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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: Not too long ago we were talking about ticks, about

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Speaker 1: how it turns out you can get a tick on

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Speaker 1: your eyeball sucking the juice from within straight through the conjunctiva.

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Speaker 1: It turns out you can get all kinds of acquired

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Speaker 1: diseases from ticks, like the acquired meat allergy syndrome, or

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Speaker 1: the of course lime disease. We all know about all

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Speaker 1: these other diseases. Of course, the woods are full of

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Speaker 1: not just small animals that can hurt you, but in fact,

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Speaker 1: if you want to go up to the Northwest or

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Speaker 1: somewhere like that, there might be bears that could be

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Speaker 1: a threat to you. And yet people want to go

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Speaker 1: to the woods. Well they're lovely, dark and deep, that's

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Speaker 1: the thing. I mean. I like to go to the woods,

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Speaker 1: and yet there's nothing in the wood that materially benefits me.

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Speaker 1: There's no food there, there's no like mating opportunity there.

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Speaker 1: And it's kind of an odd thing to say, but

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Speaker 1: you know, there's no in a biological sense of the word.

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Speaker 1: Nothing there for me really except an experience, and yet

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Speaker 1: I seek that experience. I love going hiking in the woods. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I find the same situation with with my family. We

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Speaker 1: go out in these these little hikes, you know, in

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Speaker 1: the Atlanta area, and yeah, we're not we're not foraging

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Speaker 1: for berries or mushrooms or are hunting small prey. We're

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Speaker 1: just going out there and kind of breathing air, getting

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Speaker 1: a little exercise. And um, yeah, I mean you can

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Speaker 1: you could break it down into those tangibles and say, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm getting some fresh air, I'm getting some exercise, I'm

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm occupying myself for the morning, I'm getting

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Speaker 1: away from my phone or something like this. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: but in terms of these like evolved needs, these basic

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Speaker 1: biological needs, they're not they're not necessarily being fulfilled. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the woods, for some reason seem to give you pleasure.

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Speaker 1: It the thing you're seeking out, even though there's not

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Speaker 1: a really direct that. There might be indirect explanations, but

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Speaker 1: there's not a really direct explanation for why your body

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Speaker 1: would be sending you there. Here's another question, why do

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Speaker 1: we like pets? Oh yeah, I mean this is a question.

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Speaker 1: My wife and I ask a lot about our cat

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Speaker 1: because she's kind of a nightmare. But we so we

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Speaker 1: always have these discussions where like parasites. Yeah, there, she's

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Speaker 1: living in our house, eating our food. Uh, and what

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Speaker 1: does she give back? Like, she's not she's not keeping

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Speaker 1: mice out of our our grain or anything. She's just

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Speaker 1: laying around and frequently attacking my feet and sometimes barfing

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Speaker 1: on the floor. But then but we still love her

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Speaker 1: for some reason, She's still enriches our lives somehow. Our dog, Charlie,

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Speaker 1: is an absolute parasite. He sometimes can be so annoying,

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Speaker 1: but we love this dog. This dog. He brings me

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Speaker 1: so much pleasure. I'm so happy to have this dog,

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Speaker 1: even when he's barking at me to take him on

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Speaker 1: a walk while I'm trying to work on something, or

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Speaker 1: or just eating a bunch of food that we have

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Speaker 1: to pay for. I mean, from a strict material point

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Speaker 1: of view, there's not really a reason to want to

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Speaker 1: have this thing in my house except that I love him. Yeah. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And you know, and I bet a lot of people

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Speaker 1: out there right now are thinking, well, I'm not a

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Speaker 1: dog person, I'm not a cat person. I don't like

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Speaker 1: to go into the woods. I would I would invite

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Speaker 1: you to expand these definitions because I feel like there

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Speaker 1: are certainly individuals out there who really don't want to

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Speaker 1: go into the you know, the North Georgia wilderness, but

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Speaker 1: they might be very attractive to, say, you know, the

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Speaker 1: desert environments of Arizona, or to other national parks, or

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Speaker 1: to the beach or you know, or to tropical islands

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Speaker 1: like some. So if your local outdoor environment doesn't call you,

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Speaker 1: if specific outdoor environments don't don't call to you, then

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Speaker 1: there have to be there are probably other natural world

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Speaker 1: environments that that do ring your bell. I got one

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Speaker 1: more for you, Robert. Why do people plant flowers in

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Speaker 1: their backyard? Yeah? I mean what maybe you could say, okay,

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Speaker 1: planning flowers in the front yard could be some kind

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Speaker 1: of social thing where you're trying to demonstrate your I

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Speaker 1: don't know, wealth and leisure time or something like that.

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Speaker 1: People plant flowers in their backyard people nobody can see

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Speaker 1: them except you, and so again it's there there appears

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Speaker 1: to they're getting some kind of pleasure from having these

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Speaker 1: plants that are growing, that they're taking care of, and

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Speaker 1: the plants don't provide food. They don't provide any material

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Speaker 1: benefit except that you look at them and it makes

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Speaker 1: you feel good. Unless you're growing edible flowers. Well you know,

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Speaker 1: but wait, is that a thing? I thought? Edible flowers?

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Speaker 1: You can buy them at Healthful. You can seriously get

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Speaker 1: a whole container of edible flowers for like, you know,

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Speaker 1: eighteen pocks or something. Wait, people eat squash blossoms stuff. True,

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Speaker 1: they squash blossom, but yeah, a lot of people that

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Speaker 1: do grow flowers you're just growing them to look at

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Speaker 1: them or to appreciate, say the butterflies that are attracted

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Speaker 1: and buy them the or the various pollinating insects. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So we have all these weird relationships with light forms

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Speaker 1: and natural landscapes, with pet animals, with vegetation. And if

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Speaker 1: not a dog or a cat, you think of fish, think, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, snakes, reptiles, Yeah, the reptiles, whatever your fancy is,

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Speaker 1: even a even a weird pet like a scorpion or

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Speaker 1: a tarantula. And uh and you know, I'm not calling

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Speaker 1: you a weirdo if you have those, but you're probably

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Speaker 1: into the weirdness of it. If you do own a

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Speaker 1: pet scorpion, a tarantula. What about if you own pet ticks, well,

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Speaker 1: then you're probably what a A A a partially mythological

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Speaker 1: Eastern warlord. Right as you call back to our ticks episode,

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Speaker 1: that would be great to have a pit of ticks

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Speaker 1: in your house for when, you know, just to threaten

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Speaker 1: the children when they're being too unruly, or you just

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Speaker 1: have them as pets. And people are like, whoa, you

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Speaker 1: have a pit full of ticks. That's horrible, And you're like, no,

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Speaker 1: I don't. I don't feed anybody to the ticks. I

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Speaker 1: just keep them around. I'll have to watch these little

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Speaker 1: guys crawl around. So we're presented with a question here.

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Speaker 1: And the humans seek out all kinds of activities and

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Speaker 1: get pleasure from all kinds of activities that don't appear

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Speaker 1: to have any erect material benefit, yet we we just

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Speaker 1: like them. And so one reason for this could be

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Speaker 1: that it's some kind of cultural thing that we, you know,

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Speaker 1: we grow up being taught to like walking in the

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Speaker 1: woods or to like looking at flowers, and that's possible answer.

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Speaker 1: But also many of these things seem very universal, like

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Speaker 1: across different cultures, people have some kind of companion animal

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Speaker 1: relationship or they enjoy certain natural landscapes, they enjoy being

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Speaker 1: surrounded by certain types of plants, and so another way

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Speaker 1: of looking at this, apart from just cultural learning, could

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Speaker 1: be that there's some kind of biological instinct that connects

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Speaker 1: us to other forms of life, even forms of life

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Speaker 1: that aren't directly benefiting us by say, providing food or

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Speaker 1: providing shelter or something like that. And this brings us

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Speaker 1: to the topic of today's episode, which is a hypothesis

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Speaker 1: that's been around in biology and evolutionary psychology for a

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Speaker 1: few decades now, known as the biophilia hypothesis. And this

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Speaker 1: is mainly attributed to the work that there have been

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Speaker 1: multiple people working in this field now, but it's mainly

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Speaker 1: attributed to the work of the American biologist Edward O.

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Speaker 1: Wilson also known as EO. Wilson. Now, Robert, you recently

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Speaker 1: went to like the E. O. Wilson Center. Is this

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Speaker 1: a place, uh from his hometown? Um, it's it's definitely

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Speaker 1: down from his stomping grounds, because Edward O. Wilson is

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Speaker 1: it was out Alabama, born in the nineteen nine and

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Speaker 1: he grew up in various Florida and Alabama towns. So

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Speaker 1: this is very much in his his stomping grounds. The

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Speaker 1: Edward Wilson Center is in Freeport, Florida, and um, I

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Speaker 1: and my family visited it earlier this month. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: it's named in honor of Wilson, and it echoes his

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Speaker 1: ideas and values. And he's he's been there, he's done,

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Speaker 1: he's he's visited the center, so he's he's he's very

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Speaker 1: much a part of it's it's ethos. I guess, I

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Speaker 1: guess you would say, so, what's this place like? It's wonderful.

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Speaker 1: So my family was vacationing at greaton Each which is

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Speaker 1: close to Destin. But if you need a broader idea

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Speaker 1: of where it is, we're talking roughly halfway along the

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Speaker 1: coast between Pensacola and Panama City. And I know that

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Speaker 1: at times, if one is visiting Florida, you're not a

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Speaker 1: Floridian yourself. There's sometimes a hesitancy to uh to backtrack

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Speaker 1: away from the beach too much. But there there are

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Speaker 1: some I mean, far from from just this one location,

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Speaker 1: there's some wonderful outdoor. Uh, you know, things to see

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Speaker 1: in the States, So so don't be afraid to explore

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Speaker 1: a bit. Uh. No, I know exactly what you're talking about.

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Speaker 1: Some people really love the beach. I really love the swamp. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: One of my favorite places that have been to a

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Speaker 1: few times now is uh Coula Springs State Park in Florida.

