Feeling Awe

Do your kids have “nature deficit disorder”.

A Walk in the Park

How to Raise an Environmentalist

The Beauty About The Nature

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

The Stars Awaken a Certain Reverence, Because Though Always Present, They Are Inaccessible;

but all natural objects make a kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet . The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet . This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this, their warranty deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other;

who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.

Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,

— no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. 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; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.

I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

Chapter I from Nature , published as part of Nature; Addresses and Lectures

What Is The Meaning Behind Nature, The Poem?

Emerson often referred to nature as the "Universal Being" in his many lectures. It was Emerson who deeply believed there was a spiritual sense of the natural world which felt was all around him.

Going deeper still in this discussion of the "Universal Being", Emerson writes, "The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship."

It's common sense that "nature" is everything you see that is NOT man-made, or changed by man (trees, foliage, mountains, etc.), but Emerson reminds us that nature was set forth to serve man. This is the essence of human will, for man to harness nature. Every object in nature has its own beauty. Therefore, Emerson advocates to view nature as a reality by building your own world and surrounding yourself with natural beauty.

• The purpose of science is to find the theory of nature.
• Nature wears the colors of the Spirit.
• A man is fed, not to fill his belly, but so he may work.
• Each natural action is graceful.

"Material objects are necessarily kinds of scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side."

This quote is cited in numerous works and it is attributed to a "French philosopher." However, no name can be found in association with this quote.

What is the main point of Nature, by Emerson?

The central theme of Emerson's famous essay "Nature" is the harmony that exists between the natural world and human beings. In "Nature," Ralph Waldo Emerson contends that man should rid himself of material cares and instead of being burdened by unneeded stress, he can enjoy an original relation with the universe and experience what Emerson calls "the sublime."

What is the central idea of the essay Nature, by Emerson?

For Emerson, nature is not literally God but the body of God’s soul. ”Nature,” he writes, is “mind precipitated.” Emerson feels that to realize one’s role in this respect fully is to be in paradise (similar to heaven itself).

What is Emerson's view of the Nature of humans?

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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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Emerson Quotes

"Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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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61 Human Nature Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best human nature topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on human nature.

• Freud’s View of Human Nature: Psychoanalytic Theory Research In the study of human personality, Freud believed that the central part of human nature is as a result of id and the control of human decisions by the superego.
• Human Nature: Good vs Evil If a person is born in a caring and loving family, which has the knowledge to educate the child, support him/her in their beginnings and provide a perspective that is based on kindness and respect […]
• Avocado vs. Artichoke: Can Human Nature Change The essence of the avocado vs.artichoke debate lies in the dynamic of opposing ideas of essentialism and proteanism in philosophy. Both views present quite polarizing extremes and have outdated pre-conceived notions, as in the case […]
• Thomas Hobbes’ Views on Human Nature Generally, peace is achieved by creating a government and forsaking individual rights in favor of one entity to ensure humans’ chaos-less existence.
• Human Nature: Becoming Virtuous and Find Out the Nature of Man This is despite the fact that they are, to the larger extent, varying in their view of human nature and morality.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Theories of Human Nature Chapter five of Kupperman’s book “Theories of human nature” looks at great philosophers, namely Plato’s and Aristotle’s points of view in trying to define humanity. The writer tries to illustrate the complexity of defining a […]
• Human Nature in “Lord of the Flies” by Golding Considering this, the present paper will analyze the validity of the given statement by drawing on the experiences of characters in Lord of the Flies and evaluating the conditions in which they lived.
• Theories about Human Nature: Hinduism and Christianity Christianity and Hinduism are certainly at the top of the list of important attempts at explaining the origin of the universe and human nature, since approximately 47% of the world’s population belongs to these two […]
• Human Nature as a Power to Make Choices In some instances, as in the conception of the human beings as a make-up of the soul- body union, it is likewise clear that biological considerations are paramount.
• Human Nature: The Christian Worldview This mission statement affirms the organization’s commitment to a Christian perspective by stating that its activities are driven by a love for God and the spreading of God’s word as found in the Bible.
• Descartes’ View of Human Nature: Strengths and Flaws Among this view’s foremost weaknesses is named the fact that it is based upon the philosopher’s belief in the existence of God.
• Human Nature and Morality in “Hamlet” and “Dr. Faustus” These are the problems we are going to discuss in the current essay, and we are going to address for help with it such masterpieces of literature as the play “Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark” […]
• Human Nature and Instincts: Theories and Principles Dewey proposes that the term “human nature” refers to the inbuilt differentiated characteristics that human beings tend to have as regarding to thoughts, feelings and behavior.
• Exploring Human Nature, Determinism, and the Counselling Process In the discussion of past and present experiences and their effect on humans, it is impossible to disregard the importance of the past as a guide for the future.
• Human Nature in Classical Philosophy: The Age of Enlightenment According to this approach, the justice system should work to defeat the imperfection of human behavior. Delinquency can be defeated only when the society’s system is reorganized according to the principles of equality, consciousness, and […]
• Socialization as a Human Nature Development Factor However, regarding the fact that people are social creatures, human nature is formed in the process of socialization under the impact of multiple essential factors.
• Marx vs. Weber: Different Points of View on Human Nature, Power, Resistance, Society, and Politics Though the ideas of Marx and Weber may seem to be similar in some ways, it is wrong to believe that these theorists took the same positions; Marx found it obligatory to critique the activities […]
• Human Nature in Friedrich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” In a sense, Friedrich develops a style of close observation, which is evident in the “Wanderer,” where the central figure examines the ‘world below.’ Hence, in the context of typical Romantic works, the “Wanderer” stands […]
• Machiavelli’s and Hobbes’ Views on Politics and Human Nature The main theme of “The Prince” by Machiavelli is monarchical rule and survival. Machiavelli discusses in detail how a ruler should act in various situations or circumstances and establishes that the main goal of politics […]
• The Human Nature: Locke’s and Hobbes’s Views Admittedly, there were thousands of wars in the past because of the lack of different resources, from gold to cheap labor force.
• The Impact of Non-human Nature on Human Activity in Cronon’s Narrative The author concentrates on the ecological history of this region and presents the opinion that the New England landscape was predominantly formed in the 17-18th centuries.
• Wealth as a Component of Human Nature In the present capitalist economy, wealth in the form of money is the basis of all economic functions. Accumulation of wealth may stem from labor, and investment, wealth may be handed down, and wealth may […]
• Hobbes’ Political Philosophy Regarding Human Nature In fact, he is more concerned with the profane nature of God and human beings, as opposed to the sacred nature.
• The Research Of Animal Behavior And Its Impact On Understanding Human Nature The impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution on the modern understanding of nature is immeasurable. The author often fails to cite the source or support its claims with proper research, and part of his findings […]
• Human Nature and Governance by Thomas Hobbes Due to the influences of his uncle, he had a lot of acquaintances in the government that put him in a position of power and status.
• Hsun Tsu “Human Nature Is Evil”: The Human Nature According to Confucianism Despite this view of the writer he receives opposition from the Mencious view of the human nature who argues that if at all a man saw a child at the verge of falling over a […]
• The Theories of Human Nature The following examples from the work by Stevenson and Haberman demonstrate the unacceptable and acceptable instances of paraphrasing and explain the reasons for their acceptability: “We have here two systems of belief that are total […]
• Concept and Difference in Analysis of Human Nature One of the possibilities in viewing human nature is that it is the summation of human behavior and psychology. The concept of human nature has been traditionally used to refer to the subset of human […]
• Political Science: Aristotle’s View on Human Nature A citizen, for Aristotle, is an individual who has the capacity and the right to engage in the governance of a “polies”.
• East Asian Conception of Human Nature: Understanding Confucianism The Way is the core concept of the world and it is used to explain the ultimate meaning of human existence.
• Human Nature in Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto” and Dostoyevsky’s “Notes From Underground“ In such an arrangement, there is a tendency to have the opinion that the development of one individual is a benchmark for the development of another, which eventually leads to laxity among some individuals.
• Human Nature Aspects Producing Our Love of Cars When searching for a car, our emotions of the kind of our present lifestyle and also the kind of future lifestyle that we would like to adopt are triggered.
• Human Nature Debates through Political Ideologies From the early days, philosophers and scientists discussed the behavior of people and their genetics. For example, the nature side of this discussion states that people are born a certain way, and their genetics can […]
• Sci-FI Stories: Society, Human Nature and Technology Jingfang paints a dreadful picture of the future where social inequality has risen to the point where the society is split into three parts, and the differences among them are emphasized in the most vivid […]
• Theories of Human Nature One of the reasons for this is that the challenges of contemporary living in just about any part of the world are being directly or indirectly related to the fact that, as of today, Western […]
• “Theories of Human Nature” by Peter Lopson In his analysis, the writer seeks the objective and empirical category of knowledge in the science of human nature, a shift from the more speculative and theoretical methodologies.
• Human Nature: Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Chapter seven of Kupperman’s book “Theories of human nature” describes the essentiality of human imperfections to the doctrine of original sin.
• Thomas Hobbes on Human Nature and Social Contracts In the first story, he assumes that no moral, ethical and binding norms exist in the society, and individuals are seeking their personal goals only without considering the implications of their actions.
• Human Nature in Socialist View Since 1800 The work by Robert Owen, “Lectures on the Rational System of Society”, is written in the middle of the 19th century.”Socialism and Human Nature” is created by Arnold Peterson in the middle of the 20th […]
• Marxism vs. Feminism: Human Nature, Power, Conflict Marx asserts that the ruling class uses power to exploit the working class and this argument forms the principle of Marxism.
• Human Nature and Ethics in the “Talk to Her” Movie Martin Benigno is a nurse who is said to be a virgin at the beginning of the movie. It is arguably clear that Marco is compelled by the friendly love that he has for Benigno […]
• Xunzi’s Conceptions of Human Nature In the Garden of Eden, the Adam and Eve had the freedom to eat of any tree except the tree in the center of the garden.
• Marriage as Depicted in Soloveitchik’s Typology of Human Nature In the story of the first Adam, man and woman were concurrently created while in the second Adam story, Eve or the helper appeared later.
• The Views of Freud and Post Freudians on Human Nature He likens the conscious mind to the exposed tip of the iceberg and the unconscious being to the submerged regions of the iceberg.
• Kant and Shakespeare on Human Nature and Political Reality The action by the king therefore upholds the rule that man is guided by his selfish impulses and is bound to fall into temptations that lead to his abuse of power.
• Human Nature: Comparative Analysis In his view, legitimate authority should be derived from the people since the powers of the monarchs are always destructive because they are used in a way that is inconsistent with the demands of the […]
• What can we learn about human nature from our relatives, the chimpanzees? While this actions are very primitive compared to the ability that human beings possess, they demonstrate that it is in human nature to adapt to the environment. This paper has engaged in a discussion of […]
• Various theories of human nature Comprehensive theories of personality should aspire to include both a specification of human nature and an account of the major ways in which individuals differ.
• Domains of Knowledge about Human Nature by Larsen and Buss Needless to say, research on personality domain revealed that the experiences which an individual goes through in life also influence personality. The research also demonstrated that human personality is a product of both nature and […]
• Human Nature – how the intellect and the will show humans have a tendency to go beyond what humans can grasp Historically, since the dawn of oral and written communication, humans have been searching for the meaning of their own existence. Therefore, humans innately have a sense of right and wrong even in the absence of […]
• Aristotle on Human Nature, State, and Slavery This should be done with restraint and caution in order not to compromise the validity of modern studies and to avoid bias, as evident in the studies of some historical philosophers in their quoting of […]
• Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection Evidence of this lies in the articulation of ideas and relevance of the content to the title.”Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection” is a well thought of title that highlights the main […]
• Aggression as a Part of Human Nature Social learning and social psychological analyses of aggression prove that that there are many significant bases of aggression, and frustration is one of the most considerable factors, which lead to human aggression as evidence of […]
• Human Nature: “The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli As opposed to the freelance style of leadership, one of the difficulties over the heredity or one family customized leadership style that reflects to a hierarchical prince is the ability to contravene the ancestral background […]
• Mencius’ and Hsun Tzu’s view of Human Nature The film Schindler’s List starts on September of 1939 in a place known as Krakow, Poland, with the Jews being oppressed by the Nazis.
• Does Evolution explain human nature? In their work, Martin Nowak and Frans de Waal address the issue of empathy in relation to human evolution. Of the two scientists, Martin Nowak addresses the issue of empathy better in relation to human […]
• The Problem of the Human Nature in The Prince Although Machiavelli’s view of human nature depends on his general vision of the balance between the people’s virtues and vices, the historian emphasizes the difference between the monarch and the citizens and pays attention to […]
• Diversity of human nature basing on characteristics and circumstances Dido is the queen of Carthage and Dido’s father was a king of the Phoenicians. After Medea’s husband abandons Medea for another woman, Medea is married to another man in the land she fled to.
• Five Viewpoints on Human Nature The five views of human nature are the simplistic view, the two-fold view, the three-fold view, the four-fold view, and the five-fold view.
• Human Nature and the Freedom of Speech in Different Countries The paper will look at the human nature that necessitates speech and expression, freedom of speech as applied in different countries and limitations that freedom of speech faces.
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The Quest for Human Nature: What Philosophy and Science Have Learned

