darwin and nietzsche

Some thoughts on what has been surprising to me about reading Nietzsche and Darwin over the last 5 months.

1. Darwin isn't an environmentalist. In his travel writings, Darwin shoots and kills any strange animals that he finds, and cuts them open. In Origin of Species he talks about performing all sorts of experiments on animals, etc. He also isnt too worried about the extinction of specific species, or about the invasion of foreign plants onto domestic territories. No save the whales here. But he does set things up quite nicely for environmentalism, especially when he talks about the relationships between different life forms, or when he describes how the breakdown of coral could lead to the death of an island of people.

2. It's very difficult to disentangle both Darwin and Nietzsche from everything that has been said about them, or from how they have been used as weapons for different causes (or as targets for different attacks). Nietzsche isn't as much of an atheist as people want him to be, and he's not much of a nihilist (many of his arguments are critique's of nihilism). Darwin doesn't really talk about the origins of life in the origin of species. It's difficult to disentangle Darwin from contemporary biology and genetics.

3. I appreciate how easy both are to dip into when I'm not a specialist in science or philosophy. Darwin's arguments are complex (more complex than they are represented), but not in the way that a contemporary science journal is complex. As a casual observer, I can pick up Origin of Species and have some understanding of the arguments and details of what Darwin is writing. Likewise Nietzsche is more complicated than he is represented (either by enemies or fans), but reading bits and pieces of him gives me a lot to digest. In a more general sense, Darwin wrote in a variety of different genres (travel/memoir/autobiography/science), or somewhere between the genres.

Whatevz.

nature

Some people talk about discovering God in nature. Some people enjoy hiking and spending time out of doors, in the wilderness. I don't. In part, I just don't believe that nature exists, either nature in terms of wild life, wilderness untouched by humanity, or in the sense of nature as essence, as the real thing.

I don't find God in nature, in the diversity of plant and animal life, the fragility and complexity of an ecosystem, or even in the evolution of species. That is all very beautiful and moving, but what I find isn't God.

What I find is a system of taxonomy and invention, a system of language superimposed over the world. And I'm skeptical of the bases of taxonomy, of differentiation between species, etc. So when I go on hikes, I think of the systems of order that people believe they are discovering in the world, of the categories and qualities of a species that places it in one place or another in a taxonomy, and of the limited value of those taxonomies.

Also, how the whole idea of nature is a system of values, the basic value being the drive to catalog and systematize everything.

On the other hand, I love beaches and am all for environmentalism, prefer buying organic foods and minimizing waste, have very dear friends who care for the earth, and support them in their recreation, efforts and discoveries. Go figure.