Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: It's time for a Vault episode. This originally aired July
Speaker 1: seen and this is our episode on the biophilia hypothesis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is ah. This was Edward O. Wilson's hypothesis about
Speaker 1: about life and how we think about life, and it's
Speaker 1: it's a very I think, uplifting idea. Granted, we you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about some of the pros and cons of
Speaker 1: the hypothesis in this episode, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: cool thing to take with us here in our first
Speaker 1: Vault episode of the new year. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: talked about some potential limitations of it as an idea,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, it's hard to resist EO.
Speaker 1: Wilson's infectious love of all things living and squirming and breathing.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, So let's go ahead and dive right in.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert.
Speaker 1: Not too long ago we were talking about ticks, about
Speaker 1: how it turns out you can get a tick on
Speaker 1: your eyeball sucking the juice from within straight through the conjunctiva.
Speaker 1: It turns out you can get all kinds of acquired
Speaker 1: diseases from ticks, like the acquired meat allergy syndrome, or
Speaker 1: the of course lime disease. We all know about all
Speaker 1: these other diseases. Of course, the woods are full of
Speaker 1: not just small animals that can hurt you, but in fact,
Speaker 1: if you want to go up to the Northwest or
Speaker 1: somewhere like that, there might be bears that could be
Speaker 1: a threat to you. And yet people want to go
Speaker 1: to the woods. Well they're lovely, dark and deep, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. I mean. I like to go to the woods.
Speaker 1: And yet there's nothing in the woods that materially benefits me.
Speaker 1: There's no food there, there's no like mating opportunity there.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of an odd thing to say, but
Speaker 1: you know, there's no in a biological sense of the word,
Speaker 1: nothing there for me really except an experience. And yet
Speaker 1: I seek that experience. I love going hiking in the woods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I find the same situation with with my family. We
Speaker 1: go out in these these little hikes, you know, in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta area, And yeah, we're not We're not foraging
Speaker 1: for berries or mushrooms or or hunting small prey. We're
Speaker 1: just going out there and kind of breathing air, getting
Speaker 1: a little exercise. And um, yeah, I mean you can.
Speaker 1: You could break it down into those tangibles and say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm getting some fresh air, I'm getting some exercise, I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm occupying myself for the morning, I'm getting
Speaker 1: away from my phone or something like this. But be
Speaker 1: happen in terms of these like evolved needs, these basic
Speaker 1: biological needs, they're not they're not necessarily being fulfilled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the woods, for some reason, seem to give you pleasure.
Speaker 1: It's a thing you're seeking out, even though there's not
Speaker 1: a real direct that. There might be indirect explanations, but
Speaker 1: there's not a really direct explanation for why your body
Speaker 1: would be sending you there. Here's another question, why do
Speaker 1: we like pets? Oh yeah, I mean this is a question.
Speaker 1: My wife and I asked a lot about our cat
Speaker 1: because she's kind of a nightmare. But we so we
Speaker 1: always have the discussions where like parasites. Yeah, there, she's
Speaker 1: living in our house, eating our food. Uh, and what
Speaker 1: does she give back? Like, she's not she's not keeping
Speaker 1: mice out of our our grain or anything. She's just
Speaker 1: laying around and frequently attacking my feet and sometimes barfing
Speaker 1: on the floor. But then but we still love her
Speaker 1: for some reason. She's still enriches our lives somehow. Our dog,
Speaker 1: Charlie is an absolute parasite. He sometimes can be so annoying,
Speaker 1: but we love this dog. This dog. He brings me
Speaker 1: so much pleasure. I'm so happy to have this dog,
Speaker 1: even when he's barking at me to take him on
Speaker 1: a walk while I'm trying to work on something, or
Speaker 1: or just eating a bunch of food that we have
Speaker 1: to pay for. I mean, from a strict material point
Speaker 1: of view, there's not really a reason to want to
Speaker 1: have this thing in my house except that I love him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I bet a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there right now are thinking, well, I'm not a
Speaker 1: dog person, I'm not a cat person. I don't like
Speaker 1: to go into the woods. I would I would invite
Speaker 1: you to expand these definitions because I feel like there
Speaker 1: are certainly individuals out there who really don't want to
Speaker 1: go into the you know, the north Georgia wilderness. But
Speaker 1: they might be very attracted to, say, you know, the
Speaker 1: desert environments of Arizona, or to other national parks, or
Speaker 1: to the beach or you know, or to tropical islands
Speaker 1: like some. So if your local outdoor environment doesn't call you,
Speaker 1: if specific outdoor environments don't don't call to you, then
Speaker 1: there have to be there are probably other natural world
Speaker 1: environments that that do ring your bell. I got one
Speaker 1: more for you, Robert. Why do people plant flowers in
Speaker 1: their backyard? Yeah? I mean what maybe maybe you could say, Okay,
Speaker 1: planning flowers in the front yard could be some kind
Speaker 1: kind of social thing where you're trying to demonstrate your
Speaker 1: I don't know, wealth and leisure time or something like that.
Speaker 1: People plant flowers in their backyard people nobody can see
Speaker 1: them except you. And so again is that there There
Speaker 1: appears to they're getting some kind of pleasure from having
Speaker 1: these plants that are growing, that they're taking care of.
Speaker 1: And the plants don't provide food, they don't provide any
Speaker 1: material benefit except that you look at them and it
Speaker 1: makes you feel good unless you're growing edible flowers. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, but wait, is that a thing? I thought
Speaker 1: edible flowers. You can buy them at heallefits. You can
Speaker 1: seriously get a whole container of edible flowers for like,
Speaker 1: you know, eighteen bucks or something. Wait, people eat squash
Speaker 1: blossom stuff, true squash blossom. But yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: people that do grow flowers. You're just growing to look
Speaker 1: at them or to appreciate, say the butterflies that are
Speaker 1: attracted and by them, the or the various pollinating insects. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we have all these weird relationships with life forms
Speaker 1: and natural landscapes, with pet animals, with vegetation. And if
Speaker 1: not a dog or a cat, you think of fish, think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know snakes, reptiles, You have the reptiles, whatever your
Speaker 1: fancy is, even a even a weird pet like a
Speaker 1: scorpion or a tarantula. And uh and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not calling you a weirdo if you have those, but
Speaker 1: you're probably into the weirdness of it. If you do
Speaker 1: own a pet scorpion, a tarantula. What about if you
Speaker 1: own pet ticks, well, then you're probably what a a
Speaker 1: A a partially mythological Eastern warlord. Right. As a call
Speaker 1: back to our Ticks episode, that would be great to
Speaker 1: have a pit of ticks in your house for when,
Speaker 1: you know, just to threaten the children when they're being
Speaker 1: too unruly, or you just have them as pets, and
Speaker 1: people are like, whoa, you have a pit full of ticks.
Speaker 1: That's horrible, And you're like, no, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: feed anybody to the ticks. I just keep them around.
Speaker 1: I love to watch these little guys crawl around. So
Speaker 1: we're presented with a question here, and the human seek
Speaker 1: out all kinds of activities and get pleasure from all
Speaker 1: kinds of activities that don't appear to have any direct
Speaker 1: material benefit, yet we we just like them. And so
Speaker 1: one reason for this could be that it's some kind
Speaker 1: of cultural thing that we, you know, we grow up
Speaker 1: being taught to like walking in the woods or to
Speaker 1: like looking at flowers, and that's possible answer. But also
Speaker 1: many of these things seem very universal, like across different cultures,
Speaker 1: people have some kind of companion animal relationship, or they
Speaker 1: enjoy certain natural landscapes, they enjoy being surrounded by certain
Speaker 1: types of plants, and so another way of looking at this,
Speaker 1: apart from just cultural learning, could be that there's some
Speaker 1: kind of biological instinct that connects us to other forms
Speaker 1: of life, even forms of life that aren't directly benefiting
Speaker 1: us by say, providing food or providing shelter or something
Speaker 1: like that. And this brings us to the topic of
Speaker 1: today's episode, which is a hypothesis that's been around in
Speaker 1: biology and evolutionary psychology for a few decades now, known
Speaker 1: as the biophilia hypothesis, and this is mainly attributed to
Speaker 1: the work that there have been multiple people working in
Speaker 1: this field now, but it's mainly attributed to the work
Speaker 1: of the American biologist Edward O. Wilson also known as EO. Wilson. Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: you recently went to like the E. O. Wilson Center.
Speaker 1: Is this a place uh from his hometown? Um, it's
Speaker 1: It's definitely down from his stomping grounds because Edward O.