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Science and philosophy have discovered quite a lot about humans. The emergence and development of biology, psychology, anthropology, and cognate fields have substantially increased our knowledge about who we are and where we come from. The first half of this book provides an overview of key cutting-edge topics, from evolutionary psychology to contemporary critiques of essentialism, from genetic determinism to innateness. Nevertheless, these discoveries fall short of a full-blown theory of human nature. Why? Perhaps there is nothing there to discover in the first place. Human nature, from this standpoint, is a myth and it is high time we dispose of it. This conclusion is misguided. The assumption of a shared human nature underlies some of the most pressing socio-political issues of our time. These are the subject matter of the second half of this book. From races to sex and gender, from medical therapy to disability, from biotechnological enhancement to transhumanism, all these hot debates—surveyed here in an accessible, concise, yet detailed fashion—presuppose a robust account of human nature that, however, science and philosophy are unable to provide. How do we get out of this conundrum? This study concludes that human nature is an epistemological indicator , a concept that sets out the agenda for much social, political, and normative discourse. Nevertheless, science cannot adequately capture it without thereby dissolving it.

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• Journal Articles

Nature and Humanity as Source of Life, Living and Everyday Transformation

Like most of us, I hold a deep desire to leave a legacy. I want to know my life and my work made a difference, even by the smallest measure. Yet for the longest time, life meant searching for meaning rather than experiencing it. Although I was, and will forever be, committed to living in a way that benefits Earth and all her inhabitants, I was unable to express that commitment tangibly. I thought making a difference meant leading an amazing new initiative and that I needed a particular title or position to do so. Further, as an employee of the National Park Service (NPS)—a bureau of the United States government and one of the largest bureaucracies in the world—I had little hope I could affect any kind of change through my work. The ‘system’ seemed too strong, too entrenched, too bound by red tape. Filled with frustration, I fell into a trap of feeling that each day was the same as the last and I had no hope that tomorrow would be any different.

Nurturing Nature, Mentoring People

In the Sonoran Desert, mesquite trees serve as nurse trees for young saguaro cacti. These sheltering trees shade saguaros from the desert’s intense sunlight, blanket them from winter cold, and hide them from rodents, birds and other animals that eat them. Saguaros rarely grow to maturity in the absence of these trees.

