Like many movements that started out on grassroots power, conservation has become big business. Virtually every branch of government has its own officials charged with looking after the health of plants, animals, and entire ecosystems. Nonprofit groups with conservation missions flourish. Universities have devoted increased attention to departments focusing on environmental studies, environmental ethics, and the relations of humans to their surroundings.
In 1984 Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson attempted to explain human interest in conservation with Biophilia, a slender volume in which he defined the term he’d coined for his title as “the innate [human] tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes . . . . Life of any kind is infinitely more interesting than almost any conceivable variety of inanimate matter.” He suggested that humans have an inborn affinity for nature–an affinity that transcends culture and isn’t tied to any direct exposure to wild animals or “natural” landscapes. Having wild animals and landscapes around, he claimed, is vital for our well-being.
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Wilson’s impeccable hard-science credentials made it difficult for critics to label him a sentimentalist. But he still saw the need for an in-depth, critical look at his idea. A new book, The Biophilia Hypothesis–a collection of essays edited by Wilson and Stephen Kellert, a Yale professor who has extensively studied human perceptions of the environment–is an effort by researchers in a variety of fields to lend some credence to what was essentially one scientist’s manifesto.
Most of the contributors to this volume believe that these likes and dislikes are genetically inherited, not culturally taught. Humans evolved on the savannas of east Africa, their argument goes, in a parklike setting that had a number of survival advantages. Open spaces allowed humans to see dangerous predators, such as lions and other large cats, at a distance; predators could hide too easily in close, cramped places. Groves of scattered trees with low branches presented an escape route if a predator attacked; they also provided shade. Places with water were desirable because they generally supported a good supply of food plants and animals. And those humans who reacted fastest to the presence of a poisonous snake or spider were most likely to survive.
A number of criticisms can be leveled at this sort of research. For starters, it’s extremely difficult to distinguish between the genetic and cultural influences that affect our likes and dislikes. Western cultural norms have spread so widely through the world that it’s hard to find places where a spacious, manicured lawn and large shade trees aren’t considered pleasant status symbols. Indeed, these comfortable surroundings have been installed in many places where they make no ecological sense, such as Phoenix, where they waste a great deal of valuable desert water.
Throughout most of human existence that traditional and comfortable support has come largely from the wild nature surrounding us. What’s new is how fully we’ve replaced wild settings with manicured lawns, shopping malls, and other environments where nature is rigorously controlled. In doing so we have wreaked havoc on many aspects of nature, including large wild animals and unspoiled landscapes, that have lent us physical, aesthetic, even spiritual support.
