The Biophilia Hypothesis

Why are humans so drawn to the natural world of biodiverse organisms? Is this longing merely part of our culture or do we possess an innate and even genetic tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes? Join Robert and Joe as they discuss Edward O. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis and explore arguments for and against this captivating view of nature lovers.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Not too long ago we were talking about ticks, about
how it turns out you can get a tick on

(00:23):
your eyeball sucking the juice from within straight through the conjunctiva.
It turns out you can get all kinds of acquired
diseases from ticks, like the acquired meat allergy syndrome, or
the of course lime disease. We all know about all
these other diseases. Of course, the woods are full of
not just small animals that can hurt you, but in fact,

(00:45):
if you want to go up to the Northwest or
somewhere like that, there might be bears that could be
a threat to you. And yet people want to go
to the woods. Well they're lovely, dark and deep, that's
the thing. I mean. I like to go to the woods,
and yet there's nothing in the wood that materially benefits me.
There's no food there, there's no like mating opportunity there.

(01:07):
And it's kind of an odd thing to say, but
you know, there's no in a biological sense of the word.
Nothing there for me really except an experience, and yet
I seek that experience. I love going hiking in the woods. Yeah.
I find the same situation with with my family. We
go out in these these little hikes, you know, in
the Atlanta area, and yeah, we're not we're not foraging

(01:27):
for berries or mushrooms or are hunting small prey. We're
just going out there and kind of breathing air, getting
a little exercise. And um, yeah, I mean you can
you could break it down into those tangibles and say, well,
I'm getting some fresh air, I'm getting some exercise, I'm
you know, I'm occupying myself for the morning, I'm getting
away from my phone or something like this. But yeah,

(01:49):
but in terms of these like evolved needs, these basic
biological needs, they're not they're not necessarily being fulfilled. Yeah,
the woods, for some reason seem to give you pleasure.
It the thing you're seeking out, even though there's not
a really direct that. There might be indirect explanations, but
there's not a really direct explanation for why your body
would be sending you there. Here's another question, why do

(02:12):
we like pets? Oh yeah, I mean this is a question.
My wife and I ask a lot about our cat
because she's kind of a nightmare. But we so we
always have these discussions where like parasites. Yeah, there, she's
living in our house, eating our food. Uh, and what
does she give back? Like, she's not she's not keeping
mice out of our our grain or anything. She's just

(02:34):
laying around and frequently attacking my feet and sometimes barfing
on the floor. But then but we still love her
for some reason, She's still enriches our lives somehow. Our dog, Charlie,
is an absolute parasite. He sometimes can be so annoying,
but we love this dog. This dog. He brings me
so much pleasure. I'm so happy to have this dog,

(02:55):
even when he's barking at me to take him on
a walk while I'm trying to work on something, or
or just eating a bunch of food that we have
to pay for. I mean, from a strict material point
of view, there's not really a reason to want to
have this thing in my house except that I love him. Yeah. Uh.
And you know, and I bet a lot of people
out there right now are thinking, well, I'm not a

(03:16):
dog person, I'm not a cat person. I don't like
to go into the woods. I would I would invite
you to expand these definitions because I feel like there
are certainly individuals out there who really don't want to
go into the you know, the North Georgia wilderness, but
they might be very attractive to, say, you know, the
desert environments of Arizona, or to other national parks, or

(03:38):
to the beach or you know, or to tropical islands
like some. So if your local outdoor environment doesn't call you,
if specific outdoor environments don't don't call to you, then
there have to be there are probably other natural world
environments that that do ring your bell. I got one
more for you, Robert. Why do people plant flowers in
their backyard? Yeah? I mean what maybe you could say, okay,

(04:01):
planning flowers in the front yard could be some kind
of social thing where you're trying to demonstrate your I
don't know, wealth and leisure time or something like that.
People plant flowers in their backyard people nobody can see
them except you, and so again it's there there appears
to they're getting some kind of pleasure from having these
plants that are growing, that they're taking care of, and

(04:22):
the plants don't provide food. They don't provide any material
benefit except that you look at them and it makes
you feel good. Unless you're growing edible flowers. Well you know,
but wait, is that a thing? I thought? Edible flowers?
You can buy them at Healthful. You can seriously get
a whole container of edible flowers for like, you know,
eighteen pocks or something. Wait, people eat squash blossoms stuff. True,