Speaker 1: Wilson is it was Alabama, born in the nineteen nine
Speaker 1: and he grew up in various Florida and Alabama towns,
Speaker 1: so this is very much in his his stomping grounds.
Speaker 1: The Edward Wilson Center is in Freeport, Florida, and um
Speaker 1: I and my family visited it earlier this month and
Speaker 1: it's named in honor of Wilson. And it echoes his
Speaker 1: ideas and values. And he's he's been there, he's done,
Speaker 1: he's he's visited the center, so he's he's he's very
Speaker 1: much a part of it's it's ethos. I guess you,
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, so, what's this place like?
Speaker 1: It's wonderful. So my family was vacationing at Graton Beach,
Speaker 1: which is close to Deston, But if you need a
Speaker 1: broader idea of where it is, we're talking roughly halfway
Speaker 1: along the coast between Pensacola and Panama City. And I
Speaker 1: know that at times, if one is visiting Florida you're
Speaker 1: not a Floridian yourself, there's sometimes a hesitancy to uh
Speaker 1: to backtrack away from the beach too much. But there
Speaker 1: there are some I mean, far from from just this
Speaker 1: one location. There's some wonderful outdoor uh you know, things
Speaker 1: to see in the States. So so don't be afraid
Speaker 1: to explore a bit. Uh No, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Some people really love the beach. I
Speaker 1: really love the swamp. Yeah. One of my favorite places
Speaker 1: that have been to a few times now is uh
Speaker 1: Coola Springs State Park in Florida. This is where you
Speaker 1: have this wonderful deep natural spring. You have manateees coming
Speaker 1: in this rich um estuary environment with protected regions. Is
Speaker 1: this where you saw the leaping fish? When we jump
Speaker 1: off leaping fish, they were just leaping around like it
Speaker 1: was a Disney movie. It was fabulous. If you haven't
Speaker 1: caught that episode, that's from I guess a year or
Speaker 1: so ago. Yeah, but yeah, I go back and check
Speaker 1: out our episode about jumping fish. That was a more
Speaker 1: interesting topic than I expected. Yeah, that one and and
Speaker 1: at times deadly. I'll make sure we linked to that
Speaker 1: one on the landing page for this episode is Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. But the Edward O.
Speaker 1: Wilson Center, Yeah, so it's a wonderful indoor outdoor educational
Speaker 1: center and it really does an excellent job of relating
Speaker 1: biology to two young people. Most of the time, during
Speaker 1: the course of the year it's it's only open to
Speaker 1: school groups and whatnot. But during the summer June and
Speaker 1: July it's open to the public on Thursdays and Fridays.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about it, you can
Speaker 1: go to E. O. Wilson Center dot org. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. There's a giant bird when you first walk
Speaker 1: in the door. They are giant animals to crawl on.
Speaker 1: There's a there's an observable bee colony honey bees you
Speaker 1: can check out and try and find the queen. So
Speaker 1: if it's Edward Wilson Center, I would expect there to
Speaker 1: be ants there right. There are ants. Yes, there's a
Speaker 1: huge display on ants, a giant ant that you can
Speaker 1: crawl on. Yeah. So it's it's it's really wonderful stuff.
Speaker 1: I recommend going like honey, I shrunk the kids scale. Yes. Well,
Speaker 1: so before we get into the biophelia hypothesis, we I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about Edward Wilson himself because one
Speaker 1: of the so he's got this book from nineteen four
Speaker 1: I believe, is from the nineteen eighties called Biophelia, where
Speaker 1: he first articulates this idea. Now he would explore it
Speaker 1: more in a later book. Um, but this book, Biophilia
Speaker 1: is a is a book I've read, and it's a
Speaker 1: really enjoyable scientific memoir. A lot of what he talks
Speaker 1: about is like his research on ants and his field
Speaker 1: work in places like Suriname and Papua New Guinea, And
Speaker 1: so he weaves together these themes from his life and
Speaker 1: from his work in science and his thoughts about what
Speaker 1: the role of science and society is. The the idea
Speaker 1: that ties this all together is this idea of biophilia
Speaker 1: are innate affiliation with or desire to focus on other
Speaker 1: living life forms in natural landscapes or lifelike processes. Now,
Speaker 1: there's some ambiguity in there, and we can address that
Speaker 1: ambi uity later and any problems that might cause for
Speaker 1: this as a hypothesis. But he definitely has a personal
Speaker 1: way of expressing his feelings about this idea, right. It
Speaker 1: very much connects back to stories throughout his life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's important to note that Edward O. Wilson is
Speaker 1: he's the real deal here. He is. He's he is
Speaker 1: an acclaimed scientist, uh specifically an entomologist, and he is
Speaker 1: a and he is a very accomplished author. Like he
Speaker 1: he officially retired in but he's just continued to write books,
Speaker 1: uh like almost every year. I mean, his bibliography is
Speaker 1: incredible and his books are good. He's one of those
Speaker 1: science writers who is actually a very very good writer.
Speaker 1: He's expressive and poetic, but he also gets to the
Speaker 1: point I think he's one of the better scientists slash
Speaker 1: science writers in America. Yeah and then. And he's also
Speaker 1: very relatable, especially when you see him, you know, in
Speaker 1: person or a video or a Ted talk. He's he's Alabamable, worn,
Speaker 1: he's very folksy, and he describes himself as being essentially
Speaker 1: still a child at heart, and he has that kind
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm for nature. So I mentioned he was born
Speaker 1: in an earlier biographical detail that often comes up and
Speaker 1: he attributes to being what sort of steered him into
Speaker 1: studying ants is that he was seven years old and
Speaker 1: he blinded himself in one eye during a fishing accident,
Speaker 1: you know what. He pulled up a fish and the
Speaker 1: finn got him right, and spiny finn got him in
Speaker 1: the eye and blinded him. And so he this led
Speaker 1: him to focus more, he says, on little things, things
Speaker 1: that he could actually get up, you know, get up
Speaker 1: close to with an eyeglass. So he turned to ants entomology.
Speaker 1: This game his key area of research. He attended the
Speaker 1: University of Alabama and earned his bachelor's and masters in biology,
Speaker 1: and he identified fire ants as an invasive species and
Speaker 1: reported on the first US colony of fire ants. That
Speaker 1: was while he was in college. That was when he
Speaker 1: was in college, the early days for him. Um and
Speaker 1: and this is we were just talking about this before
Speaker 1: we went on the air. Here there's a video on
Speaker 1: you to uh and it was I believe it. It
Speaker 1: is aligned with the E. O. Wilson Center. But it
Speaker 1: starts off narrated by Harrison Ford and uh and in
Speaker 1: Attenborough comes in and talks about how how how amazing
Speaker 1: Edward o'wilson is. So this this video is weird for
Speaker 1: multiple reasons, and one of them is that you hear
Speaker 1: Harrison Ford trying to sound enthusiastic about something, which I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've ever heard before. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the most chronically bored and unenthusiastic actor in the history
Speaker 1: of cinema, and we love him for it. But he's
Speaker 1: he's talking about the greatness of the work of Edward Wilson,
Speaker 1: and he still kind of has that that lake onic, sad,
Speaker 1: not very excited edge in his voice. Yeah, even though
Speaker 1: this is this is clearly like he's clearly passionate about it,
Speaker 1: Like you did this for a reason. But later on
Speaker 1: in the video, you're following Edward o Wilson, like recent
Speaker 1: Edward O. Wilson, Old Edward O. Wilson wandering around in
Speaker 1: the Florida wilderness, coming up to uh a fire ant colony.
Speaker 1: He reaches down with his bare hand, stirs them up
Speaker 1: like scrapes the nest and they all begin to swarm.
Speaker 1: And then he sticks his hand in the nest and
Speaker 1: lets them crawl in his hand and lets them begin
Speaker 1: to uh to attack his hand and uh and then
Speaker 1: he brushes them off. But it really demonstrates his man
Speaker 1: his devotion to connecting with the natural world and his
Speaker 1: fascination with the With these insects, well, it's almost deranged
Speaker 1: because he's he's like smiling gleefully as they're all stinging
Speaker 1: and attacking the back of his hand. He's got these
Speaker 1: hundreds of ants on his skin and he's like each
Speaker 1: one of these bites is like a hot needle. But
Speaker 1: it it just shows you how, you know, how fascinated
Speaker 1: he is with them like that he would have this
Speaker 1: really kind of a holy moment, Like I kept thinking
Speaker 1: of St. Francis with the animals, only instead of touching
Speaker 1: a you know, petting a lamb, he's petting fire ants.