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Speaker 1: This is where you have this wonderful deep natural spring.

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Speaker 1: You have manateees coming in this rich um estuary environment

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Speaker 1: with protected regions. Is this where you saw the leaping fish.

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Speaker 1: When we jumping off the leaping fish, they were just

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Speaker 1: leaping around like it was a Disney movie. It was fabulous.

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Speaker 1: If you haven't caught that episode, that's from I guess

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Speaker 1: a year so ago. Yeah, but yeah, I go back

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Speaker 1: and check out our episode about jumping fish. That was

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Speaker 1: a more interesting topic than I expected. Yeah, that one

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Speaker 1: and and at times deadly. I'll make sure we linked

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Speaker 1: to that one on the landing page for this episode

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Speaker 1: is stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But the

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Speaker 1: Edward O. Wilson Center, Yeah, so it's a wonderful indoor

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Speaker 1: outdoor educational center and it really does an excellent job

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Speaker 1: of relating biology to two young people. Most of the time,

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Speaker 1: during the course of the year it's it's only open

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Speaker 1: to school groups and whatnot. But during the summer June

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Speaker 1: and July. It's open to the public on Thursdays and Fridays.

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Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about it, you can

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Speaker 1: go that E. O. Wilson Center dot org. Uh. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's wonderful. There's a giant bird when you first walk

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Speaker 1: in the door. They're giant animals to crawl on. There's

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Speaker 1: a there's an observable bee colony honey Bees. You can

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Speaker 1: check out and try and find the Queen. So if

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Speaker 1: it's the Edward Wilson Center, I would expect there to

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Speaker 1: be ants there right. There are ants. Yes, there's a

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Speaker 1: huge display on ants, a giant ant that you can

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Speaker 1: crawl on. Yeah. So it's it's it's really wonderful stuff.

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Speaker 1: I recommend going like honey, I shrunk the kids scale. Yes. Well,

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Speaker 1: so before we get into the biophilia hypothesis, we I

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Speaker 1: guess we should talk about Edward Wilson himself because one

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Speaker 1: of the so he's got this book from nineteen eight four,

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Speaker 1: I believe is from the nineteen eighties called Biophelia, where

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Speaker 1: he first articulates this idea. Now he would explore it

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Speaker 1: more in a later book. Um, but this book Biophelia

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Speaker 1: is a is a book I've read, and it's a

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Speaker 1: really enjoyable scientific memoir. A lot of what he talks

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Speaker 1: about is like his research on ants and his field

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Speaker 1: work in places like Surinam and Papua New Guinea. And

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Speaker 1: so he weaves together these themes from his life and

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Speaker 1: from his work and science and his thoughts about what

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Speaker 1: the role of science and society is. The the idea

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Speaker 1: that ties this all together is this idea of biophelia

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Speaker 1: are innate affiliation with or desire to focus on other

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Speaker 1: living life forms and natural landscapes or lifelike processes. Now,

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Speaker 1: there's some ambiguity in there, and we can address that

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Speaker 1: ambiguity later and any problems that might cause for this

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Speaker 1: as a hypothesis. But he definitely has a personal way

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Speaker 1: of expressing his feelings about this idea, right. It very

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Speaker 1: much connects back to stories throughout his life. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: it's important to note that Edward O. Wilson is he's

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Speaker 1: the real deal here. He is. He's he is an

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Speaker 1: acclaimed scientist, uh specifically and entomologist, and he is a

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Speaker 1: and he is a very accomplished author. Like he he

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Speaker 1: uh like almost every year. I mean, his bibliography is

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Speaker 1: incredible and his books are good. He's one of those

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Speaker 1: science writers who is actually a very very good writer.

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Speaker 1: He's expressive and poetic, but he also gets to the

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Speaker 1: point I think he's one of the better scientists slash

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Speaker 1: science writers in America. Yeah, and then, and he's also

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Speaker 1: very relatable, especially when you see him, you know, in

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Speaker 1: Alabama born, He's very folksy, and he describes himself as

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Speaker 1: being essentially still a child at heart, and he has

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Speaker 1: that kind of enthusiasm for nature. So I mentioned he

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Speaker 1: was born in an earlier biographical detail that often comes

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Speaker 1: up and he attributes to being what sort of steered

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Speaker 1: him into studying ants is that he was seven years

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Speaker 1: old and he blinded himself in one eye during a

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Speaker 1: fishing accident. You know what. He pulled up a fish

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Speaker 1: and the finn got him right, and a spiny finn

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Speaker 1: got him in the eye and blinded him. And so

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Speaker 1: he this led him to focus more, he says, on

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Speaker 1: little things, things that he could actually get up, you know,

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Speaker 1: get up close to with an eyeglass. So he turned

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Speaker 1: to ants entomology, there's a game is key area of research.

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Speaker 1: He attended the University of Alabama and earned his bachelor's

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Speaker 1: and masters in biology, and he identified fire ants as

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Speaker 1: an invasive species and reported on the first US colony

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Speaker 1: of fire ants. That was while he was in college.

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Speaker 1: In college, the early days for him. Um, and this

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Speaker 1: is we were just talking about this before we went

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Speaker 1: on the air. Here there's a video on YouTube and

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Speaker 1: it was I believe it. It is aligned with the E. O.

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Speaker 1: Wilson Center. But it starts off narrated by Harrison Ford

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Speaker 1: and then and then Attenborough comes in and talks about

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Speaker 1: how how how amazing Edward o' wilson is. So this

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Speaker 1: this video is weird for multiple reasons, and one of

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Speaker 1: them is that you hear Harrison Ford trying to sound

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Speaker 1: enthusiastic about something which I don't know if I've ever

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Speaker 1: heard before. The most chronically bored and unenthusiastic actor in

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Speaker 1: the history of cinema. And we love him for it.

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Speaker 1: But he's he's talking about the greatness of the work

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Speaker 1: of Edward Wilson, and he still kind of has that

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Speaker 1: that lake onic, sad, not very excited edge in his voice. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: even though this is this is clearly like he's clearly

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Speaker 1: passionate about it, like you did this for a reason.

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Speaker 1: But later on in the video, you're following Edward o'wilson,

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Speaker 1: like recent Edward O Wilson, Old Edward O. Wilson wandering

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Speaker 1: around in the Florida wilderness, coming up to a fire

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Speaker 1: ant colony. He reaches down with his bare hand, stirs

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Speaker 1: them up, like scrapes the nest, and they all begin

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Speaker 1: to swarm. And then he sticks his hand in the

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Speaker 1: nest and lets them crawl in his hand and lets

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Speaker 1: them begin to uh to attack his hand and uh

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Speaker 1: and then he brushes them off. But it really demonstrates

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Speaker 1: his man his devotion to connecting with the natural world

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Speaker 1: and his fascination with the with these insects. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: almost deranged because he's he's like smiling gleefully as they're

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Speaker 1: all stinging and attacking the back of his hand. He's

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Speaker 1: got these hundreds of ants on his skin and he's

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Speaker 1: like each one of these bites is like a hot needle.

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Speaker 1: But it it just shows you how, you know, how

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Speaker 1: fascinated he is with them like that he would have

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Speaker 1: this really kind of a holy moment, Like I kept

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Speaker 1: thinking of St. Francis with the animals. Only instead of

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Speaker 1: touching a you know, petting a lamb, he's petting fire ants.

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Speaker 1: If lambs could sting. Yes, so Edward O. Wilson. Uh So,

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Speaker 1: he moved onto Harvard in nine and he joined the

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Speaker 1: faculty there and again he retired in uh. But but

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Speaker 1: he remains on as an honorary curator in entomology, and

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Speaker 1: he's during the course of his career again, he's written

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Speaker 1: numerous books. He's received more awards than we can list

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Speaker 1: in this podcast, including the Pulitzer Prize, which he I

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Speaker 1: believe received at least twice. Uh. He's received the Ted

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Speaker 1: Prize and the U S National Medal of Science again

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Speaker 1: just to name a few. Now, a lot of Wilson's

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Speaker 1: efforts outside of his scientific research over the years have

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Speaker 1: been focused on the idea of conservation and preservation of nature. Yes,

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Speaker 1: that we have this rich biodiversity. Everything is connected, and

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Speaker 1: we have to preserve it because if you start, you

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Speaker 1: start pulling things out, you start allowing things to go

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Speaker 1: dark in this epic grid of by a biodiverse um life,

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Speaker 1: then you're gonna have cascading collapses, and you're going to

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Speaker 1: you're going to risk tremendous damage to our ecosystem. He

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Speaker 1: sort of reminds me of the influence of somebody who

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Speaker 1: I enjoyed talking about last year in our summer reading episode,

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Speaker 1: which is the early ecologist Alexander von Humboldt, sort of

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Speaker 1: responsible for the idea of ecology, both focusing on the

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Speaker 1: inner connections between things in nature. How an organism doesn't

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Speaker 1: No organism is an island, It doesn't stand on its own,

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Speaker 1: and they all have connected inner dependencies. And we we

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Speaker 1: we threaten natural life forms at our own peril. And

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Speaker 1: I think he frames this in two ways. He says,

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Speaker 1: you know, destroying natural habitats and destroying organisms that may

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Speaker 1: in fact be some kind of keystone species in a

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Speaker 1: natural ecology that threatens us materially, like these can have

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Speaker 1: negative effects on our health, that can lead to the

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Speaker 1: spread of new diseases, It can make resources harder to get,

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Speaker 1: It can cause all kinds of problems for us materially.