(04:44):
they squash blossom, but yeah, a lot of people that
do grow flowers you're just growing them to look at
them or to appreciate, say the butterflies that are attracted
and buy them the or the various pollinating insects. Yeah.
So we have all these weird relationships with light forms
and natural landscapes, with pet animals, with vegetation. And if

(05:05):
not a dog or a cat, you think of fish, think, oh, yeah,
you know, snakes, reptiles, Yeah, the reptiles, whatever your fancy is,
even a even a weird pet like a scorpion or
a tarantula. And uh and you know, I'm not calling
you a weirdo if you have those, but you're probably
into the weirdness of it. If you do own a
pet scorpion, a tarantula. What about if you own pet ticks, well,

(05:27):
then you're probably what a A A a partially mythological
Eastern warlord. Right as you call back to our ticks episode,
that would be great to have a pit of ticks
in your house for when, you know, just to threaten
the children when they're being too unruly, or you just
have them as pets. And people are like, whoa, you
have a pit full of ticks. That's horrible, And you're like, no,

(05:47):
I don't. I don't feed anybody to the ticks. I
just keep them around. I'll have to watch these little
guys crawl around. So we're presented with a question here.
And the humans seek out all kinds of activities and
get pleasure from all kinds of activities that don't appear
to have any erect material benefit, yet we we just
like them. And so one reason for this could be
that it's some kind of cultural thing that we, you know,

(06:09):
we grow up being taught to like walking in the
woods or to like looking at flowers, and that's possible answer.
But also many of these things seem very universal, like
across different cultures, people have some kind of companion animal
relationship or they enjoy certain natural landscapes, they enjoy being
surrounded by certain types of plants, and so another way

(06:31):
of looking at this, apart from just cultural learning, could
be that there's some kind of biological instinct that connects
us to other forms of life, even forms of life
that aren't directly benefiting us by say, providing food or
providing shelter or something like that. And this brings us

(06:51):
to the topic of today's episode, which is a hypothesis
that's been around in biology and evolutionary psychology for a
few decades now, known as the biophilia hypothesis. And this
is mainly attributed to the work that there have been
multiple people working in this field now, but it's mainly
attributed to the work of the American biologist Edward O.
Wilson also known as EO. Wilson. Now, Robert, you recently

(07:15):
went to like the E. O. Wilson Center. Is this
a place, uh from his hometown? Um, it's it's definitely
down from his stomping grounds, because Edward O. Wilson is
it was out Alabama, born in the nineteen nine and
he grew up in various Florida and Alabama towns. So
this is very much in his his stomping grounds. The

(07:37):
Edward Wilson Center is in Freeport, Florida, and um, I
and my family visited it earlier this month. Uh. And
it's named in honor of Wilson, and it echoes his
ideas and values. And he's he's been there, he's done,
he's he's visited the center, so he's he's he's very
much a part of it's it's ethos. I guess, I
guess you would say, so, what's this place like? It's wonderful.

(07:57):
So my family was vacationing at greaton Each which is
close to Destin. But if you need a broader idea
of where it is, we're talking roughly halfway along the
coast between Pensacola and Panama City. And I know that
at times, if one is visiting Florida, you're not a
Floridian yourself. There's sometimes a hesitancy to uh to backtrack
away from the beach too much. But there there are

(08:19):
some I mean, far from from just this one location,
there's some wonderful outdoor. Uh, you know, things to see
in the States, So so don't be afraid to explore
a bit. Uh. No, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Some people really love the beach. I really love the swamp. Yeah.
One of my favorite places that have been to a
few times now is uh Coula Springs State Park in Florida.

(08:42):
This is where you have this wonderful deep natural spring.
You have manateees coming in this rich um estuary environment
with protected regions. Is this where you saw the leaping fish.
When we jumping off the leaping fish, they were just
leaping around like it was a Disney movie. It was fabulous.
If you haven't caught that episode, that's from I guess
a year so ago. Yeah, but yeah, I go back
and check out our episode about jumping fish. That was

(09:03):
a more interesting topic than I expected. Yeah, that one
and and at times deadly. I'll make sure we linked
to that one on the landing page for this episode
is stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But the
Edward O. Wilson Center, Yeah, so it's a wonderful indoor
outdoor educational center and it really does an excellent job
of relating biology to two young people. Most of the time,

(09:24):
during the course of the year it's it's only open
to school groups and whatnot. But during the summer June
and July. It's open to the public on Thursdays and Fridays.
If you want to learn more about it, you can
go that E. O. Wilson Center dot org. Uh. But yeah,
it's wonderful. There's a giant bird when you first walk
in the door. They're giant animals to crawl on. There's
a there's an observable bee colony honey Bees. You can

