Biophilia
[October 12, 2001 8:24 AM ]

The innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other organisms. It is not a single instinct but a 'complex of learning rules'. The suggestion that the human inclination to affiliate with life and lifelike process is:

• Inherent (biologically based);
• Part of our species' evolutionary heritage;
• Associated with the human competitive advantage and genetic fitness;
• Likely to increase the possibility for achieving individual meaning and personal fulfilment;
• The self intercedes basis for a human ethic of care and conservation of nature, most especially the diversity of life.

The richness and depth of the subject preclude the possibility of achieving any definitive "proof". We are human in good part because of the way we affiliate with other organisms.

A change in consciousness – a love of life based on a knowledge and conviction that in our deepest affiliation with nature is the key to our species' most fundamental yearnings for a meaningful and fulfilling existence.

Aldo Leopold: "All ethics so evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts...The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land...It is inconceivable ... that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration."

More children and adults will visit zoos than attend all major sporting events combined (in the US and Canada). For more than 99% of human history humans have lived in hunter-gatherer bands totally and intimately involved with other organisms.

Gene-culture. The number of species of organisms on earth is unknown to the nearest order of magnitude. About 1.4 million species have been given names to date, the actual number is likely to lie between 10 and 100 million. Bacteria contain on the order of a million nucleotide pairs in their genetic code, the more complex eukaryotic organisms contain from 1 to 10 billion nucleotide pairs.

The number of species on earth is being reduced by a rate 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than existed in prehuman times. Species loss from the 5 major mass extinctions that occurred in the last 550 million years, took on average 10 million years to recover. All higher eukaryotic organisms from flowering plants to insects and humanity itself, are thought to have descended from a single ancestral population that lived about 1.8 billion years ago.

The natural is being replaced by the artificial.

Stephen Kellert's biological basis for human values in nature:

Classification of Values: categories indicative of the human evolutionary dependence on nature as a basis for survival and personal fulfilment. Nine hypothesised dimensions of the biophilia tendency:
Utilitarian: the physical benefits derived from nature as a fundamental basis for human sustenance, protection and security.

Naturalistic: the satisfaction derived from direct contact with nature. A sense of fascination, wonder and awe derived from an intimate experience of nature's diversity and complexity. Its recreational importance has increased in modern industrial society. "A consistent finding in well over 100 studies of recreation experiences in wilderness and urban nature areas has been that stress mitigation is one of the most verbally expressed perceived benefits."

Ecologistic-Scientific: Ecologistic is more integrative and less reductionist than the scientific. An intense curiosity and fascination with the systematic study of life and lifelike processes.

Aesthetic: the tendency to prefer natural scenes over built views, especially when the latter lack vegetation or water features. Additional research suggests that this preference for nature may be universally expressed across human cultures: "Although far from conclusive, these findings...cast some doubt on the position that [aesthetic] preferences vary fundamentally as a function of culture." (Ulrich, R., 1983, p. 110)

Leopold referred to this central aesthetic of animals in the landscape as its "numenon", its focus in meaning, in contrast to merely the "phenomenon" of a static and lifeless environment.

Symbolic: The symbolic experience of nature reflects the human use of nature as a means of facilitating communication and thought. Nature, as a rich taxonomy of species and forms, provides a vast metaphorical tapestry for the creation of diverse and complex differentiation's. Animals constitute more than 90% of the characters employed in language acquisition and counting in childrenÕs preschool books.

An enduring question of modern life is the degree to which the human capacity for technological fabrication has provided an effective substitute for traditional natural symbols as the primary means of human communication and thought. Plastic trees, stuffed animals, and their fabricated kin seem but a meagre substitute more likely to result in a stunted capacity for symbolic expression, metaphor and communication.

Humanistic: tendency for feelings of deep emotional attachment to individual elements of the natural environment. An enhanced capacity for bonding, altruism, and sharing may be important character traits enhanced by this tendency.

Moralistic: the moralistic experience of nature encompasses strong feelings of affinity, ethical responsibility, and even reverence for the natural world. Dominionistic: reflects the desire to master the natural world.

Negativistic: characterised by sentiments of fear, aversion and antipathy toward various aspects of the natural world. The potential biological advantage of avoiding, isolating and even occasionally harming presumably threatening aspects of nature can, however, be recognised. "The cult of wilderness is not a luxury; it is a necessity for the preservation of human mental health", René Dubos (1969).

A sceptical response to the assertion of the biophilia tendency ...is the view this hypothesis is an expression of cultural and class bias...a romantic ideology of nature... Such a critique may claim that biophilia condemns, by implication, all those mired in poverty and trapped within urban walls to another stereotype of less fulfilling human existence. The great majority of people from the USA and Japan recognised to only a limited extent the value of nature in fostering human physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual development.

Recommended Reading:

Wilson, E.O. and S.R. Kellert (eds.): The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C. (1993)

Quammen, D.: Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York, NY, Scribner (1996)

Lopez, B.: About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory. New York, NY, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1998)

Hamilton-Paterson, J.: Seven-Tenths: The Sea and Its Thresholds. London, Vintage (1992)

[created: October 11, 2001 5:00 PM, last modified: October 12, 2001 8:24 AM]