Unveiling Nature: Eros or Agape?

La Nature se devoilant devant la Science, or 'Nature unveils herself before Science'.  The picture at the top was taken with my own camera, while the one below is another sculpture of the same work in a different location (Image: flickr, podiceps60).

What an erotic sculpture I viewed in Paris!  At first, I definitely thought it was beautiful.  However, after a while of thinking about it, I have concluded that the sculpture has a much darker side.  I'll delve more into this later.  For now, I'll discuss how it definitely speaks to a widespread philosophy of the 19th century,  including that of scientific naturalism.

Victorian scientific naturalism posits that all natural phenomena are explicable in terms of natural law, and rejects 'supernatural' explanations.  It places nature behind a veil, where it is just the scientist's job to reveal what lies beneath.  In scientific naturalism, Nature holds all the answers, so explaining phenomena becomes merely a matter of finding the information.


Goethe slightly eroticizes nature in his work Aphorisms [http://www.nature.com/nature/first/aphorisms.html], but not to the extent that the sculpture does above.  He seems to have a reverence for nature, when he states:

"She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself; is her own joy and her own misery. She is rough and tender, lovely and hateful, powerless and omnipotent. She is an eternal present. Past and future are unknown to her. The present is her eternity. She is beneficient. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise."

It's interesting because it sounds like he is talking about a religious figure, such as the Mother Mary.

However, the sculpture I have displayed above is far less reverent than Goethe.  Nature, robed, is removing her covering to reveal her secrets to spectators.  But, the title causes me to pose a question.  The sculpture is called 'Nature unveiling herself before Science.'  This seems to imply a willingness and action on the part of Nature and a passivity on the part of Science.  However, the reality is entirely the opposite!  Science, in 19th century society, is the entity removing the veil, and who knows if Nature is actually willing!  In a way, especially in light of a book I have been reading, I see the mentality behind this sculpture as exploitative and the root of many 21st century issues with the natural environment.

Lately, I have been reading the book Earth in Mind by David Orr [http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Mind-Education-Environment-Prospect/dp/155963295X].  In this book he argues that a widespread disrespect for nature acts as the root causes of our contemporary environmental crisis.  He quotes Stephen Jay Gould [interesting!  we looked at him in class], who states:

"We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well -- for we will not fight to save what we do not love."

Certainly, the sculpture embodies a type of love, but is it acceptable love?  To Orr, this sculpture probably embodies a love for nature in the form of eros, which he defines as "love of beauty or romantic love aiming to possess."  In the 19th century and onward, the prevailing view of nature was to reveal, uncover, unveil, conquer, or master.  All of these verbs imply some sense of possession or control, which fall into the category of eros, despite the possibility that these actions have good intentions.  As Orr states, eros for nature "traps us in a paradox. ... What we love only from self-interest, we will sooner or later destroy."  I don't think that the scientists of the 19th century would have ever thought that their erotic views of nature might have led to severe problems with Nature's exploitation, but little did they know that their journeys to discover the secrets of nature would lead humans to make discoveries that could lead to 'her' downfall.

Orr argues that we need a feeling of 'agape' -- sacrificial love -- towards nature in order to fix the problem. He urges us to be mindful of nature in all our decisions and safeguard the welfare of the biosphere at all costs.  Orr also seems to hint that agape [towards nature] stems from childhood and our innate sense of wonder and awe of the natural world.  In Orr's view, we are equipped with a sense of wonder from childhood, which is stifled by modern conditions, including an education system that stresses 'abstractions divorced from lived experience,' and conditions that keep us perpetually inside, like computers, television, and cars.

I might also add that our sense of wonder likely has diminished in the modern era just from the loss of the night sky to light pollution!  This might have detrimental effects; Orr argues, "As our sense of wonder in nature diminishes, so too does our sense of the sacred, our pleasure in the created world, and the impulse behind a great deal of our best thinking."  But maybe we cannot even escape our loss of wonder, because, it seems that the more we unveil nature, the less nature is a mystery.  Maybe we're becoming bored with nature, and maybe that's why we abuse her.

Perhaps it would have been better if nature had kept her ankles covered.  Then our voracious human appetite wouldn't have began to devour her.