(09:47):
check out and try and find the Queen. So if
it's the Edward Wilson Center, I would expect there to
be ants there right. There are ants. Yes, there's a
huge display on ants, a giant ant that you can
crawl on. Yeah. So it's it's it's really wonderful stuff.
I recommend going like honey, I shrunk the kids scale. Yes. Well,
so before we get into the biophilia hypothesis, we I

(10:09):
guess we should talk about Edward Wilson himself because one
of the so he's got this book from nineteen eight four,
I believe is from the nineteen eighties called Biophelia, where
he first articulates this idea. Now he would explore it
more in a later book. Um, but this book Biophelia
is a is a book I've read, and it's a
really enjoyable scientific memoir. A lot of what he talks

(10:30):
about is like his research on ants and his field
work in places like Surinam and Papua New Guinea. And
so he weaves together these themes from his life and
from his work and science and his thoughts about what
the role of science and society is. The the idea
that ties this all together is this idea of biophelia

(10:51):
are innate affiliation with or desire to focus on other
living life forms and natural landscapes or lifelike processes. Now,
there's some ambiguity in there, and we can address that
ambiguity later and any problems that might cause for this
as a hypothesis. But he definitely has a personal way
of expressing his feelings about this idea, right. It very

(11:13):
much connects back to stories throughout his life. Yeah, so
it's important to note that Edward O. Wilson is he's
the real deal here. He is. He's he is an
acclaimed scientist, uh specifically and entomologist, and he is a
and he is a very accomplished author. Like he he
officially retired in but he's just continued to write books,

(11:36):
uh like almost every year. I mean, his bibliography is
incredible and his books are good. He's one of those
science writers who is actually a very very good writer.
He's expressive and poetic, but he also gets to the
point I think he's one of the better scientists slash
science writers in America. Yeah, and then, and he's also
very relatable, especially when you see him, you know, in

(11:59):
person or a video or a Ted talk. He's he's
Alabama born, He's very folksy, and he describes himself as
being essentially still a child at heart, and he has
that kind of enthusiasm for nature. So I mentioned he
was born in an earlier biographical detail that often comes
up and he attributes to being what sort of steered
him into studying ants is that he was seven years

(12:21):
old and he blinded himself in one eye during a
fishing accident. You know what. He pulled up a fish
and the finn got him right, and a spiny finn
got him in the eye and blinded him. And so
he this led him to focus more, he says, on
little things, things that he could actually get up, you know,
get up close to with an eyeglass. So he turned
to ants entomology, there's a game is key area of research.

(12:43):
He attended the University of Alabama and earned his bachelor's
and masters in biology, and he identified fire ants as
an invasive species and reported on the first US colony
of fire ants. That was while he was in college.
In college, the early days for him. Um, and this
is we were just talking about this before we went
on the air. Here there's a video on YouTube and

(13:04):
it was I believe it. It is aligned with the E. O.
Wilson Center. But it starts off narrated by Harrison Ford
and then and then Attenborough comes in and talks about
how how how amazing Edward o' wilson is. So this
this video is weird for multiple reasons, and one of
them is that you hear Harrison Ford trying to sound
enthusiastic about something which I don't know if I've ever

(13:24):
heard before. The most chronically bored and unenthusiastic actor in
the history of cinema. And we love him for it.
But he's he's talking about the greatness of the work
of Edward Wilson, and he still kind of has that
that lake onic, sad, not very excited edge in his voice. Yeah,
even though this is this is clearly like he's clearly

(13:45):
passionate about it, like you did this for a reason.
But later on in the video, you're following Edward o'wilson,
like recent Edward O Wilson, Old Edward O. Wilson wandering
around in the Florida wilderness, coming up to a fire
ant colony. He reaches down with his bare hand, stirs
them up, like scrapes the nest, and they all begin

(14:06):
to swarm. And then he sticks his hand in the
nest and lets them crawl in his hand and lets
them begin to uh to attack his hand and uh
and then he brushes them off. But it really demonstrates
his man his devotion to connecting with the natural world
and his fascination with the with these insects. Well, it's
almost deranged because he's he's like smiling gleefully as they're

(14:31):
all stinging and attacking the back of his hand. He's
got these hundreds of ants on his skin and he's
like each one of these bites is like a hot needle.
But it it just shows you how, you know, how
fascinated he is with them like that he would have
this really kind of a holy moment, Like I kept
thinking of St. Francis with the animals. Only instead of
touching a you know, petting a lamb, he's petting fire ants.