Enter Dr. Monica Sharma and her conscious full-spectrum (CFS) approach to leadership that sources people’s wisdom while creating results to solve problems and shift systems that maintain the status quo. Monica’s work awakened a part of me that I had long ago lost and forgotten. This part of me was not my artist self, though I became much more creative. This part was not my ‘heart,’ though I certainly became more whole-hearted and less head-centered, as scientists tend to be. The part of me that woke up opened me to see and create patterns, allowing me to leverage my strengths and abilities to reach beyond what I believed was possible. Although I have always considered myself a visionary, the CFS principles opened me to possibilities beyond my wildest dreams. More importantly, they inspired me to take action right where I was, with the resources I had, to create the changes I wished to see through routine activities in my job. In other words, I began transforming my everyday actions at work and at home.

Working with CFS principles, I developed the Generative Action for Impact and Awareness (GAIA) Framework, an approach for solving environmental and social problems by sourcing the inner capacities of individuals and shifting the systems that maintain the status quo. Taking conscious full-spectrum action enables us to design and implement projects in a way that goes beyond treating symptoms by addressing systems issues and delivering sustainable results for people and planet. We use the GAIA Framework to design actions to respond to diverse conditions to help people innovate, generate breakthroughs, and sustain the specific changes needed for the planet and her inhabitants to thrive.

The More We Give, The More We Receive

Soil provides nutrients and the structure plants need to grow. As they grow, plants extract nutrients from soil and return organic matter, which in turn enriches the soil, making it more fertile. Through time, as plants come and go, the productivity of the soil increases, enabling it to support more and more plant life. Plants serve as food for animals. Animals also return nutrients to the soil. This is an underlying principle of nature: the more it gives, the more it receives.

The National Park Service is known for outstanding environmental education programs. While we excel at providing opportunities for people to explore nature, we don’t deliberately engage people in our conservation mission or create awareness of the interdependence between people and the environment. I’m working to change that through a series of projects using the GAIA Framework. My goal is to create transformational learning centers in parks through which we deliver environmental education programs that give people understanding of why we need a healthy environment to live healthy and productive lives and the effect our current lifestyle has on the environment, even in our most protected and sacred places (our national parks). These programs are designed to inspire people into action and demonstrate the power that one person, one family, or an entire community has to make a difference on local and global issues while also providing opportunities for taking action to deliver powerful results. Program topics vary; however, all focus on issues intended to create and maintain thriving communities and a healthy environment, demonstrate the benefit of public lands (and other commons) to people and communities, identify the pressures on public lands, and highlight actions we can all take today to make a difference.

Distinguishing Traditional and Transformational Education

The intention behind these programs is to help people engage their inner selves as they explore the great outdoors, so they find long-lost parts of themselves as I did. As this connection occurs, we start using our strengths and abilities to create change that serves ALL, not just me or mine. When our deepest values and commitments are the source of our actions, we discover a deep sense of fulfillment and feel alive as never before. It’s exhilarating! In a practical sense, we also expand our influence, even when we have no authority, because people want what we’ve got.

I am not an environmental educator and I have no authority over educational programs in any of our parks. My expertise lies in natural resource monitoring. Therefore, influencing educational programs required a circuitous route, starting within my realm of authority and influence. We created transformational monitoring products for parks using the GAIA Framework by shifting our focus from transferring knowledge to making invisible patterns visible and increasing our understanding of the context and complexity of environmental issues and connectedness of all things. In addition to providing information to park staff, we develop products for visitors to help them see themselves as agents of change—stewards of the parks and stewards of their homes and communities.

Change Is Not Good, It’s Not Bad, It Simply Is.

The transition between seasons is a reminder that change is a constant in this world. We must also cope with disturbances such as fires, floods, hurricanes and more. While we typically view these disturbances as negative, they are processes that shape our natural world and are often beneficial in the long term. Fires clear out debris and return nutrients to the soil. River valleys are fertile farm grounds because of past floods. When conditions change, plants must adapt or die. Animals also have the option of moving. Humans have a vast array of choices when responding to change. First and foremost, we can choose to be creative or we can choose to be victims.

As a result of the success of these products, parks asked for my assistance in designing new programs for visitors and exhibits in visitor’s centers to promote environmental awareness and empower individuals to wake up, reconnect to what matters most, and take action. NPS is always looking to engage youth in parks and grow the next generation of environmental stewards. Building on that theme, we implemented a leadership program to teach CFS principles to children between the ages of 9 and 12 whose parents were homeless or nearly so. We used examples from nature to illustrate that change is a natural part of life and the choices we have in responding to change. We used food to explore culture and how to embrace diversity. We used superheroes to help them articulate their inner values and commitments. One child brought tears to my eyes when he declared that he could use his superhero strengths to do what he believed was right and say ‘no’ to drugs.

Transformational products are reaching visitors via a grassroots-type effort. As educational programs are developed or revised, transformational principles are incorporated and these products are shared across parks. The national strategy for our educational programs was revised in 2013 and it includes transformational elements. We are still in the early stages of implementing these programs in parks and we don’t yet have information on the number of visitors we are inspiring into action. We do know that nearly 300 million people visit national parks in the US each year. If only 10% of our visitors are inspired to take action through this program, that’s 30 million people a year serving as change agents, strengthening our communities and stewarding the environment. Win!

Education and monitoring are routine activities in the National Park Service. We aren’t doing anything new, nor have we started new initiatives. We’re simply doing what we already do but in a new way, which is key to opening spaces in bureaucracies for transformation. It’s easy to make excuses for why we can’t start something new… we rarely have funding or personnel or time. However, if we’re going to have a meeting or write a report anyway, why not use the opportunity to create a new possibility? It’s far easier to get permission from leadership if your idea or project is tied to existing work, projects or performance measures. Leaders will give you bonus points for helping them accomplish their objectives with little or no additional cost.

Two other keys for working successfully in bureaucracies include empowering those around you and creating excellence in your work. When we empower those around us, they too become agents of change and champions of transformational work. We also create accountability, responsibility, commitment and a dynamic work environment that is highly creative, productive and fun. In this environment, it’s easy to be excellent in our work and deliver results. We’ll only be able to create space for transformational programs if we’re known for delivering results—if the higher-ups trust us to get the job done and make them look good. That said, don’t let me give you the impression that doing this work is always easy. It isn’t. Sometimes we need to take a lesson from a tree and simply stand our ground until winter’s chill passes. Persistence, a lot of persistence, is required.

The foundation of the GAIA Framework consists of transformational learning tools that create ‘aha moments’ based on inquiry, distinctions and generating new perspectives. The principles were honed by more than 50 practitioners working with Dr. Monica Sharma to deliver results on the ground worldwide, along with 25 world-class coaches. We use Annie Leonard’s and Donella Meadow’s work on systems thinking to understand the relationships between actions and events and find leverage points for action. This work is also informed by Daniel Goleman’s writing on emotional intelligence, which links self-awareness to self-expression through action. Other contributing ideas are Likert-Emberling’s stages of evolutionary organizations to provide an implementation framework, Robert Keegan’s transformational conversations, Howard Gardner’s exploration of learning for the future, and Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to understand phenomena better. The methodology is coherent, aligned and produces results. Simultaneously, it is also flexible because the whole process is based on inquiry and does not prescribe particular procedures or methods. This flexibility also allows the framework to be applied to solve any kind of problem.

The framework is simple. We identify particular measurable results we want to create to solve a problem. For example, distributing food is a specific solution to reduce hunger. However, this solution is not sustainable if the systems that support the current status quo remain intact. Shifting these systems could include distribution of seeds and development of community gardens. For changes to be sustainable, the systems we have in place and the values on which the systems are based must support the change. For example, we will be more successful at eliminating hunger if we act from a commitment that every person in our community is nourished and fed. Alignment of commitments, words and actions results in sustained, meaningful change. Misalignment of our actions with our words and commitments leads to rhetoric, which ultimately leads nowhere.

Pattern and Structure are Foundation for Everything

Although it may not seem like it, wild plants and animals are governed by structured patterns and processes that occur in nature. The seasons are one example. The water cycle is another. Water is transported around the Earth by wind, falls to earth via rain and snow, nourishes plants and animals, and is returned to the sky via evaporation and transpiration—more so in some places on Earth than others. The ocean currents and wind also follow patterns. Together, these patterns create deserts, rainforests and other ecosystems.