Speaker 1: If lambs could sting. Yes, so um Edward O. Wilson
Speaker 1: h So, he moved onto Harvard in nine and he
Speaker 1: joined the faculty there and again he retired in UH.
Speaker 1: But but he remains on as an honorary curator in
Speaker 1: entomology and he's during the course of his career again,
Speaker 1: he's written numerous books. He's received more awards than we
Speaker 1: can list in this podcast, including the Pulitzer Prize, which
Speaker 1: he I believe received at least twice. UH. He's received
Speaker 1: the Ted Prize and the U S National Medal of
Speaker 1: Science again just to name a few. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of Wilson's efforts outside of his scientific research over the
Speaker 1: years have been focused on the idea of conservation and
Speaker 1: preservation of nature. Yes, that we have this rich biodiversity.
Speaker 1: Everything is connected, and we have to preserve it because
Speaker 1: if you start you start pulling things out, you start
Speaker 1: allowing things to go dark in this epic grid of
Speaker 1: by a biodiverse um life, then you're gonna have cascading
Speaker 1: collapses and you're going to You're going to to risk
Speaker 1: tremendous damage to our ecosystem. He sort of reminds me
Speaker 1: of the influence of somebody who I enjoyed talking about
Speaker 1: last year in our summer reading episode, which is the
Speaker 1: early ecologist Alexander von Humboldt sort of responsible for the
Speaker 1: idea of ecology, both focusing on the inner connections between
Speaker 1: things in nature. How an organism doesn't No organism is
Speaker 1: an island, It doesn't stand on its own, and they
Speaker 1: all have connected inter dependencies. And we we we threaten
Speaker 1: natural life forms at our own peril. And I think
Speaker 1: he frames this in two ways. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: destroying natural habitats and destroying organisms that may in fact
Speaker 1: be some kind of keystone species in a natural ecology
Speaker 1: that threatens us materially, like these can have negative effects
Speaker 1: on our health. It can lead to the spread of
Speaker 1: new diseases, It can make resources harder to get, it
Speaker 1: can cause all kinds of problems for us materially. But
Speaker 1: he also emphasizes a lot just just the feeling of
Speaker 1: pleasure we get from nature and how important it is
Speaker 1: to our sense of well being and happiness to have
Speaker 1: intact natural ecologies around us. And this is sort of
Speaker 1: how he gets to the biophilia hypothesis. All Right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back
Speaker 1: we will dive into the biophilia hypothesis and discuss what
Speaker 1: it's saying. Uh, and also eventually we also get to
Speaker 1: some criticism about it. All right, we're back. So Wilson
Speaker 1: proposed this term biophilia meaning the love of life in
Speaker 1: the short publication back in biophilia the human bond with
Speaker 1: other species, and he defined this as humanities innate tendency
Speaker 1: to focus on living things as opposed to the inanimate,
Speaker 1: and in effect, he argued for in innate love of nature.
Speaker 1: Now there you already see some tension in the definitions, right,
Speaker 1: because in one statement there it's talking about focusing on
Speaker 1: other life forms and lifelike processes, and in the other
Speaker 1: statement it's saying that we naturally love nature. Now, focusing
Speaker 1: on things and loving them are different. And this is
Speaker 1: going to be one of the problems people have raised
Speaker 1: with the biofilia hypothesis is um that it may not
Speaker 1: be exactly pinned down on exactly what the hypothesis is saying.
Speaker 1: But for now we we should just try to explain
Speaker 1: the way it's usually expressed by people who are in
Speaker 1: favor of the biofilia hypothesis, and they tend to go
Speaker 1: with the focus idea, right, that it's that we focus
Speaker 1: on other living things and lifelike processes, where for some
Speaker 1: reason we're way more interested in trees than we are
Speaker 1: in rocks. Now. I should also add that the term
Speaker 1: biofiliate itself was used earlier in the nineties sixties by
Speaker 1: the German social psychologist Eric from to denote a psychological
Speaker 1: orientation towards nature. But uh, it was really Lee Wilson
Speaker 1: who then took it and tweet the meaning and really
Speaker 1: led to its primary usage today. Well, maybe we should
Speaker 1: read a passage from Wilson to see what what he
Speaker 1: has to say about the concept. He says, the object
Speaker 1: of my reflection can be summarized by a single word, biophilia,
Speaker 1: which I will be so bold as to define as
Speaker 1: the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.
Speaker 1: From infancy, we concentrate happily on ourselves and other organisms.
Speaker 1: We learned to distinguish life from the inanimate and move
Speaker 1: toward it like moths to a porch. Light. Novelty and
Speaker 1: diversity are particularly esteemed. The mere mention of the word
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial evokes reveries about still unexplored life, displacing the old
Speaker 1: and once potent exotic that drew earlier generations to remote
Speaker 1: islands and jungled interiors. That much is immediately clear, but
Speaker 1: a great deal more needs to be added. I will
Speaker 1: make the case that to explore and affiliate with life
Speaker 1: is a deep and complicated process in mental development, to
Speaker 1: an extent still undervalued and philosophy and religion. Our our
Speaker 1: existence depends on this propensity. Our spirit is woven from it.
Speaker 1: Hope rises on its currents. Yeah, I like that, and
Speaker 1: so I like that he's he's situating biophilia as a
Speaker 1: sort as a hypothesis to explain something about our nature.
Speaker 1: But it also, I think for him takes on a
Speaker 1: sort of propulsive meaning about like how we should act.
Speaker 1: That if we act in accordance with with these natural
Speaker 1: urges to affiliate with nature, we can sort of shed
Speaker 1: this man conquers nature mentality that was present in a
Speaker 1: lot of human history. And you might wonder, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so if throughout a lot of human history we've had
Speaker 1: this mentality of you know, we've got to tame the
Speaker 1: beast of nature, We've got to make it bend to
Speaker 1: our will and defeat our predatory adversaries wild? Is that
Speaker 1: is that tendency throughout human history a challenge to the
Speaker 1: bio philly a hypothesis. I don't know, what do you think, Robert, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss this a little bit more as we go.
Speaker 1: But I do find it interesting that even in environmental circles,
Speaker 1: even in um, in environmental movements, you see them, you
Speaker 1: see individuals evoke this idea of mastery over nature. You know,
Speaker 1: it becomes this idea of saving the planet, positioning man,
Speaker 1: is this as as not completely you know, dishonestly, but
Speaker 1: positioning us as individuals with power over nature, and therefore
Speaker 1: we should use our power over nature to rain things
Speaker 1: in and gain control over the situation. I like the
Speaker 1: way you put it there with about the idea of
Speaker 1: saving the planet, Like why do what does it mean
Speaker 1: when you talk about saving the whales versus not hurting
Speaker 1: the whales? I mean essentially you're you're saying the same thing,
Speaker 1: but they're starting with different assumptions. Uh. When if you
Speaker 1: were to say save the whales, it almost says like,
Speaker 1: you know, we have of two fates on a scale
Speaker 1: that we control, and we can press one side down
Speaker 1: or press the other side down, save them or kill them.
Speaker 1: But really the idea is that on their own they'd
Speaker 1: be fine. We are doing things to them to kill them.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like they were naturally going extinct
Speaker 1: when we found them. Yeah, so you could have you
Speaker 1: can have one person that's saying save the whales, and
Speaker 1: the other person could say, let's live in harmony with
Speaker 1: the whales. Ultimately they may be arguing for the same thing,
Speaker 1: but that but each argument cast humanity and its role
Speaker 1: with nature in a slightly different light. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I think the the stop harming the environment as opposed
Speaker 1: to save the environment might be better because it better
Speaker 1: emphasizes the fact that we we live alongside all the
Speaker 1: other organisms in the environment and we need them. They're
Speaker 1: not like pets that we're deciding what to do with.
