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So, is technology "natural"?
| Many people think that as we get more and more advanced that we are distancing ourselves from nature, and that spending our days inside on computers instead of outsude in nature is not "natural", and/or not the way things naturally are as we are only able to do this by manipulating the environments around us. However, we would not know how to do such things were our brains not so developed so as to give us the ability to figure out how to do it. Are our brains not "natural"?
| By doing everything that our brains are capable of, all we can do is what our biology enables us to do. No other animal in Earth's animal kingdom is able to create a microprocessor or assemble a jet engine, and yet here we are doing these things that are clearly not "natural", when in reality we wouldn't be able to do any of these things if we didn't naturally have the brains capable of figuring out how to use technology, from a simple wheel to a space station.
Is it natural?
| Well I think you can make a difference between things that are either created "artificially" on purpose by know concious beeings like humans and on the other side things that exist "randomly", "natural" or if you're religious by unknown/unprovable conciousness like god(s).
So the question behind your question is if you understand and accept the concept of conciousness.
| Technically everything is natural. Unnatural is just another word for "different" if you think about it. People don't accept change, so they need something to call the changes to make them appear negative.
| >>266592
I don't agree on your unnatural=different (natural=normal ?) thesis. I think >>265960 is much closer to the issue.
| We must first pause to look closer at what we must understand with "technology". To me it is like "rearranging and using the environment in ways that make living as easy as possible. A jet engine is technology. A walking stick is technology too. A chainsaw is technology. A sharp stone is too.
If we call natural a chimpanzee cracking nuts with a stone and using a grass straw to get ants out of their nest and eat them, then a space station is natural as well.
| >>267091
OP here, and yeah, this is basically what I was making the argument of.
>>266592 I'm not quite sure I agree. In this circumstance, one could take the most commonly accepted definition of "natural" to be in the name: from nature, as in organic, and "artificial" as being made from artificial parts, basically man-made. However this is not how I see things.
>>265960 Mmm, maybe, I could see that if you were a creationist, but in this sense I'm using evolution as my baseline.
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| Think about this.
With what we know so far of evolution, we know that animals over time develop traits that enable them to survive the unique threats they face in their own environments. Example: A chameleon's skin, or a butterfly's pattern are evolutuonary defenses meant to fend off predators.
So, technically, is our ability to create and use technology an evolutionary trait that we humans developed, therefore making our use of tech actually natural instead of artificial?