Identification of results and system shifts requires clarity of thinking and a comprehensive understanding of the system we’re working in to ensure the results and products deliver the desired outcome. Use of systems thinking enables us to align our projects so they build on each other synergistically. For me, this has been critical for success. Prior to using the GAIA Framework, I possessed the ability to create results, but I wasn’t very strategic about identifying leverage points or discerning the importance of particular projects, so I spent a lot of time on many ‘good little things’ rather than a few great ones that generated meaningful results.

Prior to learning to think, be and operate in this way, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that I could use monitoring data to influence environmental education programs. I knew I could use it to influence stewardship practices within NPS, but I didn’t know how to go beyond that. Now I’m slowly but surely transforming the two primary elements of the NPS mission: stewardship and environmental education. We’re creating the space to inspire nearly 300 million visitors into action. The next step is to work outside the park boundaries, through NPS employees engaging in community activities outside parks and, more importantly, through our volunteers. NPS has just over 20,000 employees and more than 200,000 volunteers across the US—people who are so deeply committed to our parks and our mission that they are willing to contribute years of their time for little or no compensation. This is the level of enthusiasm and commitment that arises when we connect to our deepest selves and take action sourced from that space.

The Tortoise Wins the Race

Bristlecone pines are remarkable because they are among the longest living organisms on Earth and live under adverse growing conditions. In fact, it seems one secret to their longevity is the harsh environment in which most bristlecone pines slowly grow.

With the GAIA Framework, our measurable results and system shifts are sourced from our inner wisdom, our deepest values and our commitments. The articulation of these values and commitments is truly empowering and it inspires me to be more courageous in my actions, enables me to use the strength of my convictions, and to be more deliberate in empowering those around me. I ensure that my actions are sourced from my commitments, so I build integrity within myself and can ensure that my work serves all beings. For me, this is probably the most inspiring aspect of the GAIA Framework. Embodying this level of integrity empowers those around us to use their strengths to deliver results. Now I can create synergy between people to create truly engaged, effective, creative teams by linking their commitments to our NPS mission and creating a space for exploring possibility and taking risks. In a recent series of meetings I held with my staff, they reported that they are excited to come to work for the first time in many years and they see possibilities they never saw before because they always had their head down, focused on the crisis de jour. They moved from crunching numbers to facilitating stewardship of our treasured park resources.

Small successes create the confidence to take risks, expand the scope of projects, or initiate larger projects. Nurturing transformational work within the National Park Service takes considerable effort, but gets easier every day thanks to the ripple effect of empowering others to use their strengths to create new possibilities. I’m also working with monitoring staff of the other federal land management agencies in the US to incorporate transformational products to shift from management to true stewardship of federal lands.

Ultimately, I would like to see a set of environmental ‘vital signs’ that are monitored around the world. These vital signs would be tied to the environment’s ability to support life, our livelihoods, and evaluate whether natural processes are sufficiently intact to continue to support humans and all other life. The vital signs related to supporting life would include monitoring air quality, water quality, and attributes related to food production, such as soil quality and availability of seeds. This information will help us understand whether or not conditions will support human survival.

Because of my commitment to living in a way that benefits Earth and all her inhabitants, survival isn’t enough. I want to see people and nature thrive. Therefore, we also need to measure whether the systems we have in place to deliver water and food support thriving people and communities. Time spent in nature nourishes our spirit, whether it’s watching otters play or a beautiful sunrise or gazing at the stars. Connecting these moments with our values and commitments make our actions more powerful. It’s also important to measure these less tangible but life-enriching qualities of nature and humanity because they make the difference between surviving and thriving. Measuring the immeasurable is both an art and a science and will require creative thinking to develop new indices and proxies. One measure might be how much time people spend engaging in outdoor activities such as hiking or gardening relative to time spent watching TV or surfing the Internet. In my view, this is a measure of engaging in life versus checking out of it.

A number of national parks are also designated World Heritage Sites or Biosphere Reserves, so I will use this avenue to begin working globally. Although monitoring isn’t sexy and we frequently prefer to avoid doing it, it’s also true that we instinctively monitor everything we value. Our lives and livelihoods depend on the health of the environment. Consequently, it’s critically important that we monitor environmental health broadly and consistently. What we measure, we move.

Specific Combinations of Patterns Create Unique Results

White Sands National Monument encompasses a portion of the world’s largest field of gypsum sand dunes. These dunes exist in only three places in the world because a specific combination of geology, precipitation and wind patterns is required for their formation. Our families, culture and experiences make each of us who we are. What unique set of ingredients do you bring for everyday transformation?

While it’s extremely important to see patterns, operate strategically, and engage others for support, the power of the GAIA Framework is the connection to our deepest values and commitments because these values and commitments emerge from who we are deep inside and what we stand for. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for equality and his words and actions were deliberately chosen to manifest equality. Mother Theresa stood for compassion, which she manifested through her daily activities. I stand for oneness with Earth and all beings. It’s currently not possible to live as a global citizen in a manner that doesn’t harm people or the environment, and that doesn’t work for me. Therefore, I endeavor to create health and well-being for all with every action I take. Declaring our stand and taking action on a daily basis to manifest that stand lights a fire in our bellies that cannot be extinguished. It’s time to stand for change so we stop being passive observers, helplessly watching the destruction of the world around us.

What do you stand for? What is it that you are uniquely qualified to deliver? We often think that leadership is reserved for presidents or generals or CEOs. Not true. Everyone can take responsibility and assume leadership in their daily experience, regardless of how big or small it is. What’s possible for you? Start where you are on something small that holds meaning for you. Transformation doesn’t occur only through new projects or new initiatives. It can start with our day-to-day, routine activities. Sometimes our daily activities are the best place to start because the change isn’t so scary or risky. When the ocean tide comes in, nothing can hold it back. When you unleash your power and potential, nothing can hold you back.

Elements of Transformational Monitoring

Status monitoring.

Purpose: Assess current status of a situation or issue, provide baseline for reference. Questions : 1. What is the current status of this situation? Gather relevant facts, figures and statistics. 2. How is the current status created and maintained? Consider physical/biological elements, cultural attitudes, laws/policies, social and political systems. 3. What is the gap between the current status and the desired status (derived from our values and commitments)?

Trend Monitoring

Purpose : Measure how the situation is changing or what is changing with the issue. Questions : 1. How has the status of the situation changed? 2. Did it change in the direction we wanted, consistent with our values/commitments? 3. What factors contributed to the change (from Status Monitoring points 2 and 3, above)? 4. Are the systems that supported the former status shifting to maintain the desired status?

Implementation Monitoring

Purpose : Determine whether we implemented what we intended to in our action plans. Questions : 1. Did we do what we intended to based on our plan? 2. Were we efficient in our actions? 3. Did we create what we wanted to create? Reference outcomes and impacts in the transformational results chain; see M. Sharma’s article in this issue. 4. Did we create transformational spaces in routine activities?

Effectiveness Monitoring

Purpose : Evaluate the effectiveness of our actions. Questions : 1. Are our results consistent with our commitment? 2. Are our results serving everyone and everything? 3. Do we have congruence at all levels (values/commitments, actions, results)? 4. Did we have any unintended consequences? 5. What’s shifting or becoming possible because of our work?