Speaker 1: Of course, then again, messaging is aimed at at the listener,
Speaker 1: and there are going to be certain group, certain individuals
Speaker 1: that are going to react more strongly to two different
Speaker 1: arguments and say, hey, you have the power to say
Speaker 1: some whales. Don't you want to say some whales? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that made me feel really good. But if you say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: stop killing the whales. Stop hurting the whale, stop wrecking
Speaker 1: our environment. You know that puts sometimes a negative spin
Speaker 1: on it that is not going to be as embraced
Speaker 1: by an individual or group. Yeah. I guess it's the
Speaker 1: superhero mentality. You want to be the superhero and save
Speaker 1: the bus full of children. It's not all that exciting
Speaker 1: to say that you wouldn't harm a bus full of children. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have one more quote from Wilson I want to
Speaker 1: read before we move forward. He just because this is
Speaker 1: just another example of his his beautiful ability to to
Speaker 1: sum up so many of these environmental ideas. He says,
Speaker 1: the living environment is what really sustains us. The living
Speaker 1: environment creates the soil, creates most of the atmosphere. It
Speaker 1: is not just something out there. The biosphere is a membrane,
Speaker 1: a very thin membrane of living organism. Now it's important
Speaker 1: to point out that as a scientific HYPOTHESI this if
Speaker 1: Biophelia has anything to say, it should have something to say,
Speaker 1: meaning that it shouldn't just be you know, people love nature, right,
Speaker 1: because we that's sort of obvious. People do generally tend
Speaker 1: to love nature in one way or another, even if
Speaker 1: you're not really an outdoors person, You probably have some
Speaker 1: kind of preference for natural shapes, for plant environments, for
Speaker 1: things like that over dead, dry, uninhabited landscapes. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about picture the surface of the Moon or Mars
Speaker 1: or something like that. Does that look like a place
Speaker 1: you want to live? No, But at the same time
Speaker 1: it is. It is an environment, right. I Mean, we
Speaker 1: were just talking about Arabia Mountain yesterday, which is a
Speaker 1: local hiking area in the Atlanta area, and we were saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's great, it's like walking on another planet. It's like
Speaker 1: being on the moon. Yeah, it's cool for a couple hours.
Speaker 1: It's it's not a place that I would want to live,
Speaker 1: I think, because well, even though there are some plants
Speaker 1: on it, the thing about Arabia Mountain is it's placed
Speaker 1: near atlant know where it's this this outcropping of mostly
Speaker 1: bald stone that has no soil. It has no plants.
Speaker 1: There are a few little groves on it that have
Speaker 1: trees and bushes growing up out of them, but mostly
Speaker 1: it's just bare rock. And while I'm there, it's cool,
Speaker 1: but it's cool for exactly the reason that it's not
Speaker 1: a place I'd want to stay. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: But how do you feel about the desert. I like
Speaker 1: the desert, but the desert is full of life. I
Speaker 1: don't know how i'd feel about, well, the desert I've
Speaker 1: been to. I mean, like, I've been to the Chihuahua
Speaker 1: Desert and it's full of life. It's fascinating. And the
Speaker 1: life in the desert when you come to like a
Speaker 1: place where there's a river flowing through a desert and
Speaker 1: there's green radiating out away from it, the life you
Speaker 1: see becomes all the more precious because of how scarce
Speaker 1: the greenery and things are in other places around. Now
Speaker 1: a place that's just pure sand dunes with no life
Speaker 1: forms at all, I don't know. That's cool to look
Speaker 1: out for a few minutes, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: i'd want to stay there. Okay, uh yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: it's gonna vary from from person to person, but I
Speaker 1: would love to hear from anyone out there is Listening's like, yes,
Speaker 1: build me a cabin in a out on the sand
Speaker 1: dunes and would be happy. Uh. You might have might
Speaker 1: be able to put a make a stronger argument for it.
Speaker 1: Now to your point about this being a hypothesis too,
Speaker 1: and about it being scientific scientifically grounded. Is that on
Speaker 1: one hand, yes, biophilia involves an ethos and uh and
Speaker 1: a lot of just commentary on what it is to
Speaker 1: be human and the human experience. But then there is
Speaker 1: also the the idea that there's at least in part
Speaker 1: a genetically and involved, that this is something that is
Speaker 1: going to go deeper than just uh, you know how
Speaker 1: we're nurtured, but it's going to get down to our
Speaker 1: core biological nature. Yeah, this would make it biologically testable.
Speaker 1: It's say, it's that our tendency to affiliate with nature,
Speaker 1: or tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes is
Speaker 1: somehow determined by our gene, or at least it's primed
Speaker 1: by our genes. Gene primed learning is a thing that
Speaker 1: they often emphasize. So that should, in theory be testable
Speaker 1: in some way if you're clear enough about what it
Speaker 1: is you're looking for. So maybe we should talk about
Speaker 1: some of the commonly cited evidence by biophilia theorists. What
Speaker 1: do they say are good reasons to think that we
Speaker 1: have this innate, in inherited tendency to affiliate with other
Speaker 1: life forms? All right, well, here's some of the here's
Speaker 1: some of the anecdotal evidence. All right, Um, so, first
Speaker 1: of all, universal appreciation for nature across human cultures. Now
Speaker 1: we've already touched on this a little bit, but it's
Speaker 1: just the idea that would no matter where you go,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nature and natural elements wrapped up
Speaker 1: in that culture. And Uh, one example that I really
Speaker 1: like is people in very different cultures over the world
Speaker 1: tend to like a particular kind of landscape, a landscape
Speaker 1: that just happens to be similar to the Pleistocene savannas. Uh,
Speaker 1: that we evolved to thrive in the ideal savannah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is related to a concept to known and
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology is the environment of evolutionary adapted nous or
Speaker 1: the e e A, which is basically the idea that
Speaker 1: animals tend to be adapted not to live anywhere on Earth,
Speaker 1: but for a particular landscape or type of environment that
Speaker 1: shaped their genes. And if that's the case, you've sort
Speaker 1: of like put your chips down on being the kind
Speaker 1: of organism that thrives in this kind of place. And
Speaker 1: as such, you should have some kind of mechanisms in
Speaker 1: your brain that tell you seek out that kind of
Speaker 1: place where you play best. Yes, now this I love this.
Speaker 1: Uh this this theory in this idea about art though,
Speaker 1: because if you spend any time in museums, you run
Speaker 1: across the landscapes. And sometimes I'm not I'm not too
Speaker 1: much of a landscape guy. I tend to walk by
Speaker 1: a lot of the unless there's something really cool going on,
Speaker 1: such as uh we were just in the last episode
Speaker 1: talking about or one of our previous episodes talking about
Speaker 1: landscape with the fall of Vicharus by h was it
Speaker 1: Bosha brugle I can't brugle b and uh, so you
Speaker 1: have one detail of a falling mythological figure, but then
Speaker 1: also just a natural landscape with human activity and nature
Speaker 1: going on. So when you do, when you look at
Speaker 1: a lot of these these works of landscape art, you
Speaker 1: find open spaces of low grasses interspersed with copses of trees.
Speaker 1: The trees tend to fork near the ground, which is
Speaker 1: to say, if they're tree, their trees you could scramble
Speaker 1: up into if you needed to get away from something.
Speaker 1: There's water close by or in the distance, so you
Speaker 1: don't feel like you're going to necessarily dry up or
Speaker 1: you know you or you'd be able to take a
Speaker 1: swim if you got overheated, or there's there are indications
Speaker 1: of animal life, maybe birds in the distance, as well
Speaker 1: as diverse green ory. And finally, get this, a path
Speaker 1: or a road, perhaps a river bank or a shoreline
Speaker 1: that extends into the distance, almost inviting you to follow it.
Speaker 1: And in this type of landscape is generally regard it
Speaker 1: is beautiful, even by people in countries that don't have it.
Speaker 1: You know, like your your culture might not have a
Speaker 1: lot of landscape art, but you're gonna there's a very
Speaker 1: good chance you're going to encounter another culture's landscape art
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get it. You know, you can be complete.
Speaker 1: You could have never seen any you know, say Chinese
Speaker 1: or Japanese landscape art, and then you would view it
Speaker 1: and you'd be like, yeah, I totally get it, and
Speaker 1: you're you're just drawn into it. You you want to
Speaker 1: crawl into the painting and run around with the trees. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this is commonly cited anecdotal evidence about the kinds
Speaker 1: of art and imagery people prefer. Now, I would say,
Speaker 1: as a counter example, as long as we're sticking with
Speaker 1: anecdotal for now, and when we're not claiming to have
Speaker 1: some kind of strong empirical case. I'd say, just personally,
Speaker 1: when I think about landscape images, I like the most.
