Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
It is very odd that Nature should be so unscrupulous. She is no saint . . .
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature." Essays: Second Series, James Munroe and Company, 1844.
Laymen look at nature fondly and personify “Mother Nature” as kindly and beneficent. However, scientists have a more dispassionate view of nature and see it as a combination of forces that would kill most life-forms unless there is a combination of behavior and evolution to resist the normal forces of nature. While man has been responsible for the termination of a number of species, well over 99 percent of all the animal species that have ever lived are extinct today and that has been all “natural”. Schrodinger explains that nature is not a positive force, and in reality is the opposite—every species has to overcome nature and what is natural in order to survive.
To most inventors, scientists, and technologists, nature is a destructive force and part of their job is to insulate man from nature.
Without interference “nature” kills all life forms. Over 99 percent of all the species that ever lived are extinct—wiped out by nature and natural events. Man has extended his lifespan by controlling or ameliorating the effects of nature. Man may destroy his own species in the end by undesirable changes in environment, but if left only to nature, man’s extinction is virtually certain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
