False Dichotomies: Natural and Artificial
Aug. 18th, 2006 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythThis is one of those things that irks me. Because it's gibberish. What's the difference between "natural" and "artificial"? There's no good definitions, but the most common feel of things seems to be natural is something not made by mankind, while artificial is.
The biggest problem with this definition is it only means anything if you assume humans are something separate from nature. And that's probably the first fundamental reason I find the distinction so annoying. Dudes. Humans are animals. We're a part of nature. Which means nature makes artificial things, at which point the crazed supercomputer in a Star Trek episode would burn out and explode.
Yes, humans are intelligent, and we can make things that don't occur often. And some of the things we make don't break down without special processes, or they're poison, or so on. But see, that leads to the second main problem.
Chemicals are chemicals. It doesn't matter how they're produced. Ammonia made by cow farts, nitrogen fixing bacteria, or a factory in Sheboygan are all chemically the same. NH3. If I give you a sample of the ammonia from each, there'd be no way to tell them apart. Cyanide is cyanide. And so on. Now, while it's not exactly true to say the process used to make something has no effect on the end product, but for the most part, well, it doesn't. Cheese is made using rennet, which is found in the stomachs of young milk-fed calves. So most cheese used to involve processed calf stomachs to curdle it. Now, thanks to genetic engineering, fungi and bacteria can be used to make the active ingredients in the rennet. You can tell the difference with a spectrometer, but probably not with your taste buds. Because the important parts are the same stuff.
A lot of things proudly proclaim "NO ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS OR PRESERVATIVES!" and you hear a lot of scare stories about how this that or the other additive can cause cancer. And it's true, some chemicals can cause cancer. Or people use poisons as pesticides. Or so on. But the thing is, plants use chemicals too. All living things do. Plants develop poisons to fight off bugs and browsers. So even if no "artificial chemicals" are added to, say, a cup of coffee, it's still made of chemicals, by definition. But it also contains a bunch of "natural" carcinogens, even in the most "organic" coffee. "Coffee is one example of the background of natural chemicals to which humans are chronically exposed (Table 1). A cup of coffee contains more than 1000 chemicals (12, 13). Only 26 have been tested for carcinogenicity, and 19 of these are positive in at least one test, totaling at least 10 mg of rodent carcinogens per cup. The average American coffee consumption is ~ 3 cups per day (11)."
Differences in process do matter on some things. Like making fertilizer, even though the ammonia in a bag of fertilizer and from nitrogen fixing bacteria are the same, the bag of fertilizer has a lot more waste products and energy that went into making it, but that made it quicker and more potent than growing a field of peanuts. The bag of fertilizer can run off in the rain and cause algae blooms and kill fish and all that, because of how it's applied. But those are problems of how it's applied and the production, it's not a problem just because the fertilizer is "artificial". And sometimes the "natural" process is worse.
For instance, pig farming. Pigs, you see, don't digest phosphorous very well. But pigs need phosphorous to live. Most of the phosphorous they eat goes out in their manure, and is one of the major pollutants from pig farms. There's ways to reduce it, such as adding enzymes to the pigs' food or by mixing limestone with the manure. Or there's a new kind of corn developed by a USDA researcher. Or there's genetically engineered pigs, who secrete their own enzyme to help them digest the phosphorous. Which of these is "natural"? All of them involve mankind "meddling" in nature. Which is what makes the whole argument so ridiculous.
The biggest problem with this definition is it only means anything if you assume humans are something separate from nature. And that's probably the first fundamental reason I find the distinction so annoying. Dudes. Humans are animals. We're a part of nature. Which means nature makes artificial things, at which point the crazed supercomputer in a Star Trek episode would burn out and explode.
Yes, humans are intelligent, and we can make things that don't occur often. And some of the things we make don't break down without special processes, or they're poison, or so on. But see, that leads to the second main problem.
Chemicals are chemicals. It doesn't matter how they're produced. Ammonia made by cow farts, nitrogen fixing bacteria, or a factory in Sheboygan are all chemically the same. NH3. If I give you a sample of the ammonia from each, there'd be no way to tell them apart. Cyanide is cyanide. And so on. Now, while it's not exactly true to say the process used to make something has no effect on the end product, but for the most part, well, it doesn't. Cheese is made using rennet, which is found in the stomachs of young milk-fed calves. So most cheese used to involve processed calf stomachs to curdle it. Now, thanks to genetic engineering, fungi and bacteria can be used to make the active ingredients in the rennet. You can tell the difference with a spectrometer, but probably not with your taste buds. Because the important parts are the same stuff.
A lot of things proudly proclaim "NO ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS OR PRESERVATIVES!" and you hear a lot of scare stories about how this that or the other additive can cause cancer. And it's true, some chemicals can cause cancer. Or people use poisons as pesticides. Or so on. But the thing is, plants use chemicals too. All living things do. Plants develop poisons to fight off bugs and browsers. So even if no "artificial chemicals" are added to, say, a cup of coffee, it's still made of chemicals, by definition. But it also contains a bunch of "natural" carcinogens, even in the most "organic" coffee. "Coffee is one example of the background of natural chemicals to which humans are chronically exposed (Table 1). A cup of coffee contains more than 1000 chemicals (12, 13). Only 26 have been tested for carcinogenicity, and 19 of these are positive in at least one test, totaling at least 10 mg of rodent carcinogens per cup. The average American coffee consumption is ~ 3 cups per day (11)."
Differences in process do matter on some things. Like making fertilizer, even though the ammonia in a bag of fertilizer and from nitrogen fixing bacteria are the same, the bag of fertilizer has a lot more waste products and energy that went into making it, but that made it quicker and more potent than growing a field of peanuts. The bag of fertilizer can run off in the rain and cause algae blooms and kill fish and all that, because of how it's applied. But those are problems of how it's applied and the production, it's not a problem just because the fertilizer is "artificial". And sometimes the "natural" process is worse.
For instance, pig farming. Pigs, you see, don't digest phosphorous very well. But pigs need phosphorous to live. Most of the phosphorous they eat goes out in their manure, and is one of the major pollutants from pig farms. There's ways to reduce it, such as adding enzymes to the pigs' food or by mixing limestone with the manure. Or there's a new kind of corn developed by a USDA researcher. Or there's genetically engineered pigs, who secrete their own enzyme to help them digest the phosphorous. Which of these is "natural"? All of them involve mankind "meddling" in nature. Which is what makes the whole argument so ridiculous.