Speaker 1: I like mountain images. Yeah, well, you know, one of
Speaker 1: these things is that to what is often going on
Speaker 1: in a mountain image. I mean, you're gonna have some
Speaker 1: somebody or something standing at a peak looking out just
Speaker 1: having you know, mastery over the landscape, being able to
Speaker 1: survey everything around you and see predators approaching you from
Speaker 1: a distance. You could very much argue that that's an
Speaker 1: evolutionary adaptation as well. Yeah, because exactly having having the
Speaker 1: higher ground gives you the ability to see what's coming
Speaker 1: in in multiple directions. But of course that isn't exactly biophilia,
Speaker 1: because that that's talking about landscapes, w It's not really
Speaker 1: talking about organisms or lifelike processes. Though. One thing I
Speaker 1: will point out is that in some of the biophilia
Speaker 1: literature there does seem to be sometimes a kind of
Speaker 1: blurry nous or fuzziness about whether we're talking still just
Speaker 1: about natural organisms, or whether this is turning into a
Speaker 1: preference for natural types of landscapes as opposed to I
Speaker 1: don't know what cities or something like that. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: and another example that comes up is the fact that
Speaker 1: some of the earliest human art works are the the
Speaker 1: the various cave paintings that show you know, realistic animals,
Speaker 1: realistic human beings and uh and uh, and also just
Speaker 1: decorative motifs that are clearly inspired by natural world organisms. Totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see these these ancient reverent images, and they tend
Speaker 1: to be what they tend to be animals, Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: prey animals that you might be hunting. Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: you know, these date back thirty two thousand years in
Speaker 1: the case of some of the French cave paintings that
Speaker 1: we've seen, and if you if you consider shell necklaces
Speaker 1: and whatnot, which might be stretching the argument a little bit,
Speaker 1: but that can take you back a good hundred thousand years. Now.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, there are other anecdotal examples, like landscape architecture
Speaker 1: is full of of of examples of this. I ran
Speaker 1: across some of some material by Bill Brown and Keith
Speaker 1: Bowers and Carol Franklin, all of them landscape architects and uh,
Speaker 1: and they point out that you're just frekently going to
Speaker 1: encounter actual nature inside of of a building. You're going
Speaker 1: to counter fish tanks and plants you can encounter. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, ornaments and patterns that read like nature. So
Speaker 1: it might be you say, you're in Florida and then
Speaker 1: you go into a beach resort. But is there going
Speaker 1: to be some sort of pineapple design, you know on
Speaker 1: the pillars or on the wallpaper. Uh, you have to
Speaker 1: take that into account and uh and oh and then
Speaker 1: that opens savannah that we crave. Well, you could argue
Speaker 1: that we also create it to some extent in our
Speaker 1: golf courses. You're right, golf courses. In a way, it's
Speaker 1: it's a weird combination, like the ultimate mastery over nature.
Speaker 1: You and you enslave nature and just turn it into
Speaker 1: your own yard game then and bend it to your will.
Speaker 1: But still you're you're evoking certain natural motifs, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm so impressed by that. I
Speaker 1: feel like you've golf courses. You just blew my Savannah
Speaker 1: hypothesis skepticism out of the water. And uh, I mean
Speaker 1: it does go to show that the idea of biophilia,
Speaker 1: there's like overt biophilia and then biophilia in ways that
Speaker 1: you didn't even realize you were. You were, you know,
Speaker 1: employing it. Like. Another example of that is the symbolic
Speaker 1: use of nature and human language. Oh yeah, all our
Speaker 1: metaphors are nature metaphors. Yeah, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of them are very over you know, blind
Speaker 1: as a bat. Wise, is it now pretty as a peacock,
Speaker 1: crazy as a rat as an outhouse rat? Um? Whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa what? Oh yeah, thats a real expression, just like that,
Speaker 1: as crazy as an outhouse rat. And then there's crazy
Speaker 1: as a rat and a coffee can I love a
Speaker 1: good crazy rat? Uh? Analogy there? But how about a
Speaker 1: bull in a China shop? A bull in a China
Speaker 1: shop is good too. Of course, China shops are not
Speaker 1: very uh, very much part of our revolutionary adapted landscape.
Speaker 1: But but but the bull is the bull, the bull
Speaker 1: and various other animals as a way to evoke personality,
Speaker 1: you know. And the thing is, these are these are
Speaker 1: just some of the obvious ones, but it gets a
Speaker 1: lot more elegant, to the point that you're not always
Speaker 1: aware that you're invoking animal imagery in your language, but
Speaker 1: it's there. Oh and then I mean we could go
Speaker 1: on for forever here about about spiritual everance for nature
Speaker 1: across cultures totally. Ye, think of all the sacred places
Speaker 1: in global myth, from dentic gardens to sacred mountains to
Speaker 1: primordial oceans like we discussed in our recent episode about
Speaker 1: creating a universe. Yeah, I agree with that, though yet
Speaker 1: again there were somewhat blurring the original definition. If the
Speaker 1: hypothesis is supposed to be about organisms, Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: are we talking about landscapes or just organism? Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about organisms. Let's look at all those gods and
Speaker 1: demigods that we have rolling about, uh how much? I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly there are examples of very anthropomorphic deities that are
Speaker 1: just pretty much just tall bearded people. But yet even
Speaker 1: in even say Abrahamic tradition, you have what you have
Speaker 1: winged angels that's invoking uh like you know, hybrid or
Speaker 1: or chimerical imagery. And then you have just straight up yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the world serpents. You have celestial dragons in
Speaker 1: Chinese mythology that are themselves com posits of all these
Speaker 1: various animal motifs. And of course you look at the
Speaker 1: pantheon of the Hindu deities and you see all of
Speaker 1: these wonderful animal forms. Now, Wilson himself is very much
Speaker 1: into the idea of serpent imagery throughout human culture. As
Speaker 1: one example of that, he sites of biophilia. But this
Speaker 1: goes into Wilson's broader definition of biophilia because as some
Speaker 1: people employ the term, they think that it just means
Speaker 1: like love of other organisms or love of nature. Wilson
Speaker 1: goes with that focus on that our attention is naturally
Speaker 1: drawn to and stuck on other organisms, especially organisms that
Speaker 1: have some kind of evolutionary relevance for us, and one
Speaker 1: of the examples is the widespread biophobia of snakes. So
Speaker 1: for Wilson, biophobia is actually a subset of biophilia. We've
Speaker 1: got this relationship with other organisms, and so the serpent
Speaker 1: human mind relationship is something that that he really focuses on.
Speaker 1: He talks about how common snake dreams are across human cultures,
Speaker 1: how common snake imagery is in religions on all all
Speaker 1: parts of the planet, how common snake imagery is an
Speaker 1: art that they're just snakes everywhere, we apparently can't get
Speaker 1: them off the brain. And then he also compares this
Speaker 1: to the way that other primates seem to react to
Speaker 1: snakes with with greater alarm and magnitude of activity than
Speaker 1: they would too many other types of animals of comparable size.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, and and it goes beyond beyond
Speaker 1: that indo our various pet animals. If anyone's ever conducted
Speaker 1: the cucumber test with a cat, replace the cucumber on
Speaker 1: the the the floor behind them when they're not looking. No,
Speaker 1: they'll turn around, and if they glimpse the cucumber they'll jump. Whoa, um,
Speaker 1: I've had I have not had a lot of luck
Speaker 1: with this experiment with my own cat, granted how many
Speaker 1: times he tried. Only when I'm holding a cucumber in
Speaker 1: the kitchen and I looked down and see the cat
Speaker 1: facing the other way. So maybe you need longer cucumbers, yeah,
Speaker 1: or just more you know, I should, I should plan
Speaker 1: more in my cat experiments. But then, of course, anyone
Speaker 1: who's in who's ever and involved themselves with horses knows.
Speaker 1: You know how a horse can behave if it sees
Speaker 1: a snake. I mean, and and I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: about dogs. I assume dogs have strong reactions to serpents
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I'd imagine just the other day, my
Speaker 1: dog Charlie tried to eat a dead one. Oh well,
Speaker 1: we're out walking. It's there on the sidewalk, belly up,
Speaker 1: rotting a little bit and he he saw a snack.
Speaker 1: Do yank him away? You have to get in there now.
Speaker 1: Back to the idea of religion and UH in biophilia,
Speaker 1: you know, I also think that that heavily nature line
Speaker 1: faiths illustrate this as well, such as like Shinto comes
Speaker 1: to mind, you know, the Japanese UH mentality that there
Speaker 1: is UH. You know, there's a there's a spiritual energy
Speaker 1: and all things. And granted some of that includes rocks
Speaker 1: but statues, but it can you know, certainly includes a
Speaker 1: natural forms as well an organism UH. And there's actually
Speaker 1: an excellent article in the New York Times from this week.
Speaker 1: By the time you hear it, it it will be like
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks old, I guess. But it's about
Speaker 1: resurgent religious faith in China and the environmental activism that
Speaker 1: is coming with it. And it's hardly an underground thing.