May I use this opportunity to request your assistance for this young whose finances were dealt a blow by Covid-19 to finish her education. Please donate whatever your heart moves you to. Thanks in advance. https://gogetfunding.com/please-help-me-finish-my-education-3/

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The Four Freedoms  

Introduction, the four freedoms and artificial intelligence, the rights of all beings, conversations, ‘the grab’ | conspiring to control the world’s food and water, with four freedoms, four responsibilities, the promise of liberty and the pain of separation, philanthropy as a territory of transition, fear, freedom and the queer world of quantum mechanics, a participant critique of the french mutual aid network, solaris, spotlight on hanne strong, origin | from “the story of gaia”, why beauty matters, mixed media, deep adaptation | a quartet of videos, this feature is self-generated, searching for a more beautiful world, with charles eisenstein, navigating the storm of global change, the sanctity of food, mugwort | plants rule the world, eleanor on 72nd street, exactly this spot | how air is, graffiti on the lee monument | gray, listening to the intelligence of your body, blessed community   the families we make, becoming ‘blessed community’, love, care and community, find the others | start a conscious change collective, are transition towns our key to a more beautiful future, mindful living at morningsun, prisons as monasteries, unitive narrative | a new lens for approaching the sustainable development goals, the art of life | a documentary, what i learned visiting intentional communities, crone wisdom | the soul of community, way of council | speaking and listening from the heart, desert blues | the music moves in circles, return to fixing things | the artist’s posthumous garage sale, sibling beit midrash | jacob’s gift, the rope bridge | monument, the way out | end of the egoic era, envisioning the beloved community, the eco-institute at pickards mountain | my experience as a black participant-turned-leader, a us department of peacebuilding, how to have a community conversation, chinese brush painting: a lesson | conflagration, the bridge to tomorrow is a work-in-progress, the sacred masculine  , masculine/feminine | a non-binary view, in search of the sacred masculine, the great simplification, erasure of indigenous identity, finding ben | mental health, justice, and healing, gender and peace | thoughts on the russian war in ukraine, blueprints for men, climate crisis | a problem of myth, ritual fire and sacred masculinity, trauma and healing for boys and men of color, adrift in the world, lessons from the ancient samurai, a cloud never dies | a film about the life of thích nhất hạnh, baptism of fire, the butterfly man in the house of pain, dusty and me, reflections on outliving my son, awakened life, a contemplation on resilience in ukraine, in the dream, my father reprimanded me for wearing earmuffs indoors | for my son, texas buddha | horse talk, taimu shakuhachi flute | art of emptiness, one final inning in st. louis, our spiritual commons   the inner resources we share, synthesis and the intuitive mind, our spiritual commons, waters of spirit, the soul of nations, global citizenship and universal values, honoring commons-based circuits of value, the value-renewed society, transformative social and emotional learning (sel) as a catalyst for climate action, embodied thinking and embodied feeling, autobiography of a yogi | 75 years on, the atlas of disappearing places, the world of itō jakuchū, the hermetic revival, the moment | alan watts and the eternal now, message from haiti | inspiration between two, lord of the forest | good fences, bum’ma (because i couldn’t say grandma), text | along the willamette, calendula seed | spirit rise, the holomovement, all things are a commons, the indwelling spirit, toward a global wellbeing mindset, the potential of grassroots environmental stewardship, meeting mugwort, joanna macy | climate crisis as spiritual path, seeking “ssshhh”, humble like the earth, are you sure   the cultivation of belief, are you sure, marching orders | covid’s attention war, post-truth politics and collective gaslighting, perceptual intelligence, seeing truth in van gogh, healing wetiko, the mind-virus that plagues our world, red brain, green brain, a quest for truth as a continuous motion to reconsider, the noosphere is here, ‘great turning’ visionaries | part 1, ‘great turning’ visionaries | part 2, earthjustice | working at the brink, deep winter, watching river otters, being brave, searching for what we already know, truth that affirms and regenerates all life, the industry of us | all you cannot see, truth is an orange canary from lisbon, garbage | pedaling my bike past jefferson davis place, let’s see what happens next | mid-20th century salvation, the juniper tree, composer, david crowe, 23 million trees planted, realigning withearth wisdom    , indigenous to life, the wisdom of our ancestors, the big ocean cantata, how to be a soil keeper, to reason with a madman, how not to lose the elephant for all its parts, our animal bodies and the unitive state, the web of meaning, trauma and regeneration, emerging renaissance | the art and wisdom of leigh j mccloskey, hermetic wisdom and the attributes of our time, glacier, elder, teacher, realigning with earth wisdom, the wonder of it all, practicing the art of wonder through radical presence, between prayer mat and smoke hole, reconnecting our children to nature, seeking the honey of life, slant | vernacular, signposts and hedges | visiting my brother’s nebraska farmstead on august 30th at dusk, into the riptide | the best we can imagine together, today you are a river in my hands | once trees grew inside me, inhale exhale, the century of awakening  , century of awakening, awakening to life, global challenges are directing us toward a unity of purpose, vow of 120,000 actions, the descent to soul, gravity and allurement, the two faces of digital spirituality, sacramental conversation, the ecozoans, can we measure culture and consciousness, dismantling the patriarchy within, living communally, reclaiming spiritual wholeness, the unchaining and the unveiling, scaffolding for a thrivable planet, cultivating spiritual intelligence, the age of freedom, the joy of living and learning interconnectedly, remembering nature, prayers in the dark, ‘uncomfortable’, poems for the solar age, butterfly effect, topophilia | thicket, master sha | tao calligraphy, how quickly the light changes | before you set your table, unexpected grace | love poem with accolades, visionary spirit   transition and transformation, the role of the visionary, unlocking a fresh vision for the world, dying into the creative, a global governance paradigm shift | first principles first, what is global education and why does it matter  , vision and change | fermentation as metaphor, thoughtforms | the materialization of sustained ideas, across the creek, looking back | the visionary spirit of resilience, deschooling dialogues: on initiation, trauma and ritual with francis weller, choosing earth | with duane and coleen elgin, reilly dow | art of the scribe, new visions give hope in dire times, rough initiations, “dear darkening ground”, david berkeley | oh quiet world, death and rebirth, birdsong as a compass, the power of pausing, we are all radical, dismantling solid bricks, cinderella story, kitchened | postcard from the mother ghost, it couldn’t be clearer, a poem for my students, ocean breeze, into the morphic | reality ritual, rapids of change   our collective journey, our collective journey, what is solidarity, the tree saviors of chipko andolan | a woman-led movement in india, making the case for a small farm future, what would hagia sophia say, an evolutionary transition is coming—are you ready, what indigenous wisdom can teach us about economics, somatics, healing, and social justice, recovering the divine feminine, oppression, interconnection, and healing, humanity and the microbe: a soul agreement, crazywise | shamanic mysticism and mental wellness, venerating the sacred | art as cultural therapy, we the “peoples” | the un at 75, the sustainable development goals begin with mindset, decolonization matters, five centuries of self-quarantine, living radical impermanence, turning our crises around from the inside out, a universal congress, horizontal governance, salmon migration as earth expression, epiphany | in the know | mapping, power colours memories identity fighting, true wealth  , the evolutionary potential of wealth, true health | what if the virus is the medicine, the treasure of our living, relational commons, soil wealth and a regenerative green new deal, the power of allurement, how we win | divestment and nonviolent direct action, advertising and trading | the markets’ problem twins, vision for a city of hope near auschwitz, bioregions and regeneration | honoring the places where we live, mystical anarchism, a spiritual biography, economic justice and ecological regeneration, wrestling with wealth and class, joy and value of connection to place and community, breakfast table revelation, safe houses | giving refuge, good fortune, two poems by joy mcdowell, two poems by diane kendig, two poems by ellen waterson, love letters from seaweed, in the hands of alchemy, greenplanet-blueplanet | sacred economy and caring, fragile gold, in the labyrinth   pathways to healing, walking the labyrinth, the labyrinth and the black madonna, rebuilding earth’s forest corridors, civility and its discontents, freedom and energy from healing white racism, howling in place, wall street to main street to world street, the science of oneness, covid-19 is a symbol of a much deeper infection, our finest hour, if we choose, hitching for hope, with ruairí mckiernan, gazing into the heart of perfection, shelterless in the time of covid-19, taking turns, weeding the labyrinth, in the garden, biracial identity | seeking to be unconditioned, a letter to herman creek canyon, mind matters most, becoming medicine, the vitality of paradox, ordinary grace, john fullerton on the qualities of a regenerative economy, leading in unknown terrain, wisdom from the flood.