(14:55):
If lambs could sting. Yes, so Edward O. Wilson. Uh So,
he moved onto Harvard in nine and he joined the
faculty there and again he retired in uh. But but
he remains on as an honorary curator in entomology, and
he's during the course of his career again, he's written

(15:16):
numerous books. He's received more awards than we can list
in this podcast, including the Pulitzer Prize, which he I
believe received at least twice. Uh. He's received the Ted
Prize and the U S National Medal of Science again
just to name a few. Now, a lot of Wilson's
efforts outside of his scientific research over the years have
been focused on the idea of conservation and preservation of nature. Yes,

(15:41):
that we have this rich biodiversity. Everything is connected, and
we have to preserve it because if you start, you
start pulling things out, you start allowing things to go
dark in this epic grid of by a biodiverse um life,
then you're gonna have cascading collapses, and you're going to

(16:02):
you're going to risk tremendous damage to our ecosystem. He
sort of reminds me of the influence of somebody who
I enjoyed talking about last year in our summer reading episode,
which is the early ecologist Alexander von Humboldt, sort of
responsible for the idea of ecology, both focusing on the
inner connections between things in nature. How an organism doesn't

(16:26):
No organism is an island, It doesn't stand on its own,
and they all have connected inner dependencies. And we we
we threaten natural life forms at our own peril. And
I think he frames this in two ways. He says,
you know, destroying natural habitats and destroying organisms that may
in fact be some kind of keystone species in a

(16:48):
natural ecology that threatens us materially, like these can have
negative effects on our health, that can lead to the
spread of new diseases, It can make resources harder to get,
It can cause all kinds of problems for us materially.
But he also emphasizes a lot just just the feeling
of pleasure we get from nature and how important it
is to our sense of well being and happiness to

(17:10):
have intact natural ecologies around us, and this is sort
of how he gets to the biophilia hypothesis. Alright, we're
gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
we will dive into the biophilia hypothesis and discuss what
it's saying. Uh and also some eventually we also get
to some criticism about it. Thank alright, we're back. So

(17:38):
Wilson proposed this term biophilia meaning the love of life
in uh, the short publication back in biophilia the human
bond with other species, and he defined this as humanities
that innate tendency to focus on living things as opposed
to the inanimate and in effect, he argued for in
innate love of nature. Now there you already see some

(17:58):
tension in the definitions, right, because in one statement there
it's talking about focusing on other life forms and lifelike processes,
and in the other statement it's saying that we naturally
love nature. Now, focusing on things and loving them are different.
And this is going to be. One of the problems
people have raised with the biophilia hypothesis is um that

(18:21):
it may not be exactly pinned down on exactly what
the hypothesis is saying, but for now, we we should
just try to explain the way it's usually expressed by
people who are in favor of the biofilia hypothesis, and
they tend to go with the focus idea, right, that
it's that we focus on other living things and lifelike processes,
where for some reason we're way more interested in trees

(18:45):
than we are in rocks. Now, I should also add
that the term biofilia itself was used earlier in the
nineties sixties by the German social psychologist Eric from to
denote a psychological orientation tour nature. But uh, it was
really a Wilson who then took it and tweaked the

(19:06):
meaning and really led to its primary usage today. Well,
maybe we should read a passage from Wilson to see
what what he has to say about the concept. He says,
the object of my reflection can be summarized by a
single word biophilia, which I will be so bold as
to define as the innate tendency to focus on life
and lifelike processes. From infancy, we concentrate happily on ourselves

(19:29):
and other organisms. We learned to distinguish life from the
inanimate and move toward it like moths to a porch. Light, novelty,
and diversity are particularly esteemed. The mere mention of the
word extraterrestrial evokes reveries about still unexplored life, displacing the
old and once potent exotic that drew earlier generations to

(19:50):
remote islands and jungled interiors. That much is immediately clear,
but a great deal more needs to be added. I
will make the case that to explore and affiliate with
life is a deep and complicated process in mental development,
to an extent, still undervalued and philosophy and religion, our
our existence depends on this propensity. Our spirit is woven

(20:12):
from it. Hope rises on its currents. Yeah, I like that,
and so I like that he's he's situating biophilia as
a sort as a hypothesis to explain something about our nature.
But it also, I think for him takes on a
sort of propulsive meaning about like how we should act.
That if we act in accordance with with these natural

(20:35):
urges to affiliate with nature, we can sort of shed
this man conquers nature mentality that was present in a
lot of human history. And you might wonder, like, Okay,
so if throughout a lot of human history, we've had
this mentality of you know, we've got to tame the
beast of nature, We've got to make it bend to
our will and defeat our predatory adversaries. Wild Is that?