Speaker 1: President Jijin Ping has a champion to return to interest
Speaker 1: in Chinese culture and particularly Taoism and Confusism. So and
Speaker 1: part of this is countering Western influences, but he's called
Speaker 1: for China to return to its roots as a quote,
Speaker 1: ecological civilization. Now, the article also points out that the
Speaker 1: movement as vote motivating Chinese Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims as well.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's always I think worth reminding
Speaker 1: everyone that the China is is home to fifty five
Speaker 1: distinct ethnic groups, even if Han is the majority there. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they're also numerous religious faiths. Now, I wonder how
Speaker 1: this initiative plays into the Chinese government's enabling of heavy
Speaker 1: polluting industry. I mean, of course they're not unique in
Speaker 1: government to enable that. But no, no, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a a fair fair criticism, and I think that's certainly
Speaker 1: a conflict in uh in China, uh presently um. And
Speaker 1: you know, there are other motivations as well, such as
Speaker 1: with you know, the U S sort of taking a
Speaker 1: a lesser role in the environmental leadership, that there's a
Speaker 1: place for someone like China to step up and assume power.
Speaker 1: So there's power here as well. Uh, that's that's at stake.
Speaker 1: But as this article by Javierra see Hernandez points out,
Speaker 1: there's there's more of an emphasis in these resulting environmental
Speaker 1: movements on living in harmony with nature rather than what
Speaker 1: is perceived as a Western take on saving the Earth.
Speaker 1: To come back to the distinction we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: so it's don't kill the whales, not save the whales, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think this is interesting in light of by affiliate,
Speaker 1: because I think it's very in keeping with the message
Speaker 1: of stewardship understanding biodiversity. But at the same time we
Speaker 1: see that that very savior message, uh, you know, invoked
Speaker 1: in materials promoting Edward Wilson and biophilia that like that
Speaker 1: Harrison Ford video we're talking about. He describes that quote
Speaker 1: as an epic battle to save our planet and it
Speaker 1: will involve swords and magic staves. And then you know,
Speaker 1: there are some people will actually bring a technology into
Speaker 1: this argument as well. Wilson himself said that the more
Speaker 1: we understand organisms through science, the closer we become to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And while technology can arguably distance ourselves from nature as well,
Speaker 1: it can bring us closer. Molecular biology and genetic engineering,
Speaker 1: for example, bring us closer to nature because is a
Speaker 1: greater understanding. And you can even argue that the search
Speaker 1: for extraterrestrial life too is a biophilic endeavor. Oh, I mean,
Speaker 1: the CT is almost perfect example of biophilia if there
Speaker 1: is any merit to the idea, because like, there are
Speaker 1: millions of planets out there that we could be interested in,
Speaker 1: and what are we interested in. We're interested in the
Speaker 1: ones that have life on them. Now that could you
Speaker 1: could say that there there's just sort of like a
Speaker 1: cognitively recognized self preservation instinct right that we we say, Okay,
Speaker 1: if there's another planet with life on it out there
Speaker 1: could be a threat to us, could help us, so
Speaker 1: that we have motivations based in our cognitive capacities to
Speaker 1: understand that life has this this value out there. But
Speaker 1: that's not the only kind of life we're interested in.
Speaker 1: People have been looking for microbes in the soil of
Speaker 1: Mars for decades. Now, you know, we scoop up the
Speaker 1: soil of Mars and we want to see things alive
Speaker 1: in it. Why do we care so much about that?
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's not just scientists who care. I
Speaker 1: understand why scientists care because it's part of their life's work.
Speaker 1: But the average person really does care. Usually whether there's
Speaker 1: life on Mars. That's an interesting question to them. Why, Well,
Speaker 1: because the answer ends up saying I mean, it ends
Speaker 1: up saying something about ourselves and about life itself, you know.
Speaker 1: But but also I think just because life is interesting,
Speaker 1: that the presence of life somewhere makes that place so
Speaker 1: much more fascinating than an otherwise dead rock covered in
Speaker 1: loose soil and stones. This makes me want to see
Speaker 1: more sort of darkly Edward Wilson type characters and some
Speaker 1: of our sci fi horror. You know, someone who's going
Speaker 1: to really just reach out and touch the xenomorphs and
Speaker 1: love them. I guess we do see characters like that
Speaker 1: in the various alien films that Brad Dworf comes to
Speaker 1: mind in the Alien Resurrection. I can't speak any anything
Speaker 1: positive but Thelian Resurrection. Let's move on. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's move on to DA Let's take one more quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back we'll get into measurable bio
Speaker 1: biological evidence for biophilia as well as some evidence against it. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So so far we've been talking not super
Speaker 1: rigorously about science. We've been talking about general anecdotal observations
Speaker 1: about people's behavi of vir about culture, about our own feelings,
Speaker 1: and that's fine, but that's not going to prove a
Speaker 1: scientific hypothesis and make it a workable theory, right. And
Speaker 1: and Edward Wilson has has been pretty clear throughout his
Speaker 1: career with this that like, there's not strong evidence for it,
Speaker 1: that there I think he more recently said, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: stronger evidence for it, but he's not He realizes that
Speaker 1: the evidence is not there yet. A lot of more
Speaker 1: research is required. But some of the measurable evidence that's
Speaker 1: out there. We've already touched on this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but measurable physiological responses and humans that are exposed to
Speaker 1: sometimes just images of snakes or spiders, right, There has
Speaker 1: been actual empirical research on this, and and it's comparing
Speaker 1: our responses as humans to the responses especially of other primates,
Speaker 1: to say, like, is there some inherited, uh genetic component
Speaker 1: to our reactions to these animals that's not just culturally learned. Yes,
Speaker 1: that in a way, there's just like there's there's awareness,
Speaker 1: there's an important like sub cognitive awareness, you know. And
Speaker 1: to go back to the the idea of biophobia, this
Speaker 1: would be a biophobia that Wilson would include underneath his
Speaker 1: definition of biophilia, it would be a natural focus or
Speaker 1: attention that we give to certain types of organisms. Now,
Speaker 1: another big area and this is this is certainly an
Speaker 1: area where there been a number of of studies over
Speaker 1: the years, and we can easily do a whole episode
Speaker 1: on it. But the importance of sunlight on mood and productivity.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Now how would that because obviously the sunlight
Speaker 1: is not like an organism, so right, but it's it's
Speaker 1: I believe the argument is that you're getting into the
Speaker 1: idea that like being being outdoors, being in nature, there
Speaker 1: are there are aspects of nature that yes, aren't directly
Speaker 1: aligned with organisms but aren't but is responsible for organisms
Speaker 1: that we're going to have this innate connection with. So
Speaker 1: this is expanding the definition. And I have seen this
Speaker 1: done and some people who talk about the subject expanding
Speaker 1: the definition to say that it's not just the desire
Speaker 1: to affiliate with organisms, it with natural environments. Like when
Speaker 1: people talk about how it's people want to seek out water,
Speaker 1: being by the water or something like that, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, not necessarily being by a pool, but being
Speaker 1: by a natural river, lake or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: that could be Yeah, I guess that could be a
Speaker 1: peripheral or related type of idea. Now, another area of
Speaker 1: measurable effect here ties in with study by Roger Yuruk
Speaker 1: which found that patients recovering from surgery actually recovered much
Speaker 1: more effectively uh if they were viewing trees and shrubs
Speaker 1: as opposed to those who would just had a view
Speaker 1: out their window of a brick wall. They also ended
Speaker 1: up taking half the painkillers and made half the nursing calls.
Speaker 1: So there was like a change in their behavior, and
Speaker 1: not just in their reported effect, but in what they
Speaker 1: actually did. If they could see some vegetation, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: they just if they could just see some trees and
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, presumably maybe some squirrels and
Speaker 1: birds in there as well. M So this is part
Speaker 1: of a broader body of literature on the benefits of
Speaker 1: vegetative environments. There's been a lot of research like this,
Speaker 1: some of it also associated with the same guy uh
Speaker 1: Roger Ulric and across different studies. People have this positive
Speaker 1: aesthetic reaction to plant filled environments, and these environments are
Speaker 1: usually found to have some kind of stress reducing effect
Speaker 1: or somehow this otherwise restorative effect on mood and on behavior.
Speaker 1: And this goes beyond vegetation as well. For example, people
Speaker 1: tend to report reductions in stress or show fewer stress
Speaker 1: behaviors in the presence of an aquarium has live fish
Speaker 1: in it. Or how about the often report. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't need to tell you about all of the
Speaker 1: tons of studies that report the health benefits and mood
Speaker 1: benefits of exposure to pets, companion animals, you know, lowering
Speaker 1: your blood pressure and all, you know, all the stuff
Speaker 1: like that over the years. Yeah, I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that you you have these hospital animals
Speaker 1: that make the rounds and just meeting Greek people. Uh,
Speaker 1: just the idea being that this will this will improve
Speaker 1: their their condition at least in a small sense, but
Speaker 1: a measurable sense. One other thing I've read about this
Speaker 1: interesting is the idea of humans preference for certain geometric patterns.
