The Role of Metaphor in Environmental Management

David Grover

    Like all words “nature” is a metaphor for something, but for what no one precisely knows.  It comes from the Latin natura, meaning “everything outside the city walls” (Class Notes, September 11, 2003).  Since ancient Rome, “nature’s” meaning has changed partly because of shifts in metaphors used to explain it.  In Discordant Harmonies, Daniel Botkin traces the history of these metaphors for nature and examines their implications in environmental management.  He also gives the reader an idea of how he thinks future environmental management should proceed.  In this paper I explore the effect of previous Western metaphors for nature and the future of nature management according to Botkin to show that, in environmental management, metaphors for the environment as a whole should not be used because they over simplifies complex concepts to the point that scientists cannot manage biological processes.  
    Botkin shows that metaphors for nature have affected science’s outlook on the natural world for millennia.  The first metaphor Botkin examines is nature as divine order (Botkin, 1990: 75).  Adherents to this view saw nature as divinely created and therefore ordered according to God’s will.  Although this idea is founded in Roman, Jewish, and other religions’ creation mythology, science found proof that nature was perfectly created, and every part played a specific role.  Botkin points to Lawrence Henderson’s The Fitness of the Environment where he explores the way water is just the right compound to promote life (Botkin, 1990: 75-76), and Aldo Leopold’s view of the wolf as having the “job” of keeping the size of mule deer herds in check (Botkin, 1990: 77).  These examples, along with many others Botkin gives, point to how nature works as though each animal, plant, chemical, and every other aspect of the universe has a divinely assigned role.  The divine order view spawned ideas that human interaction with nature was liable to upset the perfect static balance, or climax environment, that existed, or that God had created the Earth for humans since they are the only animals capable of changing the environment to such a large degree.  Remnants of these two contradictory views are still pervasive in underlying ideas of nature (Botkin, 1990: 89).
    Next, Botkin examines nature as animal.  In this organic view, natural communities function like a whole organism and have emotional motives behind natural occurrences.  Since Botkin says, “The organic viewpoint has not been important in the explanation of nature in the twentieth century (Botkin, 1990: 97),” I will only say this idea influenced scientific thought on nature while it was prevalent and was itself brought about by the prevailing ideas of the time like Romanticism (Botkin, 1990: 96).
    The most recent view of nature Botkin examines is nature as machine.  This view, founded on the divine order view, the newly discovered laws of nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the rise of machines in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sees nature as having parts that work together similar to gears or components of a combustion engine.  Like its predecessor, the mechanistic view sees elements of nature working together to function as a whole.  If humans understand the parts and how they work together, they can tinker with them to meet their needs or give the machine a tune-up.  This view became the primary metaphor for nature in the nineteenth and twentieth century and was adopted by well-known environmentalists like Paul Erlich in his book The Machinery of Nature.  
    Central to the mechanistic view is the idea nature functions on a set of rules, so science’s goal becomes discovering these rules to correctly manage nature either to meet human needs or maintain the perceived natural balance.  Scientists who see nature through the mechanistic view believe plants and animals will prosper most in the correct constant environment just as a combustion engine runs best when used under ideal conditions.  Botkin criticizes the mechanistic view as too simple and not taking into account nature’s tendency to shift.  While nature management previously thought that humans should try to suppress change like forest fires to promote growth, the current dominant theory is that some burning is necessary for the health of the Mariposa Grove of sequoias in Yosemite and the nesting of Kirkland’s warbler (Botkin, 1990: 153 – 155).  This new idea on environmental management shows a shift in policy towards seeing changes in nature as positive and sometimes necessary.  There is no optimal condition.  The environment changes constantly, and organisms evolved to thrive under different circumstances.
    Like their forerunners, contemporary scientists are influenced by prevalent metaphors for nature. Botkin shows a “new metaphor” emerging of bacteria functioning like a computer from A New Bacteriology to show how new ideas create new metaphors for nature (Botkin, 1990: 113-114).  Although Botkin implores the reader to use new technology, like computers, to understand nature, he wants the reader to conclude that the metaphor in general is misleading and inadequate.  The fact that bacteria and computers both have multi-operational ability does not mean they are similar nor that science can use knowledge of computers to understand bacteria.  Similarly, a forest does not function like an engine even though they both seem to thrive under specific conditions.  
    Throughout “nature’s” history, metaphor influenced science’s conception of it and equated natural function to the better-understood operation of the dominant nature metaphor.  “Nature” has no definition but a changing meaning.  Discordant Harmonies poses the question, “How can science manage something it cannot define?”  The Roman natura of everything beyond the city walls is still present in society’s idea of nature.  Although Webster’s Dictionary defines “nature” as “the sum total of all things in time and space; the entire physical universe” (Guralnik, 1968: 948), it also defines it as “natural scenery, including the plants and animals that are part of it” (Guralnik, 1968: 948).  It defines “natural” as “not artificial or manufactured” (Guralnik, 1968: 947).  Society views nature as that which is not human or manmade, and this separation between humans and nature has led society to forget that it depends on nature for everything.  Human beings are a part of nature, and we affect it more than any other animal.   Nature is not an engine to be tinkered with but the place we live.
    I cannot give a metaphor to top engine in the last sentence because no metaphor encompasses the complexities of the universe.  It is tempting to use one like “home” or “kitchen,” to create the illusion of understanding, but Discordant Harmonies shows nature is above metaphor.  The complexities of nature are beyond contemporary ecologists’ comprehension, so how can science compare nature to a process with which lay people are familiar?  Oversimplification of natural processes leads to the mismanagement of nature because the managers do not truly understand their subject.  Environmental managers hurt the Kirkland’s warbler and the sequoias when trying to help by suppressing fires.  In breaking with a metaphor for nature, Botkin shows how environmental management should strive to view nature: as a system (Botkin, 1990: 189).
    Nature as a whole, the intricate dependencies and changes of the universe, cannot be summed up in an analogy or direct comparison.  In a system, all parts are understood through each other, directly or indirectly.  Science must acknowledge the complexities and interconnectedness of the universe if it is to understand nature well enough to manage it.  Botkin says the scientific community needs to learn what the environment is like now so it can judge how much humans are changing it (Botkin, 1990: 194).  Other tasks for the scientific community include developing more accurate computer models, better using the technology it has, and developing technology for future monitoring.  All these tasks will lead to an improved understanding of how nature operates.  Botkin urges the reader not to see nature through a metaphor but for what it actually is (Botkin, 1990: 120).  The reader must see “operates” above not in terms of a machine but in terms of the natural laws science discovers to avoid oversimplifying and misunderstanding natural processes.
    There is an important place for metaphor in nature management.  Environmental issues will become mainstream only through public education, and the public will only understand these problems through comparisons to familiar processes.  Although no metaphor is suitable to explain the operations of nature as a whole, metaphors may explain generally the problems faced by the biotic community and hopefully shift public opinion and policy.  Metaphors constrained to describing problems within pieces of nature for the public will not simplify a process science needs to fully understand to correctly manage it.  However, science must remember to see nature as it is and not through metaphor; this may prove challenging as members of science are also members of the public.


References

Botkin, Daniel. 1990.  Discordant Harmonies.  New York: Oxford University Press.
Ehrlich, Paul R.  1986.  The Machinery of Nature.  New York: Simon & Schuster.
Guralnik, David B. editor.  1968.  Webster’s New World Dictionary.  New York: The World Publishing Company.

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