(20:59):
Is that tendency throughout human history a challenge to the
biophilia hypothesis. I don't know what do you think, Robert, Well,
we'll discuss this a little bit more as as we go.
But I do find it interesting that even in environmental circles,
even in um, in environmental movements, you see them, you
see individuals evoke this idea of mastery over nature. You know,

(21:23):
it becomes this idea of saving the planet, positioning man,
is this as as not completely uh, you know, dishonestly,
but positioning us as individuals with power over nature, and
therefore we should use our power over nature to rain
things in and gain control over the situation. I like
the way you put it there with about the idea

(21:44):
of saving the planet, Like why do what does it
mean when you talk about saving the whales versus not
hurting the whales? I mean essentially you're you're saying the
same thing, but they're starting with different assumptions. When if
you're say save the whales, it almost says like, you know,
we have two fates on a scale that we control,

(22:06):
and we can press one side down or press the
other side down, save them or kill them. But really
the idea is that on their own they'd be fine.
We are doing things to them to kill them, you know,
it's not like they were naturally going extinct when we
found them. Yeah, so you could have you can have
one person that's saying save the whales, and the other
person could say let's live in harmony with the whales.

(22:29):
Ultimately they may be arguing for the same thing, but
that but each argument cast humanity and its role with
nature in a slightly different light. Yeah, and so I
think the the stop harming the environment as opposed to
save the environment might be better because it better emphasizes
the fact that we we live alongside all the other

(22:50):
organisms in the environment and we need them. They're not
like pets that we're deciding what to do with. Of course,
then again, messaging is aimed at at the listener, and
there are going to be certain groups, certain individuals that
are going to react more strongly to son two different
arguments and say hey, you have the power to say
some whales. Don't want to say some whales. Yeah, that

(23:10):
made me feel really good. But if you say, hey, man,
stop killing the whales, stop hurting the whale, stop wrecking
our environment. You know that puts sometimes a negative spin
on it that is not going to be as embraced
by an individual or group. Yeah. I guess it's the
superhero mentality. You want to be the superhero and save
the bus full of children. It's not all that exciting
to say that you wouldn't harm a bus full of children. Yeah.

(23:34):
I have one more quote from Wilson I want to
read before we move forward. He just because this is
just another example of his his beautiful ability to to
sum up so many of these environmental ideas. He says,
the living environment is what really sustains us. The living
environment creates the soil, creates most of the atmosphere. It
is not just something out there. The biosphere is a membrane,

(23:55):
a very thin membrane of living organism. Now it's important
to point out that as a scientific hypothesis, if biophelia
has anything to say, it should have something to say,
meaning that it shouldn't just be you know, people love nature, right,
because we that's sort of obvious. People do generally tend

(24:15):
to love nature in one way or another. Even if
you're not really an outdoors person, you probably have some
kind of preference for natural shapes, for plant environments, for
things like that over dead, dry, uninhabited landscapes. I mean,
think about picture the surface of the Moon or Mars
or something like that. Does that look like a place

(24:35):
you want to live? No, But at the same time
it is. It is an environment, right. I Mean we
were just talking about Arabia Mountain yesterday, which is a
local hiking area in the Atlanta area, and we were saying, oh,
it's great, It's like walking on another planet. It's like
being on the moon. Yeah, it's cool for a couple hours.
It's it's not a place that I would want to live,

(24:58):
I think, because well, even though there are some plants
on it, the thing about Arabia Mountain is it's placed
near Atlanta where it's this this outcropping of mostly bald
stone that has no soil, It has no plants. There
are a few little groves on it that have trees
and bushes growing up out of them, but mostly it's
just bare rock, and while I'm there, it's cool, but

(25:18):
it's cool for exactly the reason that it's not a
place i'd want to stay. Does that makes sense? But
how do you feel about the desert? I like the desert,
but the desert is full of life. I don't know
how i'd feel about, well, the desert I've been to.
I mean, like, I've been to the Chihuahua Desert and
it's full of life. It's fascinating. And the life in

(25:39):
the desert when you come to like a place where
there's a river flowing through a desert and there's green
radiating out away from it, the life you see becomes
all the more precious because of how scarce the greenery
and things are in other places around Now. A place
that's just pure sand dunes with no life forms at all,
I don't know. That's cool to look out for a

(26:00):
few minutes, but I don't know if i'd want to
stay there. Okay, uh yeah, I guess it's gonna vary
from from person to person, but I would love to
hear from anyone out there is listening who's like, yes,
build me a cabin in a out on the sand
dunes and then be happy. Uh, you might have might
be able to put a make a stronger argument for it.