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Speaker 1: But he also emphasizes a lot just just the feeling

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Speaker 1: of pleasure we get from nature and how important it

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Speaker 1: is to our sense of well being and happiness to

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Speaker 1: have intact natural ecologies around us, and this is sort

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Speaker 1: of how he gets to the biophilia hypothesis. Alright, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we will dive into the biophilia hypothesis and discuss what

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Speaker 1: it's saying. Uh and also some eventually we also get

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Speaker 1: to some criticism about it. Thank alright, we're back. So

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Speaker 1: Wilson proposed this term biophilia meaning the love of life

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Speaker 1: in uh, the short publication back in biophilia the human

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Speaker 1: bond with other species, and he defined this as humanities

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Speaker 1: that innate tendency to focus on living things as opposed

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Speaker 1: to the inanimate and in effect, he argued for in

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Speaker 1: innate love of nature. Now there you already see some

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Speaker 1: tension in the definitions, right, because in one statement there

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Speaker 1: it's talking about focusing on other life forms and lifelike processes,

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Speaker 1: and in the other statement it's saying that we naturally

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Speaker 1: love nature. Now, focusing on things and loving them are different.

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Speaker 1: And this is going to be. One of the problems

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Speaker 1: people have raised with the biophilia hypothesis is um that

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Speaker 1: it may not be exactly pinned down on exactly what

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Speaker 1: the hypothesis is saying, but for now, we we should

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Speaker 1: just try to explain the way it's usually expressed by

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Speaker 1: people who are in favor of the biofilia hypothesis, and

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Speaker 1: they tend to go with the focus idea, right, that

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Speaker 1: it's that we focus on other living things and lifelike processes,

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Speaker 1: where for some reason we're way more interested in trees

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Speaker 1: than we are in rocks. Now, I should also add

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Speaker 1: that the term biofilia itself was used earlier in the

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Speaker 1: nineties sixties by the German social psychologist Eric from to

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Speaker 1: denote a psychological orientation tour nature. But uh, it was

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Speaker 1: really a Wilson who then took it and tweaked the

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Speaker 1: meaning and really led to its primary usage today. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe we should read a passage from Wilson to see

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Speaker 1: what what he has to say about the concept. He says,

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Speaker 1: the object of my reflection can be summarized by a

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Speaker 1: single word biophilia, which I will be so bold as

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Speaker 1: to define as the innate tendency to focus on life

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Speaker 1: and lifelike processes. From infancy, we concentrate happily on ourselves

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Speaker 1: and other organisms. We learned to distinguish life from the

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Speaker 1: inanimate and move toward it like moths to a porch. Light, novelty,

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Speaker 1: and diversity are particularly esteemed. The mere mention of the

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Speaker 1: word extraterrestrial evokes reveries about still unexplored life, displacing the

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Speaker 1: old and once potent exotic that drew earlier generations to

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Speaker 1: remote islands and jungled interiors. That much is immediately clear,

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Speaker 1: but a great deal more needs to be added. I

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Speaker 1: will make the case that to explore and affiliate with

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Speaker 1: life is a deep and complicated process in mental development,

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Speaker 1: to an extent, still undervalued and philosophy and religion, our

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Speaker 1: our existence depends on this propensity. Our spirit is woven

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Speaker 1: from it. Hope rises on its currents. Yeah, I like that,

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Speaker 1: and so I like that he's he's situating biophilia as

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Speaker 1: a sort as a hypothesis to explain something about our nature.

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Speaker 1: But it also, I think for him takes on a

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Speaker 1: sort of propulsive meaning about like how we should act.

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Speaker 1: That if we act in accordance with with these natural

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Speaker 1: urges to affiliate with nature, we can sort of shed

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Speaker 1: this man conquers nature mentality that was present in a

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Speaker 1: lot of human history. And you might wonder, like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so if throughout a lot of human history, we've had

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Speaker 1: this mentality of you know, we've got to tame the

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Speaker 1: beast of nature, We've got to make it bend to

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Speaker 1: our will and defeat our predatory adversaries. Wild Is that?

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Speaker 1: Is that tendency throughout human history a challenge to the

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Speaker 1: biophilia hypothesis. I don't know what do you think, Robert, Well,

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Speaker 1: we'll discuss this a little bit more as as we go.

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Speaker 1: But I do find it interesting that even in environmental circles,

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Speaker 1: even in um, in environmental movements, you see them, you

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Speaker 1: see individuals evoke this idea of mastery over nature. You know,

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Speaker 1: it becomes this idea of saving the planet, positioning man,

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Speaker 1: is this as as not completely uh, you know, dishonestly,

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Speaker 1: but positioning us as individuals with power over nature, and

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Speaker 1: therefore we should use our power over nature to rain

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Speaker 1: things in and gain control over the situation. I like

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Speaker 1: the way you put it there with about the idea

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Speaker 1: of saving the planet, Like why do what does it

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Speaker 1: mean when you talk about saving the whales versus not

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Speaker 1: hurting the whales? I mean essentially you're you're saying the

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Speaker 1: same thing, but they're starting with different assumptions. When if

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Speaker 1: you're say save the whales, it almost says like, you know,

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Speaker 1: we have two fates on a scale that we control,

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Speaker 1: and we can press one side down or press the

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Speaker 1: other side down, save them or kill them. But really

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Speaker 1: the idea is that on their own they'd be fine.

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Speaker 1: We are doing things to them to kill them, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's not like they were naturally going extinct when we

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Speaker 1: found them. Yeah, so you could have you can have

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Speaker 1: one person that's saying save the whales, and the other

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Speaker 1: person could say let's live in harmony with the whales.

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Speaker 1: Ultimately they may be arguing for the same thing, but

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Speaker 1: that but each argument cast humanity and its role with

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Speaker 1: nature in a slightly different light. Yeah, and so I

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Speaker 1: think the the stop harming the environment as opposed to

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Speaker 1: save the environment might be better because it better emphasizes

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Speaker 1: the fact that we we live alongside all the other

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Speaker 1: organisms in the environment and we need them. They're not

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Speaker 1: like pets that we're deciding what to do with. Of course,

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Speaker 1: then again, messaging is aimed at at the listener, and

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Speaker 1: there are going to be certain groups, certain individuals that

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Speaker 1: are going to react more strongly to son two different

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Speaker 1: arguments and say hey, you have the power to say

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Speaker 1: some whales. Don't want to say some whales. Yeah, that

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Speaker 1: made me feel really good. But if you say, hey, man,

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Speaker 1: stop killing the whales, stop hurting the whale, stop wrecking

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Speaker 1: our environment. You know that puts sometimes a negative spin

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Speaker 1: on it that is not going to be as embraced

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Speaker 1: by an individual or group. Yeah. I guess it's the

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Speaker 1: superhero mentality. You want to be the superhero and save

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Speaker 1: the bus full of children. It's not all that exciting

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Speaker 1: to say that you wouldn't harm a bus full of children. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I have one more quote from Wilson I want to

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Speaker 1: read before we move forward. He just because this is

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Speaker 1: just another example of his his beautiful ability to to

427
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:45,120
Speaker 1: sum up so many of these environmental ideas. He says,

428
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:48,040
Speaker 1: the living environment is what really sustains us. The living

429
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:51,399
Speaker 1: environment creates the soil, creates most of the atmosphere. It

430
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:55,040
Speaker 1: is not just something out there. The biosphere is a membrane,

431
00:23:55,160 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 1: a very thin membrane of living organism. Now it's important

432
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:05,160
Speaker 1: to point out that as a scientific hypothesis, if biophelia

433
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:08,159
Speaker 1: has anything to say, it should have something to say,

434
00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 1: meaning that it shouldn't just be you know, people love nature, right,

435
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:15,520
Speaker 1: because we that's sort of obvious. People do generally tend

436
00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:17,679
Speaker 1: to love nature in one way or another. Even if

437
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:20,840
Speaker 1: you're not really an outdoors person, you probably have some

438
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:25,800
Speaker 1: kind of preference for natural shapes, for plant environments, for

439
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 1: things like that over dead, dry, uninhabited landscapes. I mean,

440
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:33,640
Speaker 1: think about picture the surface of the Moon or Mars

441
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:35,680
Speaker 1: or something like that. Does that look like a place

442
00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:41,200
Speaker 1: you want to live? No, But at the same time

443
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 1: it is. It is an environment, right. I Mean we

444
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:47,159
Speaker 1: were just talking about Arabia Mountain yesterday, which is a

445
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: local hiking area in the Atlanta area, and we were saying, oh,

446
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:52,879
Speaker 1: it's great, It's like walking on another planet. It's like

447
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:55,400
Speaker 1: being on the moon. Yeah, it's cool for a couple hours.

448
00:24:55,520 --> 00:24:58,000
Speaker 1: It's it's not a place that I would want to live,

449
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 1: I think, because well, even though there are some plants

450
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: on it, the thing about Arabia Mountain is it's placed

451
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:06,600
Speaker 1: near Atlanta where it's this this outcropping of mostly bald

452
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:10,399
Speaker 1: stone that has no soil, It has no plants. There

453
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: are a few little groves on it that have trees

454
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:15,280
Speaker 1: and bushes growing up out of them, but mostly it's

455
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:18,679
Speaker 1: just bare rock, and while I'm there, it's cool, but

456
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: it's cool for exactly the reason that it's not a

457
00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 1: place i'd want to stay. Does that makes sense? But

458
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,119
Speaker 1: how do you feel about the desert? I like the desert,

459
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:30,879
Speaker 1: but the desert is full of life. I don't know

460
00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:33,000
Speaker 1: how i'd feel about, well, the desert I've been to.

461
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I've been to the Chihuahua Desert and

462
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:39,119
Speaker 1: it's full of life. It's fascinating. And the life in

463
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: the desert when you come to like a place where

464
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 1: there's a river flowing through a desert and there's green

465
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 1: radiating out away from it, the life you see becomes

466
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: all the more precious because of how scarce the greenery

467
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 1: and things are in other places around Now. A place

468
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 1: that's just pure sand dunes with no life forms at all,

469
00:25:58,680 --> 00:26:00,359
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's cool to look out for a

470
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 1: few minutes, but I don't know if i'd want to

471
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 1: stay there. Okay, uh yeah, I guess it's gonna vary

472
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: from from person to person, but I would love to

473
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,160
Speaker 1: hear from anyone out there is listening who's like, yes,

474
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:15,400
Speaker 1: build me a cabin in a out on the sand

475
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 1: dunes and then be happy. Uh, you might have might

476
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 1: be able to put a make a stronger argument for it.