Speaker 1: For example, uh So, geometric patterns can be expressed in
Speaker 1: terms of what are called fractal patterns, that are repeating
Speaker 1: patterns that are often said to resemble designs found in
Speaker 1: biological organisms and in nature. So if you look down
Speaker 1: at surfaces of the earth from above, say winding rivers
Speaker 1: through a plain or how mountain, how you know, the
Speaker 1: the drainage areas in mountains form these these spiky patterns
Speaker 1: looking down from above, or if you look at the
Speaker 1: branches of trees, or of ferns, or of the spirals
Speaker 1: and flowering plants. I mean, it gets into the golden ratio, right.
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that if you if you do
Speaker 1: any image editing out there, you you know, you often
Speaker 1: bring one of these overlays, even sometimes like I used
Speaker 1: the rule of thirds one a lot, which is a
Speaker 1: very in organic way of of breaking up your photo.
Speaker 1: But you can also bring in essentially a snail shell
Speaker 1: so you can see this curve. Because so you end
Speaker 1: up with situations where people are like, they may not
Speaker 1: be actually thinking this, but essentially they're looking at an
Speaker 1: image and saying, oh this this photograph of race cars
Speaker 1: is great, but I'd love it a little bit more.
Speaker 1: It evoked an image of a snail shell, you know. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably don't think it consciously, but people do. In
Speaker 1: some studies show preferences for fractal patterns, geometric fractal patterns
Speaker 1: at certain levels of of density branching, and these basically
Speaker 1: are said to correspond to the most common patterns seen
Speaker 1: in natural organisms. So if you're thinking about branching trees
Speaker 1: or mangrove roots or things like that, these are geometric
Speaker 1: patterns that are brains seem to prefer looking at. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, one question about that is if we're respond
Speaker 1: in the geometric patterns through some innate preference in our
Speaker 1: brain that's not just culturally learned, but we we've got
Speaker 1: these inherited genetic preferences for things that spike at this
Speaker 1: angle this many times. One wonder is if that means
Speaker 1: you could trick your brain into satisfying any kind of
Speaker 1: biophilic impulse to whatever extent that is real, just by
Speaker 1: looking at dead geometric patterns or things like that that
Speaker 1: simulate whatever it is we notice in nature that we like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think here we get we get down to
Speaker 1: this situation where biophilia it's kind of like the echoes
Speaker 1: of biophilia throughout our our life and our culture and
Speaker 1: our creations. Even things that don't you know, aren't overtly
Speaker 1: a statue of an animal or the the avocation of
Speaker 1: of an animal's form, Uh, there's still aspects of it
Speaker 1: there that are resonating through most of what we do. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's time to talk about some criticisms of
Speaker 1: the idea because if you if you can't tell I've
Speaker 1: got some reservations about aphilia. At the same time that
Speaker 1: I find it strongly, intuitively persuasive, I also recognize that
Speaker 1: the idea it's got some problems. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about one study I read that was published inn
Speaker 1: and the journal Environmental Values, which is a peer reviewed
Speaker 1: environmental ethics journal by the author's joy and to Block
Speaker 1: called Nature and I are to a critical examination of
Speaker 1: the biophilia hypothesis. And like I said, while I I
Speaker 1: intuitively respond to a lot of what Wilson and people
Speaker 1: like him have said, I think this article makes some
Speaker 1: good points. So they're arguing against the biophilia hypothesis, and
Speaker 1: they don't argue that we don't have natural inherited tendencies
Speaker 1: to focus on living things. But they're more talking about
Speaker 1: whether biophilia, as a commonly understood idea is a coherent
Speaker 1: scientific construct. So this is the author's take. Biophilia is
Speaker 1: presented as a hypothesis, and they say, Okay, that's fine,
Speaker 1: because when you're at the hypothesis age in science. You're
Speaker 1: not saying this is a proven theory or something like that.
Speaker 1: You're just saying, we're speculating about something that appears to
Speaker 1: be the case. Let's do some experiments and find out
Speaker 1: if it's true. That would be fine. But there's one
Speaker 1: key criterion for a hypothesis, and that's that it needs
Speaker 1: to be falsifiable. Now, this is buying into one particular
Speaker 1: theory about the demarcation problem separating science from pseudoscience. We've
Speaker 1: talked about that before, but this is a very commonly
Speaker 1: accepted solution of the demarcation problem. A hypothesis should be
Speaker 1: a statement that you can come up with some kind
Speaker 1: of way of showing whether it's true or false, that
Speaker 1: you could prove it false. Now, they turned to the
Speaker 1: biophelia definition that's often offered by E. O. Wilson, which
Speaker 1: is quote, the innate tendency to focus on life and
Speaker 1: lifelike processes. And they break that into three key parts,
Speaker 1: which is a the innate tendency be to focus and
Speaker 1: see on life or lifelike processes. So they start by
Speaker 1: talking about life or life like processes, and this is
Speaker 1: a good point. They say, Okay, so how is life
Speaker 1: like defined? The hypothesis is often expanded to include things like,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about natural landscapes water features as the
Speaker 1: object of biophilia, So is a waterfall an object of biophilia?
Speaker 1: Obviously a waterfall is not alive, but biophilia theorists sometimes
Speaker 1: assert that moving water features and other things are lifelike
Speaker 1: enough that they can be grouped under the biophilia rubric.
Speaker 1: And on what basis do we conclude that? Like what
Speaker 1: gets ruled in? And do people looking at a waterfall
Speaker 1: really start thinking of it in the same way they
Speaker 1: would think of an organism? I'm not sure that there's
Speaker 1: strong evidence for that. Well, I mean, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you take the waterfall and you just think about flowing water,
Speaker 1: I mean, flowing waters is a habitat for organisms. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know, in any place where there's some
Speaker 1: sort of a dynamic with flowing water, there's a potential
Speaker 1: for the the capture and consumption of said organisms. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I see that, But that that almost begs a greater
Speaker 1: expansion of the statement of the hypothesis, right, It seems
Speaker 1: like that would make it an innate tendency to focus
Speaker 1: on life or lifelike processes or environments that could sustain
Speaker 1: life or lifelike processes. But then you can also come
Speaker 1: back and say, what is a what is a branching uh,
Speaker 1: waterway but a bit of branching vein through a body?
Speaker 1: Like does the form of the flowing water evoke the
Speaker 1: flow of blood through an organism or the you know,
Speaker 1: the chambers inside a plant. I mean, that's a good point,
Speaker 1: but I guess I guess the question would be are
Speaker 1: people really seeing it that way? Like, is that is
Speaker 1: that entering their minds? Or are they just responding to
Speaker 1: water because sometimes you get thirsty, yeah, Or it's just
Speaker 1: really loud, or they just like these moving features, or
Speaker 1: there's some other thing about it that's yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think that's a decent point to raise. The next thing
Speaker 1: they focus on is the idea of focusing. So in
Speaker 1: that definition, there's some wishy washing us about what the
Speaker 1: human who experiences biophilia does. Like sometimes biophilia is treated
Speaker 1: as the desire to quote affiliate with other organisms, And
Speaker 1: to me, that means we would assume it to mean
Speaker 1: that you want to be near them, you want to
Speaker 1: look at them, you want to touch them, you want
Speaker 1: to interact with them. But other times there's this more
Speaker 1: neutral word focus used. And and because of our biophilia,
Speaker 1: the ideas we focus on living organisms, they sort of
Speaker 1: command our attention living organisms or lifelike processes. But they
Speaker 1: point out that there's there's not necessarily consistency here. Ulric
Speaker 1: seems to define biophilia as a positive affiliation with life forms.
Speaker 1: Wilson himself includes biophobia within the definition of biophilia, and
Speaker 1: one of his primary examples, as we talked about, is
Speaker 1: this nearly universal mental obsession with snakes and frightening snake imagery. Um,
Speaker 1: so they say that, you know, this part of the
Speaker 1: definition really does need to be more specific. We need
Speaker 1: to figure out what we're talking about here. Is it
Speaker 1: just what we like or is it what gets our
Speaker 1: attention or what is going on? Well, and this raises
Speaker 1: questions too. I mean, it makes me think about about
Speaker 1: deer hunters, you know, which you can relate to having
Speaker 1: grown up uh in the South in Tennessee because it
Speaker 1: was not a deer hunter myself, but nor I have
Speaker 1: known many. Yeah, and there's a it's sometimes tricky I
Speaker 1: think for for people who aren't affiliated with that culture
Speaker 1: or haven't really given it much thought to to understand.