(26:21):
Now to your point about this being a hypothesis too
and about it being scientific scientifically grounded, is that on
one hand, yes, biophilia involves an ethos and uh and
a lot of just commentary on what it is to
be human and the human experience. But then there is
also the the idea that there's at least in part

(26:42):
a genetically and involved, that this is something that is
going to go deeper than just uh, you know how
we're nurtured, but it's going to get down to our
core biological nature. Yeah, this would make it biologically testable.
It's say, it's that our tendency to affiliate with nature,
or tendency to focus on life and life like processes
is somehow determined by our genes, or at least it's

(27:04):
primed by our genes, you know, gene primed learning is
the thing that they often emphasize. So that should in
theory be testable in some way if you're clear enough
about what it is you're looking for. So maybe we
should talk about some of the commonly cited evidence by
biophilia theorists. What do, they say, are good reasons to

(27:24):
think that we have this innate, in inherited tendency to
affiliate with other life forms? All right, well, here's some
of the here's some of the anecdotal evidence. All right. Um, so,
first of all, universal appreciation for nature across human cultures.
Now we've already touched on this a little bit, but
it's just the idea that would no matter where you go,

(27:45):
there's going to be nature and natural elements wrapped up
in that culture. And uh, one example that I really
like is people in very different cultures all over the
world tend to like a particular kind of landscape, a
landscape that just happens to be similar to the Pleistocene savannas. Uh,
that we evolved to thrive in the ideal savannah. Yeah,

(28:08):
and this is related to a concept to known and
evolutionary psychology is the environment of evolutionary adapted nous or
the e A, which is basically the idea that animals
tend to be adapted not to live anywhere on Earth,
but for a particular landscape or type of environment that
shaped their genes. And if that's the case, you've sort
of like put your chips down on being the kind

(28:30):
of organism that thrives in this kind of place, and
as such, you should have some kind of mechanisms in
your brain that tell you seek out that kind of
place where you play best. Yes, now this I love this.
Uh this this theory in this idea about art though,
because if you spend any time in museums, you run
across the landscapes and sometimes I'm not I'm not too

(28:52):
much of a landscape guy. I tend to walk by
a lot of them. Less there's something really cool going on,
such as uh, we were just in the last episode
talking about or one of previous episodes talking about landscape
with the fall of chorus by Uh was it Bosha
Brugle I can't and uh yeah, So you have one
detail of a following mythological figure, but then also just

(29:13):
a natural landscape with human activity and nature going on.
So when you do, when you look at a lot
of these these works of landscape art, you find open
spaces of low grasses interspersed with the copses of trees.
The trees tend to fork near the ground, which is
to say, if they're tree, their trees you could scramble

(29:34):
up into if you needed to get away from something. Uh,
there's water close by or in the distance, so you
don't feel like you're going to necessarily dry up or
you know, you or you'd be able to take a
swim if you got overheated, or there's there indications of
animal life maybe birds in the distance, as well as
diverse greenery. And finally, get this, a path or a road,
perhaps a river bank or a shoreline that extends into

(29:57):
the distance, almost inviting you to follow it m hm.
And this type of landscape is generally regarded as beautiful,
even by people in countries that don't have it. You know,
like your your culture might not have a lot of
landscape art, but you're gonna there's a very good chance
you're going to encounter another culture's landscape art and you're
gonna get it. You know, you can be completely you

(30:17):
could have never seen any you know, say Chinese or
Japanese landscape art, and then you would view it and
you'd be like, yeah, I totally get it, and you're
just drawn into it. You you want to crawl into
the painting and run around with the trees. Okay. So
this is commonly cited anecdotal evidence about the kinds of
art and imagery people prefer. Now, I would say, as