477
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,120
Speaker 1: Now to your point about this being a hypothesis too

478
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: and about it being scientific scientifically grounded, is that on

479
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: one hand, yes, biophilia involves an ethos and uh and

480
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:36,199
Speaker 1: a lot of just commentary on what it is to

481
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: be human and the human experience. But then there is

482
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 1: also the the idea that there's at least in part

483
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 1: a genetically and involved, that this is something that is

484
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: going to go deeper than just uh, you know how

485
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: we're nurtured, but it's going to get down to our

486
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: core biological nature. Yeah, this would make it biologically testable.

487
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:57,399
Speaker 1: It's say, it's that our tendency to affiliate with nature,

488
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 1: or tendency to focus on life and life like processes

489
00:27:01,359 --> 00:27:04,360
Speaker 1: is somehow determined by our genes, or at least it's

490
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,480
Speaker 1: primed by our genes, you know, gene primed learning is

491
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:11,439
Speaker 1: the thing that they often emphasize. So that should in

492
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: theory be testable in some way if you're clear enough

493
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 1: about what it is you're looking for. So maybe we

494
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:20,400
Speaker 1: should talk about some of the commonly cited evidence by

495
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: biophilia theorists. What do, they say, are good reasons to

496
00:27:24,600 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 1: think that we have this innate, in inherited tendency to

497
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: affiliate with other life forms? All right, well, here's some

498
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 1: of the here's some of the anecdotal evidence. All right. Um, so,

499
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: first of all, universal appreciation for nature across human cultures.

500
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: Now we've already touched on this a little bit, but

501
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:45,199
Speaker 1: it's just the idea that would no matter where you go,

502
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:48,440
Speaker 1: there's going to be nature and natural elements wrapped up

503
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:52,480
Speaker 1: in that culture. And uh, one example that I really

504
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: like is people in very different cultures all over the

505
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,520
Speaker 1: world tend to like a particular kind of landscape, a

506
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: landscape that just happens to be similar to the Pleistocene savannas. Uh,

507
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: that we evolved to thrive in the ideal savannah. Yeah,

508
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,159
Speaker 1: and this is related to a concept to known and

509
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology is the environment of evolutionary adapted nous or

510
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 1: the e A, which is basically the idea that animals

511
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:20,680
Speaker 1: tend to be adapted not to live anywhere on Earth,

512
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:24,119
Speaker 1: but for a particular landscape or type of environment that

513
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: shaped their genes. And if that's the case, you've sort

514
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:30,640
Speaker 1: of like put your chips down on being the kind

515
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: of organism that thrives in this kind of place, and

516
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:36,359
Speaker 1: as such, you should have some kind of mechanisms in

517
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:38,719
Speaker 1: your brain that tell you seek out that kind of

518
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: place where you play best. Yes, now this I love this.

519
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,440
Speaker 1: Uh this this theory in this idea about art though,

520
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 1: because if you spend any time in museums, you run

521
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,959
Speaker 1: across the landscapes and sometimes I'm not I'm not too

522
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: much of a landscape guy. I tend to walk by

523
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Less there's something really cool going on,

524
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:59,080
Speaker 1: such as uh, we were just in the last episode

525
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: talking about or one of previous episodes talking about landscape

526
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: with the fall of chorus by Uh was it Bosha

527
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: Brugle I can't and uh yeah, So you have one

528
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 1: detail of a following mythological figure, but then also just

529
00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: a natural landscape with human activity and nature going on.

530
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 1: So when you do, when you look at a lot

531
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: of these these works of landscape art, you find open

532
00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: spaces of low grasses interspersed with the copses of trees.

533
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: The trees tend to fork near the ground, which is

534
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 1: to say, if they're tree, their trees you could scramble

535
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: up into if you needed to get away from something. Uh,

536
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: there's water close by or in the distance, so you

537
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 1: don't feel like you're going to necessarily dry up or

538
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:45,080
Speaker 1: you know, you or you'd be able to take a

539
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:47,520
Speaker 1: swim if you got overheated, or there's there indications of

540
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:50,239
Speaker 1: animal life maybe birds in the distance, as well as

541
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: diverse greenery. And finally, get this, a path or a road,

542
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: perhaps a river bank or a shoreline that extends into

543
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 1: the distance, almost inviting you to follow it m hm.

544
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 1: And this type of landscape is generally regarded as beautiful,

545
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: even by people in countries that don't have it. You know,

546
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: like your your culture might not have a lot of

547
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,240
Speaker 1: landscape art, but you're gonna there's a very good chance

548
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 1: you're going to encounter another culture's landscape art and you're

549
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 1: gonna get it. You know, you can be completely you

550
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: could have never seen any you know, say Chinese or

551
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: Japanese landscape art, and then you would view it and

552
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: you'd be like, yeah, I totally get it, and you're

553
00:30:26,120 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: just drawn into it. You you want to crawl into

554
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: the painting and run around with the trees. Okay. So

555
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: this is commonly cited anecdotal evidence about the kinds of

556
00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 1: art and imagery people prefer. Now, I would say, as

557
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: a counter example, as long as we're sticking with anecdotal

558
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: for now, and when we're not claiming to have some

559
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 1: kind of strong empirical case, I'd say, just personally, when

560
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: I think about landscape images, I like the most. I

561
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: like mountain images. Yeah, well, you know, one of these

562
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 1: things is that to what is often going on in

563
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: a mountain image. I mean, you're gonna have some somebody

564
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: or something standing at a peak looking out just having

565
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: you know, mastery over the landscape, being able to survey

566
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: everything around you and see predators approaching you from a distance.

567
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: You could very much argue that that's an evolutionary adaptation

568
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, because exactly having having the higher ground

569
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: gives you the ability to see what's coming in in

570
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 1: multiple directions. But of course that isn't exactly biophelia, because

571
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:25,720
Speaker 1: that that's talking about landscapes, but it's not really talking

572
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:30,200
Speaker 1: about organisms or lifelike processes. Though. One thing I will

573
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: point out is that in some of the biophilia literature

574
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: there does seem to be sometimes a kind of blurry

575
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: nous or fuzziness about whether we're talking still just about

576
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 1: natural organisms or whether this is turning into a preference

577
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 1: for natural types of landscapes as opposed to I don't

578
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:50,960
Speaker 1: know what cities or something like that. Yeah. Now, and

579
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: another example that comes up is the fact that some

580
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: of the earliest human art works are the the various

581
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: cave paintings that show you know, realistic animals, realistic um

582
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: human beings and uh and uh, and also just decorative

583
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: motifs that are clearly inspired by natural world organisms. Totally. Yeah,

584
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 1: you see these these ancient reverent images, and they tend

585
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: to be what they tend to be animals, Yeah, especially

586
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 1: prey animals that you might be hunting. Yeah, exactly. And

587
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: you know, these date back thirty two thousand years in

588
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: the case of some of the French cave paintings that

589
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: we've seen, and if you if you consider shell necklaces

590
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: and whatnot, which might be stretching the argument a little bit,

591
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: but that can take you back a good hundred thousand years. Now.

592
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: Beyond that, there are other anecdotal examples, like landscape architecture

593
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: is full of of of examples of this. I ran

594
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 1: across some some material by Bill Brown and Keith Bowers

595
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: and Carol Franklin, all of them landscape architects, and uh,

596
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: and they point out that you're just freakuently going to

597
00:32:57,280 --> 00:33:01,640
Speaker 1: encounter actual nature inside of of a building. You're gonna

598
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:05,440
Speaker 1: counter fish, tanks and plants. You're gonna encounter, uh, you know,

599
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 1: ornaments and patterns that read like nature. So it might

600
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 1: be you say you're in Florida and then you go

601
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: into a beach resort. But is there going to be

602
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: some sort of pineapple design, you know, on the pillars

603
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: or on the wallpaper. Uh, you have to take that

604
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: into account. And uh and oh and then that opened

605
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 1: Savannah that we crave, well, you could argue that we

606
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 1: also create it to some extent in our golf courses.

607
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: You're right, golf courses. In a way, it's it's a

608
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: weird combination, like the ultimate mastery over nature. You and

609
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: you enslave nature and just turn it into your own

610
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 1: yard game then and bend it to your will. But

611
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: still you're you're evoking certain natural motifs, you know. Yeah,

612
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:50,160
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm so impressed by that. You

613
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: I feel like you've golf courses. You just blew my

614
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 1: Savannah hypothesis. Skepticism out of the water. And uh, I

615
00:33:57,640 --> 00:34:00,080
Speaker 1: mean it does go to show that the idea you

616
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: have biophilia, there's like overt biophilia and then biophilia in

617
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: ways that you didn't even realize you were, you were,

618
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,319
Speaker 1: you know, employing it. Like. Another example of that is

619
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 1: the symbolic use of nature and human language. Oh yeah,

620
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 1: all our metaphors are nature metaphors. Yeah, you know a

621
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of them are very over you know,

622
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 1: blind as a bat. Wise is it now pretty as

623
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:22,439
Speaker 1: a peacock, crazy as a rat, as an outhouse rat? Um, whoa,

624
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: whoa what real expression like that? As crazy as an

625
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 1: outhouse rat. And then there's crazy as a rat and

626
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,320
Speaker 1: a coffee Can I love a good crazy rat? Uh?

627
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: Analogy there? But how about a bull in a China shop.