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Possible Futures   Regeneration, Connection and Values

A story still unfolding, thomas berry and the rights of nature, ten economic insights of rudolf steiner, holding a seed for the future, from what is to what if, the unexpected journey of caring, re-imagining america, the alchemy of power, the next civilization, with jeremy lent, collective trauma and our emerging future , sacred season gathering of songs, freedom to make music, global social witnessing, a cry for help, active hope | time with joanna macy, healing the wounded mind, art in a time of catastrophe, hopeful essay penned by firelight, our scarlet blue wounds, kito mbiango | the power of art to drive action, closer looking | microscopy and aboriginal art, three poems, new spirit, wise action  , new spirit, wise action, beyond ‘sacred activism’, fourteen recommendations when facing climate tragedy, restoring the housatonic river walk, shut it down: stories from a fierce, loving resistance, thich nhat hanh’s code of global ethics, every act a ceremony, inner work makes our outer work massively more effective, the sun of darkness, white men and native america, burning man | what we’ve learned, kathy thaden | an inner fire, big lazy | music for unsettling times, kendra smith | the disappearing art of living, holacracy | an emergent order system, the practice of liminal dreaming, god becomes a hairdresser, men at the end of their strings, what you cross the street to avoid, a long convalescence, decoding the trump virus, seven practices of ‘holistic activism’, memes, mantras, and modern illusions of the eternal, including the earth in our prayers, the paradox of wise activism, living in flow, fluency in the language of stillness, values as a means to invite greater depth, summer 2019  , resonance and relationship, to all my relations, the holy grail of restoration, freeing the dragon, developing a mindful approach to earth justice work, rhino conservation, bringing reefs back to life, farming while black, selfcare freedom, the stones will cry out, sacred headwaters of the amazon, eating as if life and the planet mattered, sam lee | birdsong hits the charts, among the nightingales in berlin, reforestation in portugal, dancing with animals, cooperation with wild boars in palestine, killing us softly, where are we in the story of the universe, borders of our perception, the gift of tears, a song of pause, captives of our desire, documenting land trauma, spring 2019  , the earth is doing her best, dancing with gaia, the community awaiting us, turtles among us, resilience, the global challenge, and the human predicament, book | trees of power, paradise lost | the sequel, cultivating right livelihood, quiet places initiative, rising earth consciousness, consciousness and the combustion engine, the lie of the land | conversation and essay, rejoining the great conversation, physics and spirituality, a vision for the world, chama river revelations, rights of nature, council of the wild gods, the power of community, gallery 1 | in the realm of the world’s heart, gallery 2 | flower flourescence, gallery 3 | guardians of the sacred in tibet, emergent universe oratorio, a conversation with alanis obomsawin, three poems from reverberations from fukushima, dear reed canyon, winter 2018   global citizen, global spirit, the practice of global citizenship, we are all global citizens | seeing ourselves in the advancement of all, breaking out of the domination trance, evolving toward cooperation, on edge work, migration flows, and glocalization, returning to indigenous worldview, liquid democracy and the future of governance, book | farming for the long haul, delivering the un global goals | the consciousness perspective, the insurgent power of the commons in the war against the imagination, on elevating the human narrative, film | lifeboat, refugees adrift at sea, for love of place | reflections of an agrarian sage, sacred diplomacy in the emerging ecozoic era, globalism-nationalism, the new left-right, the economics of solidarity, spirit, and soul, global citizenship | an emerging agenda in education, caring for the soul of humanity, a pocket full of stones, the most important thing, being and becoming in a field of resonance, an overcast morning, i sit down to write, almost bethlehem, the rebel’s silhouette, xiuhtezcatl martinez | break free, playing for change, the universal declaration of human rights, toward a global ethic, statement on the unique challenge of nuclear weapons, the earth charter, fall 2018   all consuming, the four nutriments, un-pick-apart-able, tending the wild, making politics sacred again, from the unreal to the real, the problem with “more”, the galileo project, eager: the surprising, secret life of beavers and why they matter, do we really want to be happy, the deschooling dialogues | plant medicine and the coming transition, eldering in the age of consumption, water and the rising feminine , a tale of two pipelines, unity and the power of love, between the inner and outer worlds, wind | a letter to my daughters, healing the hunger, the selling of the soul, nourishment, are we addicted to fear, what the wind taught, the prophecy, green medicine, the fairy begs for bacon, finals time, how love builds a home, may everything flower, healing sound with jesse paris smith, consumption as the path, books in brief, climate news.

Contributors

KOSMOS Summer Quarterly, 2018

Unlearning together, awake, awakened, woke, change the worldview, change the world, presence at the edge of our practice, dynamic governance, roots and evolution of mindfulness, indigenous worldview is a source we now urgently need, the wanderer’s preparation in the death lodge, the deschooling dialogues: grief, collapse, and mysticism, social breakdown and initiation, forgive: the new practice and mantra for black men, the migrant quilt, the connection, healing into consciousness, wealth and abundance, confessions of a recovering catholic, the habits of schooling, an uncommon song, purposeful memoir as a path to alignment, being human, the night i didn’t stand up, absence presence, yorkston/thorne/khan.

Panama: where Nature’s Symphony Meets Human Ingenuity

This essay about Panama’s geography explores the intricate interplay between natural wonders and human achievements. It highlights the diverse landscapes of Panama, from misty cloud forests to bustling urban centers, and delves into the historical significance of the Panama Canal. The essay emphasizes Panama’s rich biodiversity and cultural heritage, showcasing how the country’s geography has shaped its identity and influenced its development. Through a blend of natural beauty and human ingenuity, Panama emerges as a captivating destination that invites exploration and appreciation.

How it works

Nestled amidst the verdant embrace of Central America, Panama stands as a testament to the intricate dance between nature’s grandeur and human ingenuity. Its geography, like a masterful symphony, weaves together a tapestry of diverse landscapes, each note resonating with the echoes of centuries past and the promise of tomorrow. From the misty peaks of its cloud forests to the shimmering waters of its coastal plains, Panama beckons travelers on a journey of discovery and wonder.

At the heart of Panama’s geography lies the majestic spine of the isthmus, a natural bridge between continents that has shaped the destiny of nations and civilizations.

Here, where the Atlantic meets the Pacific in a timeless embrace, the Panama Canal stands as a monument to human ambition and perseverance. Its locks, like giant sentinels, guard the passage of ships through this vital artery of global commerce, connecting distant shores and fostering prosperity for generations to come.

But beyond the engineering marvels that define its landscape, Panama is a land of unparalleled biodiversity, where the whispers of the rainforest mingle with the rustle of palm fronds in the coastal breeze. From the dense jungles of the Darien Gap to the sun-drenched shores of the Pearl Islands, Panama’s ecosystems teem with life in all its wondrous forms. Here, amid the tangled roots of ancient trees and the vibrant hues of tropical flowers, one can glimpse the delicate balance that sustains life on our planet.

Yet, amid this natural splendor, Panama’s geography also bears the scars of human endeavor, a testament to the triumphs and tragedies of civilization’s march. From the ruins of Spanish forts that dot its coastline to the bustling metropolis of Panama City, the imprint of history is writ large upon the land. Here, where the past meets the present, one can trace the footsteps of explorers and adventurers who dared to brave the unknown in search of fame and fortune.

And yet, for all its storied past and natural beauty, Panama is a land of contrasts, where tradition and modernity coexist in a delicate balance. In the shadow of gleaming skyscrapers, indigenous tribes still ply their ancient crafts, preserving the cultural heritage that defines their identity. Here, amid the bustling markets and lively plazas, one can experience the vibrant tapestry of Panama’s multicultural society, where people of all backgrounds come together in celebration of life’s rich tapestry.