(30:38):
a counter example, as long as we're sticking with anecdotal
for now, and when we're not claiming to have some
kind of strong empirical case, I'd say, just personally, when
I think about landscape images, I like the most. I
like mountain images. Yeah, well, you know, one of these
things is that to what is often going on in
a mountain image. I mean, you're gonna have some somebody
or something standing at a peak looking out just having

(31:01):
you know, mastery over the landscape, being able to survey
everything around you and see predators approaching you from a distance.
You could very much argue that that's an evolutionary adaptation
as well. Yeah, because exactly having having the higher ground
gives you the ability to see what's coming in in
multiple directions. But of course that isn't exactly biophelia, because

(31:23):
that that's talking about landscapes, but it's not really talking
about organisms or lifelike processes. Though. One thing I will
point out is that in some of the biophilia literature
there does seem to be sometimes a kind of blurry
nous or fuzziness about whether we're talking still just about
natural organisms or whether this is turning into a preference

(31:43):
for natural types of landscapes as opposed to I don't
know what cities or something like that. Yeah. Now, and
another example that comes up is the fact that some
of the earliest human art works are the the various
cave paintings that show you know, realistic animals, realistic um

(32:03):
human beings and uh and uh, and also just decorative
motifs that are clearly inspired by natural world organisms. Totally. Yeah,
you see these these ancient reverent images, and they tend
to be what they tend to be animals, Yeah, especially
prey animals that you might be hunting. Yeah, exactly. And

(32:24):
you know, these date back thirty two thousand years in
the case of some of the French cave paintings that
we've seen, and if you if you consider shell necklaces
and whatnot, which might be stretching the argument a little bit,
but that can take you back a good hundred thousand years. Now.
Beyond that, there are other anecdotal examples, like landscape architecture
is full of of of examples of this. I ran

(32:46):
across some some material by Bill Brown and Keith Bowers
and Carol Franklin, all of them landscape architects, and uh,
and they point out that you're just freakuently going to
encounter actual nature inside of of a building. You're gonna
counter fish, tanks and plants. You're gonna encounter, uh, you know,
ornaments and patterns that read like nature. So it might

(33:09):
be you say you're in Florida and then you go
into a beach resort. But is there going to be
some sort of pineapple design, you know, on the pillars
or on the wallpaper. Uh, you have to take that
into account. And uh and oh and then that opened
Savannah that we crave, well, you could argue that we
also create it to some extent in our golf courses.

(33:29):
You're right, golf courses. In a way, it's it's a
weird combination, like the ultimate mastery over nature. You and
you enslave nature and just turn it into your own
yard game then and bend it to your will. But
still you're you're evoking certain natural motifs, you know. Yeah,
I don't know why I'm so impressed by that. You

(33:50):
I feel like you've golf courses. You just blew my
Savannah hypothesis. Skepticism out of the water. And uh, I
mean it does go to show that the idea you
have biophilia, there's like overt biophilia and then biophilia in
ways that you didn't even realize you were, you were,
you know, employing it. Like. Another example of that is
the symbolic use of nature and human language. Oh yeah,

(34:11):
all our metaphors are nature metaphors. Yeah, you know a
lot of a lot of them are very over you know,
blind as a bat. Wise is it now pretty as
a peacock, crazy as a rat, as an outhouse rat? Um, whoa,
whoa what real expression like that? As crazy as an
outhouse rat. And then there's crazy as a rat and
a coffee Can I love a good crazy rat? Uh?

(34:31):
Analogy there? But how about a bull in a China shop.
A bull in a china shop is good too. Of course,
china shops are not very uh, very much part of
our revolutionary adapted landscape. But but but the bull is
the bull, the bull and various other animals as a
way to evoke personality, you know. And the thing is
these are these are just some of the obvious ones,
but it gets a lot more elegant, to the point

(34:52):
that you're not always aware that you're invoking animal imagery
in your language, but it's there. Oh and then I
mean we could go on forever here about about spiritual
reverence for nature across cultures totally. Yeah, think of all
the sacred places in global myth, from Edenic gardens to
sacred mountains to primordial oceans like we discussed in our

(35:15):
recent episode about creating a universe. Yeah, I agree with that, though,
yet again there were somewhat blurring the original definition. If
the hypothesis is supposed to be about organisms, Wait a minute,
are we talking about landscapes or just organisms? Well, let's
talk about organisms. Let's look at all those gods and
demigods that we have rolling about, uh how much. I mean,

(35:35):
certainly there are examples of very anthropomorphic deities that are
just pretty much just tall bearded people. But yet even
in even say Abrahamic tradition, you have what you have
winged angels that's invoking uh like you know, hybrid or
or chimerical imagery. And then you have just straight up