628
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: A bull in a china shop is good too. Of course,

629
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 1: china shops are not very uh, very much part of

630
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 1: our revolutionary adapted landscape. But but but the bull is

631
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 1: the bull, the bull and various other animals as a

632
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 1: way to evoke personality, you know. And the thing is

633
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:50,239
Speaker 1: these are these are just some of the obvious ones,

634
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:52,399
Speaker 1: but it gets a lot more elegant, to the point

635
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:56,000
Speaker 1: that you're not always aware that you're invoking animal imagery

636
00:34:56,280 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: in your language, but it's there. Oh and then I

637
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 1: mean we could go on forever here about about spiritual

638
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:06,799
Speaker 1: reverence for nature across cultures totally. Yeah, think of all

639
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 1: the sacred places in global myth, from Edenic gardens to

640
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:15,399
Speaker 1: sacred mountains to primordial oceans like we discussed in our

641
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 1: recent episode about creating a universe. Yeah, I agree with that, though,

642
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 1: yet again there were somewhat blurring the original definition. If

643
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,319
Speaker 1: the hypothesis is supposed to be about organisms, Wait a minute,

644
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 1: are we talking about landscapes or just organisms? Well, let's

645
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 1: talk about organisms. Let's look at all those gods and

646
00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:35,839
Speaker 1: demigods that we have rolling about, uh how much. I mean,

647
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: certainly there are examples of very anthropomorphic deities that are

648
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: just pretty much just tall bearded people. But yet even

649
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: in even say Abrahamic tradition, you have what you have

650
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:52,160
Speaker 1: winged angels that's invoking uh like you know, hybrid or

651
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:56,800
Speaker 1: or chimerical imagery. And then you have just straight up

652
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 1: and yeah, you have the world serpents. You have celestial

653
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 1: draft wagons in a Chinese mythology that are themselves composites

654
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: of all these various animal motifs, and of course you

655
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: look at the pantheon of the Hindu deities and you

656
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 1: see all of these wonderful animal forms. Now, Wilson himself

657
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 1: is very much into the idea of serpent imagery throughout

658
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 1: human culture. As one example of that, he sites of biophelia.

659
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: But this goes into Wilson's broader definition of biophilia because

660
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 1: as some people employ the term, they think that it

661
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: just means like love of other organisms or love of nature.

662
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: Wilson goes with that focus on that our attention is

663
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: naturally drawn to and stuck on other organisms, especially organisms

664
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:45,920
Speaker 1: that have some kind of evolutionary relevance for us. And

665
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 1: one of the examples is the widespread biophobia of snakes.

666
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 1: So for Wilson, biophobia is actually a subset of biophilia.

667
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: We've got this relationship with other organisms, and so the

668
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: serpent human mind relationship is something that that he really

669
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 1: focuses on. He talks about how common snake dreams are

670
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: across human cultures, how common snake imagery is in religions

671
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 1: on all all parts of the planet, how common snake

672
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: imagery is an art that they're just snakes everywhere. We

673
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 1: apparently can't get them off the brain. And then he

674
00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: also compares this to the way that other primates seem

675
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:29,359
Speaker 1: to react to snakes with with greater alarm and magnitude

676
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: of activity than they would too many other types of

677
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 1: animals of comparable size. Oh yeah, I mean, and and

678
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:38,640
Speaker 1: it goes beyond beyond that into our various pet animals.

679
00:37:38,640 --> 00:37:41,399
Speaker 1: If anyone's ever conducted the cucumber test with a cat,

680
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: replace the cucumber on the the of the floor behind

681
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:46,799
Speaker 1: them when they're not looking. No, they'll turn around, and

682
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 1: if they glimpse the cucumber, they'll jump. Whoa, um, I've

683
00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: had I have not had a lot of luck with

684
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:55,280
Speaker 1: this experiment with my own cat, granted how many times

685
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: he tried. Only when I'm holding a cucumber in the

686
00:37:58,080 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 1: kitchen and I looked down and see the cat facing

687
00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: the other way. So maybe you need longer cucumbers, yeah,

688
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:06,160
Speaker 1: or just more you know, I should, I should plan

689
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:09,280
Speaker 1: more in my cat experiments. But then, of course, anyone

690
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: who's in who's ever in go involved themselves with horses

691
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:14,759
Speaker 1: knows you know, how a horse can behave if it

692
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:17,839
Speaker 1: sees a snake. I mean, and and I'm not even

693
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,920
Speaker 1: sure about dogs. I assume dogs have strong reactions to

694
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:24,799
Speaker 1: serpents as well. Yeah, I'd imagine just the other day

695
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 1: my dog Charlie tried to eat a dead one. Oh well,

696
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: we're out walking. It's there on the sidewalk, belly up,

697
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:32,720
Speaker 1: rotting a little bit and he he saw a snack.

698
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 1: Do yank him away? You have to get in there. Now.

699
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: Back to the idea of religion and UH in biophilia,

700
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: you know, I also think that that heavily nature a

701
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 1: line faiths illustrate this as well, such as like Shinto

702
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 1: comes to mind, you know, the Japanese uh mentality that

703
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 1: there is uh. You know, there's a there's a spiritual

704
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: energy and all things. And granted some of that includes

705
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: rocks but in statues, but it can, you know, certainly

706
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: include natural forms as well and organisms. Uh. And there's

707
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: actually an excellent article in the New York Times from

708
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:09,279
Speaker 1: this week. By the time you hear it, it it will

709
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:10,840
Speaker 1: be like a couple of weeks old, I guess. But

710
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:15,239
Speaker 1: it's about resurgent religious faith in China and the environmental

711
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 1: activism that is coming with it. And it's hardly an

712
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: underground thing. President Ji jin Ping has a champion to

713
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 1: return to interest in Chinese culture and particularly Taoism and Confusism.

714
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:31,239
Speaker 1: So and part of this is countering Western influences, but

715
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: he's called for China to return to its roots as

716
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,839
Speaker 1: a quote, ecological civilization. Now, the article also points out

717
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: that the movement as vote motivating Chinese Buddhists, Christians and

718
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 1: Muslims as well. And you know, it's it's always I

719
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 1: think worth reminding everyone that the China is is home

720
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:49,920
Speaker 1: to fifty five distinct ethnic groups, even if Han is

721
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 1: the majority there, uh, and they are also numerous religious faiths. Now,

722
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:58,080
Speaker 1: I wonder how this initiative plays into the Chinese government's

723
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:02,239
Speaker 1: enabling of heavy polluting industry. I mean, of course they're

724
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 1: not unique in governments to enable that. But no, no,

725
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 1: that's a that's a a fair fair criticism, and I

726
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:11,359
Speaker 1: think that's certainly a conflict in uh in China uh

727
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:14,759
Speaker 1: presently um. And you know, there are other motivations as well,

728
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 1: such as with you know, the u s sort of

729
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:21,719
Speaker 1: taking a a lesser role in the environmental leadership, that

730
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,799
Speaker 1: there's a place for someone like China to step up

731
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:28,280
Speaker 1: and assume power so there's power here as well. Uh,

732
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:32,359
Speaker 1: that's that's at stake. But as this article by Javiira

733
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 1: Sea Hernandez points out, there's there's more of an emphasis

734
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,839
Speaker 1: in these resulting environmental movements on living in harmony with

735
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:43,319
Speaker 1: nature rather than what is perceived as a Western take

736
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: on saving the Earth. To come back to the distinction

737
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, so it's don't kill the whales,

738
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:51,719
Speaker 1: not save the whales, right, Yeah, And I think this

739
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: is interesting in light of by affiliate, because I think

740
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:59,120
Speaker 1: it's very in keeping with the message of stewardship understanding biodiversity.

741
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: But at the same time time, we see that that

742
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:06,280
Speaker 1: very savior message, uh, you know, invoked in materials promoting

743
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:09,879
Speaker 1: Edward Wilson and biophilia that like that Harrison Ford video

744
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:13,280
Speaker 1: we're talking about. He describes that quote as an epic

745
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: battle to save our planet and it will involve swords

746
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 1: and magic staves. And then you know there are some

747
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:25,879
Speaker 1: people will actually bring a technology into this argument as well.

748
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: Wilson himself said that the more we understand organisms through science,

749
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 1: the closer we become to them. Uh. And while technology

750
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:36,399
Speaker 1: can arguably distance ourselves from nature as well, it can

751
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,320
Speaker 1: bring us closer. Molecular biology and genetic engineering, for example,

752
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: bring us closer to nature because is a greater understanding.

753
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: And you can even argue that the search for extraterrestrial

754
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 1: life too is a biophilic endeavor. Oh, I mean, the

755
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: CT is almost perfect example of biophilia, if there is

756
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: any merit to the idea, because like, there are millions

757
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:02,839
Speaker 1: of planet it's out there that we could be interested in,

758
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: and what are we interested in? We're interested in the

759
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 1: ones that have life on them. Now that could you

760
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:10,440
Speaker 1: could say that there there's just sort of like a

761
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: cognitively recognized self preservation instinct right that we we say, okay,

762
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:17,920
Speaker 1: if there's another planet with life on it out there

763
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 1: could be a threat to us, could help us so

764
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:24,319
Speaker 1: that we have motivations based in our cognitive capacities to

765
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:28,040
Speaker 1: understand that life has this this value out there. But

766
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 1: that's not the only kind of life we're interested in.

767
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: People have been looking for microbes in the soil of

768
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:34,880
Speaker 1: Mars for decades. Now, you know, we scoop up the

769
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 1: soil of Mars and we want to see things alive

770
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: in it. Why do we care so much about that?

771
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:41,759
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's not just scientists who care. I

772
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:44,399
Speaker 1: understand why scientists care, because it's part of their life's work.

773
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: But the average person really does care. Usually whether there's

774
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:53,200
Speaker 1: life on Mars, that's an interesting question to them. Why. Well,

775
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 1: because the answer ends up saying I mean, ends up

776
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:57,839
Speaker 1: saying something about ourselves and about life itself, you know.

777
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 1: But but also I think just because life is interesting. Yeah,

778
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 1: the presence of life somewhere makes that place so much

779
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,720
Speaker 1: more fascinating than an otherwise dead rock covered in loose

780
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:12,920
Speaker 1: soil and stones. This makes me want to see more

781
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: sort of darkly Edward Wilson type characters and some of

782
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 1: our sci fi horror. You know, someone who's gonna really

783
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 1: just reach out and touch the xenomorphs and love them.