Speaker 1: But there is a love for nature, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: love for deer, I think with with a lot of
Speaker 1: maybe even most maybe all deer hunters. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a and there's this at times kind of difficult to
Speaker 1: understand reverence for the deer. You know, you see like
Speaker 1: deer stickers on people's car and the trophies of of
Speaker 1: their heads, um, you know, hung in their homes almost
Speaker 1: with a like a religious zeal, almost like it's some
Speaker 1: some ancient uh you know antler god. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it mimics the behavior of our ancient ancestors. Who would
Speaker 1: you who might, in some kind of religious way take
Speaker 1: pieces of an animal that they had killed primarily for
Speaker 1: material resources. You know, you'd want its meat, you'd want
Speaker 1: its hide for clothing or something like that. But what
Speaker 1: do you do with the antlers? They become some kind
Speaker 1: of religious artifact, your tools. Yeah, all right, Well what
Speaker 1: about part A that innate part? Right? Then this is
Speaker 1: another important part. So this means that biophelic tendencies are
Speaker 1: are not learned through culture, but they're inherited biologically. And
Speaker 1: this would generally be accepted to mean that they had
Speaker 1: adaptive value in the past, right, they served us some purpose,
Speaker 1: and so we adapted to favor them. And there's not
Speaker 1: always agreement on what form these adaptive mechanisms take, what
Speaker 1: whether they stem from the same general mechanism, or what
Speaker 1: their relative importance is. So the authors reformulate the hypothesis
Speaker 1: to fit all the nuances they've just brought in, and
Speaker 1: it becomes there is a set of genetic predispositions of
Speaker 1: different strength, involving different sorts of affective states toward different
Speaker 1: kinds of lifelike things. You can see the problem here, right,
Speaker 1: that this is becoming so broad as to accommodate almost anything,
Speaker 1: and it becomes really hard to falsify since there's just
Speaker 1: so much wiggle room in that in that definition of
Speaker 1: the proposition, and it creeps more towards just a pure
Speaker 1: ethos or philosophy as opposed to something you can scientifically
Speaker 1: test for. Right. Uh Now, to be fair to the
Speaker 1: biophelia theorists, the authors point out that this could be
Speaker 1: a sort of unreasonably broad definition. Uh. That's an artifact
Speaker 1: of the fact that they're trying to synthesize the work
Speaker 1: of different researchers working within the biophelia framework, and that
Speaker 1: it's possible for one individual scientist maybe to have a tighter, sturdier,
Speaker 1: more testable version of the hypothesis, though the authors don't
Speaker 1: really seem to favor any of the particular ones they've
Speaker 1: come across. But if so, I think what they're thinking
Speaker 1: needs to happen is that biophelia theorists should identify the leaner,
Speaker 1: more specific hypothesis and unify their experiments underneath it. They
Speaker 1: also they attack some of the specific evidence given for
Speaker 1: the common legs of the biophilia hypothesis, for example, the
Speaker 1: savannah preference hypothesis, the idea of us loving companion animals
Speaker 1: and are quote vegetated settings. You know that we surround
Speaker 1: ourselves with potted plants and things like that, even though
Speaker 1: there's no apparent material reason or benefit for doing so.
Speaker 1: And whether or not these criticisms of the lines of
Speaker 1: supporting evidence are correct, I'm somewhat persuaded by their criticism
Speaker 1: of the biophilia framework definition uh, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: I still feel persuaded by something about the general idea
Speaker 1: um Like I I do feel this urge to connect
Speaker 1: with nature in some sense and in the same way
Speaker 1: I was talking about Mars. Obviously, I think life commands
Speaker 1: our attention in a way that non living matter really
Speaker 1: does not seem to, even if it's not of immediate
Speaker 1: relevance to our survival or something like that. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe this could be culturally learned. I'm open
Speaker 1: to that possibility. So I'm somewhere in the middle on biophilia.
Speaker 1: I find it intuitively persuasive, but I also recognize that
Speaker 1: there could be a lot of problems with how it's
Speaker 1: framed as a scientific proposition, and maybe it needs to
Speaker 1: be narrowed down and made more specific and more falsifiable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on a rational um level, I'm I'm, I'm, I think
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. But then if I if
Speaker 1: I look at it more emotionally, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, philosophically, I guess I tend to decide
Speaker 1: with biophilia, especially since I my son is so biophilic.
Speaker 1: You know, he's just he loves animals so much, like
Speaker 1: he's not interested in cars or trucks or superheroes, but
Speaker 1: it's just it's just animals. He wants to draw animals,
Speaker 1: he wants to his the toys he has are generally
Speaker 1: animal related. He needs to see animals. And and I
Speaker 1: do pick that apart, and I think, well, how much
Speaker 1: of this is you know, something that we have have
Speaker 1: nurtured in him? How much of this is just you know,
Speaker 1: has to do with his you know, with with nature
Speaker 1: itself and something out of our hands. Um, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: where does it come from? Is it? Is it biophilic
Speaker 1: and just a mirror like learnable sense or is it
Speaker 1: something deeper, something that that does have an origin in
Speaker 1: his genes? So here's the real question. The thing we
Speaker 1: need to test for is we need to completely remove
Speaker 1: some human test subjects from all culture and put them
Speaker 1: on another planet and never communicate them with them at all,
Speaker 1: except we put some hidden cameras in and we give
Speaker 1: them the opportunity to either live in a in a
Speaker 1: in a sterile environment that satisfies all their material needs
Speaker 1: and gives them uh, food and entertainment and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: or an environment that's full of house plants and cats
Speaker 1: and dogs and uh and gardens and flowers and access
Speaker 1: to walks in the woods. If they would go for
Speaker 1: the ladder, it does raise the question why do they
Speaker 1: want that? What? What is telling them to do that
Speaker 1: instead of just go to the place that meets all
Speaker 1: their material needs. You know, in discussing like sci fi
Speaker 1: scenarios here I can't help but but look back on
Speaker 1: the fabulous Bruce Dern movie Silent Running. Oh yeah, where
Speaker 1: he's trying to save the plants. Yeah, and he's yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the situation in this movie. It's a great movie.
Speaker 1: See it if you if you haven't. But Bruce Dern
Speaker 1: basically plays like the the last biophilic human in our civilization.
Speaker 1: Like the forests of Earth are gone and they're only
Speaker 1: maintained within these giant biospheres aboard a series of they're
Speaker 1: not spaces, they're space ships, but they're kind of just
Speaker 1: in orbit and uh. And then the ruling comes up,
Speaker 1: the orders come up that they need to sine and
Speaker 1: detonate all of the forests. Bruce Durn's character goes rogue
Speaker 1: and uh and you know, takes off towards Saturn with
Speaker 1: the last forests of Earth. It's the adult version of
Speaker 1: the lorax Y. He speaks for the trees um but yeah,
Speaker 1: it in that case, like he is that that's a
Speaker 1: vision of a humanity that has lost its biophilia that
Speaker 1: has drifted so far from it that they no longer
Speaker 1: feel and it's any attachment, and they no longer recognize
Speaker 1: the value of the natural world. Concrete, plastic, and steel
Speaker 1: environments are good enough. Yeah, yeah, like cubes of food
Speaker 1: as opposed to the stuff that Bruce Durn's character is growing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's part of my intuition. I just can't
Speaker 1: see us ever being cool with that. I just can't.
Speaker 1: But you know, maybe it's hard to it's hard to
Speaker 1: do an experiment to really test that. But maybe somebody
Speaker 1: will come up with a good way. So my my
Speaker 1: outlook on biophilia now is I recognize their problems with
Speaker 1: the framework, but but I think it could be salvaged.
Speaker 1: I think people could come up with a with a leaner,
Speaker 1: more falsifiable version of the hypothesis and test the dickens
Speaker 1: out of it. All. Right, Well, there you have it, biophilia.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we provided a nice introduction to this if you
Speaker 1: weren't familiar with it, uh and and and if you
Speaker 1: were familiar with it, we uh we helped remind you
Speaker 1: about some of the I think some of the important
Speaker 1: tenants of it. You know, certainly some of the potential
Speaker 1: problems with it, but also I think the overall positive
Speaker 1: message of biophilia as a you know, biodiversity focused view
Speaker 1: of humans humanity's interaction with nature. Now, take your dog
Speaker 1: out in the woods and get some ticks. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: get out there all right. Hey. If you want to
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Speaker 1: on over to stuff to Bowl your Mind dot com.
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