> [email protected] writes:
> Are humans to be
> considered a part of the natural world?...
...
> How do you resolve this?
Simple: long ago I resolved to stop trying to resolve it. ;)
Seriously, there's no clear answer that everybody agrees upon. Your message
summed up the problem well, so leave it at that. It is what it is. And,
ultimately, I don't think we have to worry about what we call "natural" or
"unnatural" - it doesn't really affect what we (scientists) do. (It can,
however, be a hot potato in the political/advocacy realm.)
I tend to think of it this way: I think it likely that on any hypothetical
planet with the right conditions, a sentient species is likely to evolve, and
it will probably develop technology that alters its environment. So in that
sense, human civilization is just an outcome of natural evolutionary processes.
But I could be all wrong.
Joe