784
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:25,640
Speaker 1: I guess we do see characters like that in the

785
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: various alien films that Brad Dwarf comes to mind in

786
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:34,360
Speaker 1: the Alien Resurrection. I can't speak any anything positive by

787
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 1: the Alien Resurrection. Let's move on al right, Well, let's

788
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:41,960
Speaker 1: move on to day. Let's take one more quick break,

789
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: and when we come back we'll get into measurable bio

790
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: biological evidence for biophilia as well as some evidence against it. Alright,

791
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: we're back. So so far, we've been talking not super

792
00:43:57,680 --> 00:44:02,520
Speaker 1: rigorously about science. We've been talking about general anecdotal observations

793
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: about people's behavior, about culture, about our own feelings. And

794
00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: that's fine, but that's not going to prove a scientific

795
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:13,319
Speaker 1: hypothesis and make it a workable theory, right. And and

796
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:16,479
Speaker 1: Edward Wilson has has been pretty clear throughout his career

797
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: with this that like, there's not strong evidence for it,

798
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 1: that there I think he more recently said, yeah, there's

799
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:24,279
Speaker 1: stronger evidence for it, but he's not He realizes that

800
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 1: the evidence is not there yet. A lot of more

801
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:31,359
Speaker 1: research is required. But some of the measurable evidence that's

802
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 1: out there. We've already touched on this a little bit,

803
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 1: but measurable physiological responses and humans that are exposed to

804
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 1: sometimes just images of snakes or spiders. Right, there has

805
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: been actual empirical research on this, and and it's comparing

806
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 1: our responses as humans to the responses especially of other primates,

807
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 1: to say, like, is there some inherited, uh genetic component

808
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 1: to our reactions to these animals that's not just culturally learned. Yes,

809
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: that in a way, there's just like there's there's awareness,

810
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 1: there's an important like cognitive awareness, you know. And to

811
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:06,359
Speaker 1: go back to the the idea of biophobia, this would

812
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: be a biophobia that Wilson would include underneath his definition

813
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: of biophilia. It would be a natural focus or attention

814
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: that we give to certain types of organisms. Now, another

815
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:19,919
Speaker 1: big area and this is this is certainly an area

816
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 1: where there's been a number of of studies over the years,

817
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:24,840
Speaker 1: and we could easily do a whole episode on it.

818
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: But the importance of sunlight on mood and productivity. Mm hmm,

819
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: Now how would that because obviously the sunlight is not

820
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:38,120
Speaker 1: like an organism, so right, but it's it's I believe

821
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: the argument is that you're getting into the idea that

822
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: like being being outdoors, being in nature, there are there

823
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:48,600
Speaker 1: are aspects of nature that yes aren't directly aligned with

824
00:45:48,719 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 1: organisms but aren't, but is responsible for organisms that we're

825
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: going to have this innate connection with. So this is

826
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 1: expanding the definition. And I have seen this done and

827
00:45:57,040 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 1: some people who talk about the subject expanding the definition

828
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 1: to say that it's not just the desire to affiliate

829
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:05,919
Speaker 1: with organisms, but with natural environments, like when people talk

830
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: about how it's people want to seek out water, being

831
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:13,319
Speaker 1: by the water, or something like that. And that's you know,

832
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: not necessarily being by a pool, but being by a

833
00:46:16,160 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: natural river or lake or something like that. Uh, that

834
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:22,400
Speaker 1: could be yeah, I guess that could be a peripheral

835
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:26,279
Speaker 1: or related type of idea. Now another area of measurable

836
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:31,360
Speaker 1: effect here ties in with the study by Roger Yuruk

837
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 1: which found that patients recovering from surgery actually recovered much

838
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:39,320
Speaker 1: more effectively, uh if they were viewing trees and shrubs

839
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: as opposed to those that would just had a view

840
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: out their window of a brick wall. They also ended

841
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:47,320
Speaker 1: up taking half the painkillers and made half the nursing calls.

842
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: So there was like a change in their behavior and

843
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,359
Speaker 1: not just in their reported affect but in what they

844
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:57,319
Speaker 1: actually did. If they could see some vegetation, Yeah, if

845
00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: they just if they could just see some trees and

846
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,800
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, presumably maybe some squirrelding birds

847
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: in there as well. So this is part of a

848
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: broader body of literature on the benefits of vegetative environments.

849
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:10,520
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of research like this, some of

850
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:13,760
Speaker 1: it also associated with the same guy, uh, Roger Ulric

851
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:18,680
Speaker 1: and across different studies. People have this positive aesthetic reaction

852
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,399
Speaker 1: to plant filled environments, and these environments are usually found

853
00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:25,280
Speaker 1: to have some kind of stress reducing effect or somehow

854
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: this otherwise restorative effect on mood and on behavior. And

855
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 1: this goes beyond vegetation as well. For example, people tend

856
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: to report reductions in stress or show fewer stress behaviors

857
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: in the presence of an aquarium that has live fish

858
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: in it. Or how about the often report. I mean,

859
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: we don't need to tell you about all of the

860
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:49,480
Speaker 1: tons of studies that report the health benefits and mood

861
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:54,120
Speaker 1: benefits of exposure to pets, companion animals, you know, lowering

862
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:56,400
Speaker 1: your blood pressure and all, you know, all the stuff

863
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 1: like that over the years. Yeah. I think it's one

864
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 1: of the reasons that you you you have these hospital

865
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,280
Speaker 1: animals that make the rounds and just meet in Greek people, uh,

866
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,840
Speaker 1: just the idea being that this will this will improve

867
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: their their condition at least in you know, a small sense,

868
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:14,759
Speaker 1: but a measurable sense. One other thing I've read about

869
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:17,720
Speaker 1: this interesting is the idea of humans preference for certain

870
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 1: geometric patterns. For example, uh, so, geometric patterns can be

871
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 1: expressed in terms of what are called fractal patterns. That

872
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 1: are repeating patterns that are often said to resemble designs

873
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: found in biological organisms and in nature. So if you

874
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: look down at surfaces of the earth from above, say

875
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: winding rivers through a plain or how mountain, how you know,

876
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 1: the drainage areas in mountains form these these spiky patterns

877
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 1: looking down from above, Or if you look at the

878
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: branches of trees, or of ferns, or of the spirals

879
00:48:53,680 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 1: and flowering plants. I mean, it gets into the golden ratio, right,

880
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:00,319
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that if you if you do

881
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:02,760
Speaker 1: any image editing out there, you you know, you often

882
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 1: bring in one of these overlays. Even sometimes like I

883
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: use the rule of thirds one a lot, which is

884
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: a very inorganic way of of breaking up your photo.

885
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: But you can also bring in essentially a snail shell,

886
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: so you can see this curve. Because so you end

887
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:19,880
Speaker 1: up with situations where people are like, they may not

888
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 1: be actually thinking this, but essentially they're looking at an

889
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:25,240
Speaker 1: image and saying, oh, this this photograph of race cars

890
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 1: is great, but I'd love it a little bit more.

891
00:49:27,600 --> 00:49:31,919
Speaker 1: It evoked an image of a snail shell. You know. Now, yeah,

892
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:34,880
Speaker 1: you probably don't think it consciously but people do. In

893
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:39,800
Speaker 1: some studies show preferences for fractal patterns, geometric fractal patterns

894
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: at certain levels of of density branching, and these basically

895
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: are said to correspond to the most common patterns seen

896
00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: in natural organisms. So if you're thinking about branching trees

897
00:49:52,320 --> 00:49:56,359
Speaker 1: or mangrove roots or things like that, these are geometric

898
00:49:56,440 --> 00:50:00,399
Speaker 1: patterns that are brains seem to prefer looking at. Now.

899
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: Of course, one question about that is if we're responding

900
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:07,919
Speaker 1: to geometric patterns through some innate preference in our brain.

901
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: It's not just culturally learned, but we we've got these

902
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:15,240
Speaker 1: inherited genetic preferences for things that spike at this angle

903
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:18,279
Speaker 1: this many times. One wonder is if that means you

904
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 1: could trick your brain into satisfying any kind of biophilic

905
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 1: impulse to whatever extent that is real, just by looking

906
00:50:25,560 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: at dead geometric patterns or things like that that simulate

907
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 1: whatever it is we notice in nature that we like, Yeah,

908
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: and I think here we get we get down to

909
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 1: this situation where biophilia it's kind of like the echoes

910
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 1: of biophilia throughout our our life and our culture and

911
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:44,360
Speaker 1: our creations. Even things that don't you know, aren't overtly

912
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:48,440
Speaker 1: a statue of an animal or the the the avocation

913
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: of of an animal's form. Uh, there's still aspects of

914
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:56,319
Speaker 1: it there that are resonating through most of what we do. Now.

915
00:50:56,360 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: I think it's time to talk about some criticisms of

916
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: the idea, because as if you if you can't tell,

917
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:04,760
Speaker 1: I've got some reservations about biophilia. At the same time

918
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:09,040
Speaker 1: that I find it strongly intuitively persuasive, I also recognize

919
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,839
Speaker 1: that the idea it's got some problems. So I wanted

920
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 1: to talk about one study I read that was published

921
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 1: INN and the General Environmental Values, which is a peer

922
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 1: reviewed environmental ethics journal by the author's joy and to

923
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:26,799
Speaker 1: Block called Nature and I are to a critical examination

924
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 1: of the biophilia hypothesis. And like I said, while I

925
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: I intuitively respond to a lot of what Wilson and

926
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,359
Speaker 1: people like him have said, I think this article makes

927
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 1: some good points. So they're arguing against the biophilia hypothesis.