In conclusion, Panama’s geography is a symphony of contrasts, where the timeless rhythms of nature converge with the boundless energy of human ambition. From its mist-shrouded mountains to its sun-drenched beaches, Panama offers a glimpse into the very soul of our planet, a place where the past meets the present in a harmonious dance of life. Whether exploring its pristine rainforests, marveling at its engineering feats, or immersing oneself in its rich cultural heritage, Panama invites travelers on a journey of discovery and wonder unlike any other.

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Panama: Where Nature's Symphony Meets Human Ingenuity . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/panama-where-natures-symphony-meets-human-ingenuity/ [Accessed: 1-Jun-2024]

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Philosophical Concepts — Human Nature

Essays on Human Nature

Writing an essay on human nature is important because it allows us to explore and understand the fundamental aspects of being human. By delving into the complexities of human behavior, emotions, and thought processes, we can gain insight into our own nature and the nature of others. This understanding can lead to greater empathy, compassion, and self-awareness.

When writing an essay on human nature, it is important to consider the various perspectives and theories that have been put forth by philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists. These differing viewpoints can provide a rich tapestry of ideas and concepts to draw from, allowing for a nuanced and comprehensive exploration of the topic.

It is also crucial to support your arguments with evidence and examples. This can include real-life experiences, case studies, and scholarly research. By grounding your essay in concrete examples, you can make your points more persuasive and compelling.

Additionally, it is important to consider the ethical and moral implications of human nature. How do our fundamental traits and behaviors impact our relationships with others? How do they shape our society and culture? These questions can add depth and complexity to your essay, prompting readers to consider the broader implications of human nature.

In conclusion, writing an essay on human nature is a valuable endeavor that can lead to greater self-awareness and understanding of others. By considering different perspectives, providing evidence, and exploring ethical implications, you can create a thought-provoking and insightful essay on this fundamental aspect of the human experience.

What Makes a Good Human Nature Essay Topics

When it comes to writing an essay on human nature, choosing the right topic is crucial. Good Essay Topics should be thought-provoking, engaging, and relevant to the subject matter. To brainstorm and choose an essay topic, consider what aspects of human nature interest you the most. Think about current events, philosophical questions, or social issues that relate to human behavior. A good essay topic should also be specific and focused, allowing for in-depth analysis and exploration. Additionally, consider the potential for debate or differing viewpoints, as this can lead to a more compelling and impactful essay.

Best Human Nature Essay Topics

• The concept of free will and its impact on human behavior
• The role of empathy in shaping human relationships
• The influence of nature vs. nurture on personality development
• The psychology of persuasion and its effects on decision-making
• The ethics of genetic engineering and its implications for human nature
• The connection between technology and human connection
• The impact of social media on self-perception and identity
• The evolutionary roots of human emotions and instincts
• The concept of good and evil in human nature
• The role of culture in shaping human values and beliefs
• The psychology of addiction and its impact on human behavior
• The relationship between power and human behavior
• The impact of trauma on human resilience and coping mechanisms
• The intersection of biology and psychology in understanding human nature
• The influence of social norms on individual behavior
• The connection between creativity and human nature
• The impact of environmental factors on human development
• The role of spirituality in shaping human values and beliefs
• The psychology of decision-making and its impact on human behavior
• The concept of identity and its relationship to human nature

Human Nature Essay Topics Prompts

• Imagine a world without the concept of good and evil. How would human behavior be different?
• If you could genetically engineer a specific trait in humans, what would it be and why?
• Explore the connection between human behavior and the natural environment, focusing on a specific aspect of nature.
• Write a personal reflection on a time when you experienced a conflict between your instincts and societal expectations.
• Create a fictional scenario that explores the impact of a technological advancement on human nature, considering both positive and negative effects.

Similarities Between Utopia and Dystopia

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Human Nature (Essay Sample)

Human nature.

Human nature comprises of unique features human exhibit like emotion, thoughts, and actions. These three features are distinct from cultural influences.  The argument concerning some of the human characteristics that help describe human nature, how natural they are and their origin are the frequently debated questions when discussing human beings. Philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, presented varied views of human nature based on their experiences and observations. All these views continue to influence the philosophical beliefs of human beings.

Plato believed that the ability to choose between what is good and bad is part of human nature. Human has intrinsic values that guide them.  A philosopher like Augustine viewed human nature as the ability to incorporate unique metaphysics to develop rationalization. Augustine shared similar views of Plato and Plotinus that the body and the soul are different. Pluto believed that human actions are triggered by our thoughts that are generated from our soul.  Therefore, human existence is about exercising the free will to determine how to act. Defining human nature is describing the divine process that is beyond human understanding.

Augustine believed that any attempt to achieve good virtues by training, or learning is not achievable because it is through the divine intervention that we can describe the nature of human beings. According to Augustine, humans cannot do anything but simply have hope and faith in God to guide them through life process. I concur with Augustine that it is only through God’s work that humans can live a fulfilling life. Such sentiments contradict Plato’s view that human can exercise free will.

Augustine argument that God has infinite power is widely accepted because those who believe in God act in specific ways that present various outcomes that go beyond human understanding. Such sentiments have been expressed before by medieval philosophers who contend that humans are not capable of exercising free will because of God`s influence in their lives that affects their thoughts and actions.

The traditional theory of human nature presents humans as intellectual beings having a greater capacity for reasoning. Plato believed that human nature consists of three parts reasons, spirit and appetite and all the three were expected to function in harmony. The reasoning part of human nature is located in the brain; this controls the other parts of the body.  The spirit coordinates human feeling like temper and is located in the chest of the human body. The appetite is in charge with producing instincts like thirst hunger or lust and is located in the stomach.

Among all the three characteristics described by Plato is reason, reason is the most important part of human nature that it controls all the aspects of hum action hence guiding persons in his action. Humans are more independent of nature compared to an animal; humans are aware of their ability to reason and some of their consequences of their decisions. When analyzing the different views of human nature, I can conclude that humans are unique because of their capacity to think in a complex manner and be in control of their actions. It is evident that not all philosophers agree on the definition of human nature, but they all define similar patterns of reasoning from a natural system of ethics. According to Greek philosophers, human beings have instincts and emotion, but the most important character is their ability to reason and control their feelings and primitive urges.

A Relationship between Humans, Nature, and Climate Change

Posted on May 28, 2024 by adevill

These past three weeks have been an enlightening whirlwind. It’s incredible that this course took the overwhelming topic of climate change and carefully and thoughtfully broke it down into meaningful and digestible coursework and experiences (ignore how many ands are in that sentence). I am so so very thankful for every challenge, conversation, and minute in Costa Rica. For this blog post, I want to focus on the macro side of climate change; my thoughts and experiences in the environment, and their place in the topic climate change.

I have never been deeply concerned with nature until I saw people not care.

What is the point of being outside if you do not want to experience outside things?  If you do not want to sit at the bottom of a waterfall and stare into its eternal flow, why are you hiking a waterfall trail? The point of these questions is to point out a disconnect that became alarmingly clear in the ecotourism and climate change section of our class. Most people only appreciate nature at a surface level; a checked box of going to see the hanging bridges, or a great photo op in front of La Fortuna Waterfall. Giving it a good 45 minutes then speeding out of the area like you have somewhere better to be and never thinking about it again. I think we have all been guilty of this, trying to complete the trail faster, prioritizing post-hike lunch over the current moment, and more. It’s a term that I have given the name ‘instant gratification hikers’ and the world is full of them. Even during my experience at the Hanging Bridges, the goal became to pass as many tourists groups as possible rather than actually taking time to leave no leaf unseen. Another time was during a hike a few of us did at the Monteverde Research Station. The pace we were going at was so fast I didn’t have time to search the forest for birds and critters (don’t worry Amanda and I ended up slowing down and taking twice as long so we could take it all in and this is where many of the thoughts I’m writing about came from).

All this to say, I hypothesize that people being out of touch with true nature is proliferating the aspects of climate change.