928
00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:44,160
Speaker 1: And they don't argue that we don't have natural inherited

929
00:51:44,200 --> 00:51:47,640
Speaker 1: tendencies to focus on living things. But they're more talking

930
00:51:47,680 --> 00:51:52,279
Speaker 1: about whether biophilia as a commonly understood idea is a

931
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: coherent scientific construct. So this is the author's take. Biophilia

932
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 1: is presented as a hypotheists and they say, okay, that's fine,

933
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:04,759
Speaker 1: because when you're at the hypothesis stage in science, you're

934
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 1: not saying this is a proven theory or something like that.

935
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:09,719
Speaker 1: You're just saying, we're speculating about something that appears to

936
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:12,440
Speaker 1: be the case. Let's do some experiments and find out

937
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:15,960
Speaker 1: if it's true. That would be fine. But there's one

938
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 1: key criterion for a hypothesis, and that's that it needs

939
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: to be falsifiable. Now, this is buying into one particular

940
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:26,839
Speaker 1: theory about the demarcation problem separating science from pseudoscience. We've

941
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 1: talked about that before, but this is a very commonly

942
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:34,440
Speaker 1: accepted solution of the demarcation problem. A hypothesis should be

943
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: a statement that you can come up with some kind

944
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:40,239
Speaker 1: of way of showing whether it's true or false, that

945
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 1: you could prove it false. Now, they turned to the

946
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:46,440
Speaker 1: biophelia definition that's often offered by EO. Wilson, which is

947
00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: quote the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes,

948
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:55,000
Speaker 1: and they break that into three key parts, which is

949
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: a the innate tendency be to focus and see on

950
00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: life for lifelike processes. So they start by talking about

951
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:05,719
Speaker 1: life or lifelike processes, and this is a good point,

952
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: they say, Okay, so how is life like defined? The

953
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 1: hypothesis is often expanded to include things like, we've been

954
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 1: talking about natural landscapes water features as the object of biophilia.

955
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: So is a waterfall an object of biophilia? Obviously a

956
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:26,160
Speaker 1: waterfall is not alive, but biophilia theorists sometimes assert that

957
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:29,359
Speaker 1: moving water features and other things are lifelike enough that

958
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 1: they can be grouped under the biophilia rubric. And on

959
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: what basis do we conclude that? Like what gets ruled in?

960
00:53:36,640 --> 00:53:40,320
Speaker 1: And do people looking at a waterfall really start thinking

961
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: of it in the same way they would think of

962
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: an organism. I'm not sure that there's strong evidence for that. Well,

963
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, if you take the waterfall and

964
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:51,760
Speaker 1: you just think about flowing water, I mean, flowing waters

965
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:55,880
Speaker 1: is a habitat for organisms. Uh, And then you know,

966
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:58,080
Speaker 1: in any place where there's some sort of a dynamic

967
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:02,640
Speaker 1: with flowing water, there's a potential for the the capture

968
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: and consumption of set organisms. Yeah, I see that but

969
00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:11,360
Speaker 1: that that almost begs a greater expansion of the statement

970
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:13,879
Speaker 1: of the hypothesis. Right, it seems like that would make

971
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: it an innate tendency to focus on life or lifelike

972
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: processes or environments that could sustain life or lifelike processes. Okay,

973
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 1: But then you can also come back and say, what

974
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 1: is a what is a branching uh, waterway, but a

975
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:30,480
Speaker 1: bit of branching vein through a body, Like there's the

976
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,960
Speaker 1: form of the flowing water. Evoke the flow of blood

977
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:37,520
Speaker 1: through an organism or the you know, the chambers inside

978
00:54:37,680 --> 00:54:40,359
Speaker 1: a plant. I mean, that's a good point, but I

979
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:43,360
Speaker 1: guess I guess the question would be are people really

980
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: seeing it that way? Like, is that is that entering

981
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:50,040
Speaker 1: their minds or are they just responding to water because

982
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: sometimes you get thirsty, yeah, or it's just really loud,

983
00:54:54,360 --> 00:54:56,759
Speaker 1: or they just like these moving features, or there's some

984
00:54:56,840 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: other thing about it that's yeah. So I think that's

985
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 1: a decent point to raise. The next thing they focus

986
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:06,480
Speaker 1: on is the idea of focusing. So in that definition,

987
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:10,399
Speaker 1: there's some wishy washing us about what the human who

988
00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:14,840
Speaker 1: experiences biophilia does, Like sometimes biophilia is treated as the

989
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:18,719
Speaker 1: desire to quote affiliate with other organisms. And to me

990
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: that means we would assume it to mean that you

991
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:23,799
Speaker 1: want to be near them, you want to look at them,

992
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:26,399
Speaker 1: you want to touch them, you want to interact with them.

993
00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:30,920
Speaker 1: But other times there's this more neutral word focus used.

994
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:34,440
Speaker 1: And and because of our biophilia, the ideas we focus

995
00:55:34,480 --> 00:55:38,000
Speaker 1: on living organisms, they sort of command our attention living

996
00:55:38,120 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 1: organisms or lifelike processes. But they point out that there's

997
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:46,239
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily consistency here. Ulric seems to define biophilia

998
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:50,680
Speaker 1: as a positive affiliation with life forms. Wilson himself includes

999
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 1: biophobia within the definition of biophilia, and one of his

1000
00:55:54,719 --> 00:55:57,920
Speaker 1: primary examples, as we talked about, is this nearly universal

1001
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:02,319
Speaker 1: mental obsession with snakes and frightening snake imagery. Um, so

1002
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: they say that, you know, this part of the definition

1003
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:06,840
Speaker 1: really does need to be more specific. We need to

1004
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 1: figure out what we're talking about here. Is it just

1005
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:12,239
Speaker 1: what we like or is it what gets our attention

1006
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,600
Speaker 1: or what is going on? Well, and this raises questions too,

1007
00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 1: And I mean it makes me think about about deer hunters,

1008
00:56:18,239 --> 00:56:20,680
Speaker 1: you know, which you can relate to. Having grown up

1009
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:24,359
Speaker 1: in the South in Tennessee. It was not a deer

1010
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:27,239
Speaker 1: hunter myself, but nor I have known many. Yeah, and

1011
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:30,359
Speaker 1: there's a it's sometimes tricky, I think for for people

1012
00:56:30,360 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: who aren't affiliated with that culture or haven't really given

1013
00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:36,000
Speaker 1: it much thought to understand. But there is a love

1014
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:39,279
Speaker 1: for nature, and you're gonna love for deer, I think

1015
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:42,520
Speaker 1: with with a lot of maybe even most, maybe all

1016
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:45,440
Speaker 1: deer hunters. You know, there's a and there's this, at

1017
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:48,440
Speaker 1: times kind of difficult to understand reverence for the deer.

1018
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 1: You know, you see like deer stickers on people's car

1019
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:55,359
Speaker 1: and the trophies of their heads, um, you know, hung

1020
00:56:55,360 --> 00:56:58,280
Speaker 1: in their homes, almost with a like a religious zeal,

1021
00:56:58,280 --> 00:57:02,560
Speaker 1: almost like it's some some shent uh you know antler god, Well,

1022
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: I mean it mimics the behavior of our ancient ancestors.

1023
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:09,680
Speaker 1: Who would you who might, in some kind of religious

1024
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:12,960
Speaker 1: way take pieces of an animal that they had killed

1025
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:16,880
Speaker 1: primarily for material resources. You know, you'd want its meat,

1026
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 1: you'd want its hide for clothing or something like that.

1027
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:21,240
Speaker 1: But what do you do with the antlers? They become

1028
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:25,480
Speaker 1: some kind of religious artifact, your tools? Yeah, all right,

1029
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:28,919
Speaker 1: Well what about part A that innate part? Right? Then

1030
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:31,800
Speaker 1: this is another important part. So this means that biophelic

1031
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:35,880
Speaker 1: tendencies are are not learned through culture, but they're inherited biologically,

1032
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 1: and this would generally be accepted to mean that they

1033
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 1: had adaptive value in the past. Right, they served us

1034
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:45,840
Speaker 1: some purpose and so we adapted to favor them. And

1035
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:50,400
Speaker 1: there's not always agreement on what form these adaptive mechanisms take,

1036
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: what whether they stem from the same general mechanism, or

1037
00:57:54,240 --> 00:57:57,800
Speaker 1: what their relative importance is. So the authors reformulate the

1038
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:01,000
Speaker 1: hypothesis to fit all the nuances as they've just brought in,

1039
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:05,680
Speaker 1: and it becomes there is a set of genetic predispositions

1040
00:58:05,680 --> 00:58:10,400
Speaker 1: of different strength, involving different sorts of affective states toward

1041
00:58:10,480 --> 00:58:14,760
Speaker 1: different kinds of lifelike things. You can see the problem here, right,

1042
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:18,800
Speaker 1: that this is becoming so broad as to accommodate almost anything,

1043
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 1: and it becomes really hard to falsify since there's just

1044
00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:24,720
Speaker 1: so much wiggle room in that in that definition of

1045
00:58:24,760 --> 00:58:27,440
Speaker 1: the proposition, and it creeps more towards just a pure

1046
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:31,600
Speaker 1: ethos or philosophy as opposed to something you can scientifically

1047
00:58:31,640 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: test for. Right uh now, To be fair to the

1048
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:37,400
Speaker 1: biophilia theorists, the authors point out that this could be

1049
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 1: a sort of unreasonably broad definition. Uh, that's an artifact

1050
00:58:42,120 --> 00:58:44,080
Speaker 1: of the fact that they're trying to synthesize the work

1051
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 1: of different researchers working within the biophelia framework, and that

1052
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 1: it's possible for one individual scientist maybe to have a tighter, sturdier,

1053
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:55,840
Speaker 1: more testable version of the hypothesis. Though the authors don't

1054
00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:58,919
Speaker 1: really seem to favor any of the particular ones they've

1055
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:01,880
Speaker 1: come across. But if so, I think what they're thinking

1056
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:05,520
Speaker 1: needs to happen is that biophilia theorists should identify the leaner,

1057
00:59:05,680 --> 00:59:11,680
Speaker 1: more specific hypothesis and unify their experiments underneath it. They

1058
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:15,120
Speaker 1: also they attack some of the specific evidence given for

1059
00:59:15,240 --> 00:59:18,920
Speaker 1: the common legs of the biophilia hypothesis, For example, the

1060
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: savannah preference hypothesis, the idea of us a loving companion

1061
00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:26,920
Speaker 1: animals and are quote vegetated settings. You know that we

1062
00:59:26,960 --> 00:59:29,880
Speaker 1: surround ourselves with potted plants and things like that, even

1063
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:33,560
Speaker 1: though there's no apparent material reason or benefit for doing so.

1064
00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:37,240
Speaker 1: And whether or not these criticisms of the lines of

1065
00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:40,960
Speaker 1: supporting evidence are correct, I'm somewhat persuaded by their criticism

1066
00:59:41,200 --> 00:59:45,320
Speaker 1: of the biophilia framework definition. Uh, And at the same time,

1067
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:48,600
Speaker 1: I still feel persuaded by something about the general idea

1068
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:52,280
Speaker 1: um Like I, I do feel this urge to connect

1069
00:59:52,320 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 1: with nature in some sense, and in the same way

1070
00:59:54,920 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: I was talking about Mars. Obviously, I think life commands

1071
00:59:57,760 --> 01:00:00,320
Speaker 1: our attention in a way that non living matter really

1072
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:04,360
Speaker 1: does not seem to, even if it's not of immediate

1073
01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:09,400
Speaker 1: relevance to our survival or something like that. But I

1074
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:11,959
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe this could be culturally learned. I'm open

1075
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:15,360
Speaker 1: to that possibility. So I'm somewhere in the middle on biophilia.

1076
01:00:15,400 --> 01:00:19,680
Speaker 1: I find it intuitively persuasive, but I also recognize that

1077
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:22,080
Speaker 1: there could be a lot of problems with how it's

1078
01:00:22,080 --> 01:00:25,040
Speaker 1: framed as a scientific proposition, and maybe it needs to

1079
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: be narrowed down and made more specific and more falsifiable. Yeah,

1080
01:00:30,320 --> 01:00:34,360
Speaker 1: on a rational um level, I'm I'm I'm, I think

1081
01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:36,760
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. But then if I if

1082
01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 1: I look at it more emotionally, you know, and uh,

1083
01:00:40,440 --> 01:00:45,160
Speaker 1: you know, philosophically, I guess I tend to decide with biophilia,

1084
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:49,800
Speaker 1: especially since I my son is so biophilic, you know,

1085
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:53,960
Speaker 1: he's just he loves animals. So much like he's not

1086
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:58,120
Speaker 1: interested in cars or trucks or superheroes, but it's just

1087
01:00:58,200 --> 01:01:00,320
Speaker 1: it's just animals. He wants to draw animal as he

1088
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: wants to his the toys he has are generally animal related.

1089
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 1: He needs to see animals. And and I do pick

1090
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:09,720
Speaker 1: that apart. I think, well, how much of this is,

1091
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:12,240
Speaker 1: you know, something that we have have nurtured in him?

1092
01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:15,000
Speaker 1: How much of this is just you know, has to

1093
01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 1: do with his you know, with with nature itself and

1094
01:01:18,440 --> 01:01:21,960
Speaker 1: something out of our hands. Um, yeah, Like where does

1095
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:25,120
Speaker 1: it come from? Is it? Is it biophilic and just

1096
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:28,600
Speaker 1: a mirror like learnable sense or is it something deeper,

1097
01:01:28,720 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 1: something that that does have an origin in his genes?

1098
01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 1: So here's the real question. The thing we need to

1099
01:01:36,120 --> 01:01:39,240
Speaker 1: test for is we need to completely remove some human

1100
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:43,400
Speaker 1: test subjects from all culture and put them on another

1101
01:01:43,400 --> 01:01:46,800
Speaker 1: planet and never communicate them with them at all, except

1102
01:01:46,840 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 1: we put some hidden cameras in and we give them

1103
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:53,280
Speaker 1: the opportunity to either live in a in a in

1104
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 1: a sterile environment that satisfies all their material needs and

1105
01:01:57,000 --> 01:02:00,400
Speaker 1: gives them uh, food and entertainment and stuff like that,

1106
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:03,960
Speaker 1: or an environment that's full of house plants and cats.

1107
01:02:04,000 --> 01:02:09,160
Speaker 1: And dogs and uh and gardens and flowers and access

1108
01:02:09,160 --> 01:02:12,320
Speaker 1: to walks in the woods. If they would go for

1109
01:02:12,480 --> 01:02:15,800
Speaker 1: the ladder, it does raise the question why do they

1110
01:02:15,840 --> 01:02:19,120
Speaker 1: want that? What what is telling them to do that

1111
01:02:19,240 --> 01:02:21,280
Speaker 1: instead of just go to the place that meets all

1112
01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:27,000
Speaker 1: their material needs. You know, in discussing like sci fi scenarios, here,

1113
01:02:27,160 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 1: I can't help but look back on the fabulous Bruce

1114
01:02:30,920 --> 01:02:34,480
Speaker 1: den movie Silent Running. Oh yeah, where he's trying to

1115
01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:36,800
Speaker 1: save the plants. Yeah, and he's yeah, this is the

1116
01:02:37,160 --> 01:02:39,080
Speaker 1: situation in this movie. It's a great movie. See if

1117
01:02:39,440 --> 01:02:42,680
Speaker 1: if you if you haven't, But Bruce Dern basically plays

1118
01:02:42,720 --> 01:02:47,600
Speaker 1: like the the last biophilic human in our civilization. Like

1119
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:50,960
Speaker 1: the forests of Earth are gone, and they're only maintained

1120
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:56,640
Speaker 1: within these giant biospheres aboard a series of they're not spaces,

1121
01:02:56,640 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 1: they're space ships, but they're kind of just in orbit.

1122
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:02,360
Speaker 1: And and then the the ruling comes up, the orders

1123
01:03:02,360 --> 01:03:04,680
Speaker 1: come up that they need to jettison and detonate all

1124
01:03:04,720 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: of the forests. Bruce Durn's character goes rogue and uh

1125
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:11,720
Speaker 1: and you know, takes off towards Saturn with the last

1126
01:03:11,760 --> 01:03:14,840
Speaker 1: forests of Earth. It's the adult version of the lorax

1127
01:03:15,880 --> 01:03:20,840
Speaker 1: he speaks for the trees um. But yeah, it in

1128
01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:23,440
Speaker 1: that case, like he is the that's a vision of

1129
01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:26,840
Speaker 1: a humanity that has lost its biophilia, that has drifted

1130
01:03:26,880 --> 01:03:29,360
Speaker 1: so far from it that they no longer feel and

1131
01:03:29,640 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: any attachment, and they no longer recognize the value of

1132
01:03:32,400 --> 01:03:37,240
Speaker 1: the natural world. Concrete, plastic, and steel environments are good enough. Yeah, yeah,

1133
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:39,600
Speaker 1: like cubes of food as opposed to the stuff that

1134
01:03:39,600 --> 01:03:42,000
Speaker 1: Bruce Durn's character is growing. I mean, that's part of

1135
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:44,920
Speaker 1: my intuition. I just can't see us ever being cool

1136
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:48,520
Speaker 1: with that. I just can't. But you know, maybe it's

1137
01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:50,880
Speaker 1: hard to it's hard to do an experiment to really

1138
01:03:50,920 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: test that. But maybe somebody will come up with a

1139
01:03:53,840 --> 01:03:57,800
Speaker 1: good way. So my my outlook on biophilia now is

1140
01:03:57,920 --> 01:04:01,360
Speaker 1: I recognize their problems with the a work, but but

1141
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:03,800
Speaker 1: I think it could be salvaged. I think people could

1142
01:04:03,880 --> 01:04:07,040
Speaker 1: come up with a with a leaner, more falsifiable version

1143
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:12,280
Speaker 1: of the hypothesis and test the dickens out of it. All. Right, Well,

1144
01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:16,760
Speaker 1: there you have it, biophilia. Hopefully we provided a nice

1145
01:04:16,800 --> 01:04:19,640
Speaker 1: introduction to this if you weren't familiar with it, uh

1146
01:04:19,680 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 1: and and and if you're familiar with it, we uh

1147
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:24,720
Speaker 1: we helped remind you about some of the I think

1148
01:04:24,760 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: some of the important tenants of it. You know, certainly

1149
01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 1: some of the potential problems with it, but also I

1150
01:04:30,360 --> 01:04:34,600
Speaker 1: think the overall positive message of biophilia as a you know,

1151
01:04:34,720 --> 01:04:41,800
Speaker 1: bio diversity focused view of humans humanity's interaction with nature. Now,

1152
01:04:41,840 --> 01:04:45,240
Speaker 1: take your dog out in the woods and get some ticks. Yeah,

1153
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:47,920
Speaker 1: get out there, all right. Hey, If you want to uh,

1154
01:04:48,280 --> 01:04:50,600
Speaker 1: check out more episodes of stuff about your Mind, head

1155
01:04:50,600 --> 01:04:52,560
Speaker 1: on over to stuff to a Boil your Mind dot com.

1156
01:04:52,560 --> 01:04:55,040
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship where you will find uh all

1157
01:04:55,080 --> 01:04:59,760
Speaker 1: of our podcasts attached in wonderful biospheres and you can

1158
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:02,400
Speaker 1: you can listen to everything back to the very beginning.

1159
01:05:02,720 --> 01:05:05,840
Speaker 1: You can check out blog post videos as well as

1160
01:05:05,880 --> 01:05:11,120
Speaker 1: links out to our various social media accounts so as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Humbler,

1161
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:13,040
Speaker 1: and who knows what else. And if you want to

1162
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:15,560
Speaker 1: get in touch with us directly, you can email us

1163
01:05:15,680 --> 01:05:29,480
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com

1164
01:05:29,520 --> 01:05:31,920
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does

1165
01:05:31,960 --> 01:05:56,040
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com