Why is it that books like 6 degrees and other climate change findings are not resonating with the public? I truly believe that at least part of the answer is that a lot of people’s relationship with nature is fractured. Take Costa Rica for example. Every single one of the guides at La Selva, Sarapiqui(the food tours), Tortuguero, Arenal, and even Life Farm, 1)speak with such pride and joy when talking about the hard work that goes into what they produce, 2)hold such respect and enchantment of the nature around them, and 3)have a deep understanding of the word coexist. This priority of coexisting is even reflected in Costa Rica’s government, with green policies, recovering forests, and aiming to go carbon neutral. Even the President, Oscar Arias, wrote a foreword for a Costa Rican mammal identification book. They are an example of a nation, culture, and individuals who have a deep relationship with nature. And with this unfractured relationship with nature, the warnings of climate change are heard and proactively addressed more effectively than any country in the world.

While the rest of us outside of this eco-friendly contemporary model fall short and I think part of the reason is that we have forgotten what it means to coexist with nature. Unlike the Costa Ricans, an average American’s daily life does not require them to remotely think about how important nature, biodiversity, ecosystems, etc. are to us. We are so enthralled with current day to day problems that a long term problem such as climate change is just labelled as bad. We care that climate change is a thing but do know or understand the layers of creation behind it. Our relationship to nature is more distanced therefore we are not as roused into action as the Costa Ricans are. I for one, was not until I spent 3 weeks understanding their way of life and living like a Costa Rican.

The moment I flew over Orlando from Costa Rica I became sad, disheartened, and disturbed by the sight below. Paved roads for miles, cleared plots of land with no purpose, only tiny parcels of land with natural forests, random ponds for aesthetics, and lots of lawns and golf courses. I was horrified. How do we change a problem when it is a part of every fiber of American life? I wish everyone had this Costa Rican experience to put things into perspective. To realize how ridiculous it is to clear a plot of land that will remain empty. To realize all of the lives affected by clearing even an acre of land. Bacteria, bugs, birds, mammals, shrubs, wild grass, trees, all lost in a fraction of the time it took to create that life-giving ecosystem. In a way, I’m in mourning. Mourning the fact that we all have to reassimilate to the consumer-driven fast, cheap, easy, human-centered lifestyle. Being without air conditioning for weeks has made me realize how RIDICULOUS maxing A/C out is. Why on Earth does the security guard for the airport have to bring a sweatshirt everyday to work? There is utterly no reason to create a freezing microclimate other than US’s unsustainable social culture. Even the idea of maintaining a home to a consistent specific degree…it’s almost like rejecting the way life was meant to be, which could be said for a lot of modern human developments. I think I will keep churning over this idea for as long as I can and hope I never become lulled into the vast amenities in the US that make life less ‘pura vida’. Thank you Dr. Libby, Dr. Wasserman, and Dr. Johnson for burdening me with knowledge and deep reflection. Here’s to more discussions about the world.

Entering a needed existential crisis,

Alaina DeVille

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• Published: 23 May 2024

Bone-marrow-homing lipid nanoparticles for genome editing in diseased and malignant haematopoietic stem cells

• Xizhen Lian 1 ,
• Sumanta Chatterjee 1 ,
• Yehui Sun   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0215-6095 1 ,
• Sean A. Dilliard 1 ,
• Stephen Moore 1 ,
• Yufen Xiao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5604-7479 1 ,
• Xiaoyan Bian   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6263-5269 1 ,
• Kohki Yamada 1 ,
• Yun-Chieh Sung 1 ,
• Rachel M. Levine   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3684-2950 2 ,
• Kalin Mayberry 2 ,
• Samuel John   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4167-2466 3 ,
• Xiaoye Liu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5031-0822 3 ,
• Caroline Smith 3 ,
• Lindsay T. Johnson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4563-5486 1 ,
• Xu Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8925-5645 1 ,
• Cheng Cheng Zhang 3 ,
• David R. Liu 4 , 5 , 6 ,
• Gregory A. Newby 7 ,
• Mitchell J. Weiss 2 ,
• Jonathan S. Yen 2 &
• Daniel J. Siegwart   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-1931 1  

Nature Nanotechnology ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Drug delivery
• Nanoparticles

Therapeutic genome editing of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) would provide long-lasting treatments for multiple diseases. However, the in vivo delivery of genetic medicines to HSCs remains challenging, especially in diseased and malignant settings. Here we report on a series of bone-marrow-homing lipid nanoparticles that deliver mRNA to a broad group of at least 14 unique cell types in the bone marrow, including healthy and diseased HSCs, leukaemic stem cells, B cells, T cells, macrophages and leukaemia cells. CRISPR/Cas and base editing is achieved in a mouse model expressing human sickle cell disease phenotypes for potential foetal haemoglobin reactivation and conversion from sickle to non-sickle alleles. Bone-marrow-homing lipid nanoparticles were also able to achieve Cre-recombinase-mediated genetic deletion in bone-marrow-engrafted leukaemic stem cells and leukaemia cells. We show evidence that diverse cell types in the bone marrow niche can be edited using bone-marrow-homing lipid nanoparticles.

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Selective haematological cancer eradication with preserved haematopoiesis

Development of multiplexed orthogonal base editor (MOBE) systems

Data availability.

DNA sequencing files can be accessed at the National Center for Biotechnology Information Sequence Read Archive (NCBI SRA) with accession code PRJNA1082713 . Source data are provided with this paper. All other data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) (R01 5R01EB025192-06) and National Cancer Institute (R01 CA269787-01); the Welch Foundation (I-2123-20220031); and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) (SIEGWA18XX0, SIEGWA21XX0) (to D.J.S). We also acknowledge support from the UTSW Small Animal Imaging Resource (NCI P30CA142543), the UTSW Proteomics Core, NIH (1R01 CA248736) and Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (6629-21) to C.C.Z., NIH (R01HL156647) (to M.J.W.) and the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital Collaborative Research Consortium for Sickle Cell Disease.

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Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Biochemistry, Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, Program in Genetic Drug Engineering, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

Xizhen Lian, Sumanta Chatterjee, Yehui Sun, Sean A. Dilliard, Stephen Moore, Yufen Xiao, Xiaoyan Bian, Kohki Yamada, Yun-Chieh Sung, Lindsay T. Johnson, Xu Wang & Daniel J. Siegwart

Department of Hematology, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA

Rachel M. Levine, Kalin Mayberry, Mitchell J. Weiss & Jonathan S. Yen

Department of Physiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

Samuel John, Xiaoye Liu, Caroline Smith & Cheng Cheng Zhang

Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

David R. Liu

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Department of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Gregory A. Newby

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Contributions

X. Lian and D.J.S. conceived and designed the experiments and wrote the manuscript. X. Lian, S.C., Y.S., S.A.D., S.M., Y.X., X.B., K.Y., Y.-C.S., R.M.L., K.M., S.J., X. Liu, C.S., L.T.J., X.W. and G.A.N. performed the experiments. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. D.J.S. directed the research.

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Correspondence to Daniel J. Siegwart .

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Competing interests.

UT Southwestern has filed patent applications on the technologies described in this manuscript with X. Lian and D.J.S. listed as inventors. D.J.S. discloses the following competing interests: ReCode Therapeutics, Signify Bio, Tome Biosciences, Jumble Therapeutics and Pfizer Inc. D.R.L. is a consultant and equity holder of Beam Therapeutics, Prime Medicine, Pairwise Plants, Chroma Medicine and Nvelop Therapeutics, companies that use or deliver gene-editing or epigenome-modulating agents. M.J.W. is a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline, Cellarity, Novartis and Dyne Therapeutics. J.S.Y. is an equity owner of Beam Therapeutics. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–25, Tables 1–16, Materials and Methods, and results and discussion.

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Lian, X., Chatterjee, S., Sun, Y. et al. Bone-marrow-homing lipid nanoparticles for genome editing in diseased and malignant haematopoietic stem cells. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-024-01680-8

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Received : 22 July 2023

Accepted : 15 April 2024

Published : 23 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-024-01680-8

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