(35:56):
and yeah, you have the world serpents. You have celestial
draft wagons in a Chinese mythology that are themselves composites
of all these various animal motifs, and of course you
look at the pantheon of the Hindu deities and you
see all of these wonderful animal forms. Now, Wilson himself
is very much into the idea of serpent imagery throughout

(36:19):
human culture. As one example of that, he sites of biophelia.
But this goes into Wilson's broader definition of biophilia because
as some people employ the term, they think that it
just means like love of other organisms or love of nature.
Wilson goes with that focus on that our attention is
naturally drawn to and stuck on other organisms, especially organisms

(36:42):
that have some kind of evolutionary relevance for us. And
one of the examples is the widespread biophobia of snakes.
So for Wilson, biophobia is actually a subset of biophilia.
We've got this relationship with other organisms, and so the
serpent human mind relationship is something that that he really

(37:03):
focuses on. He talks about how common snake dreams are
across human cultures, how common snake imagery is in religions
on all all parts of the planet, how common snake
imagery is an art that they're just snakes everywhere. We
apparently can't get them off the brain. And then he
also compares this to the way that other primates seem

(37:25):
to react to snakes with with greater alarm and magnitude
of activity than they would too many other types of
animals of comparable size. Oh yeah, I mean, and and
it goes beyond beyond that into our various pet animals.
If anyone's ever conducted the cucumber test with a cat,
replace the cucumber on the the of the floor behind
them when they're not looking. No, they'll turn around, and

(37:46):
if they glimpse the cucumber, they'll jump. Whoa, um, I've
had I have not had a lot of luck with
this experiment with my own cat, granted how many times
he tried. Only when I'm holding a cucumber in the
kitchen and I looked down and see the cat facing
the other way. So maybe you need longer cucumbers, yeah,
or just more you know, I should, I should plan
more in my cat experiments. But then, of course, anyone

(38:09):
who's in who's ever in go involved themselves with horses
knows you know, how a horse can behave if it
sees a snake. I mean, and and I'm not even
sure about dogs. I assume dogs have strong reactions to
serpents as well. Yeah, I'd imagine just the other day
my dog Charlie tried to eat a dead one. Oh well,
we're out walking. It's there on the sidewalk, belly up,

(38:30):
rotting a little bit and he he saw a snack.
Do yank him away? You have to get in there. Now.
Back to the idea of religion and UH in biophilia,
you know, I also think that that heavily nature a
line faiths illustrate this as well, such as like Shinto
comes to mind, you know, the Japanese uh mentality that

(38:52):
there is uh. You know, there's a there's a spiritual
energy and all things. And granted some of that includes
rocks but in statues, but it can, you know, certainly
include natural forms as well and organisms. Uh. And there's
actually an excellent article in the New York Times from
this week. By the time you hear it, it it will
be like a couple of weeks old, I guess. But
it's about resurgent religious faith in China and the environmental

(39:15):
activism that is coming with it. And it's hardly an
underground thing. President Ji jin Ping has a champion to
return to interest in Chinese culture and particularly Taoism and Confusism.
So and part of this is countering Western influences, but
he's called for China to return to its roots as
a quote, ecological civilization. Now, the article also points out

(39:37):
that the movement as vote motivating Chinese Buddhists, Christians and
Muslims as well. And you know, it's it's always I
think worth reminding everyone that the China is is home
to fifty five distinct ethnic groups, even if Han is
the majority there, uh, and they are also numerous religious faiths. Now,
I wonder how this initiative plays into the Chinese government's

(39:58):
enabling of heavy polluting industry. I mean, of course they're
not unique in governments to enable that. But no, no,
that's a that's a a fair fair criticism, and I
think that's certainly a conflict in uh in China uh
presently um. And you know, there are other motivations as well,
such as with you know, the u s sort of
taking a a lesser role in the environmental leadership, that

(40:21):
there's a place for someone like China to step up
and assume power so there's power here as well. Uh,
that's that's at stake. But as this article by Javiira
Sea Hernandez points out, there's there's more of an emphasis
in these resulting environmental movements on living in harmony with
nature rather than what is perceived as a Western take

(40:43):
on saving the Earth. To come back to the distinction
we were talking about earlier, so it's don't kill the whales,
not save the whales, right, Yeah, And I think this
is interesting in light of by affiliate, because I think
it's very in keeping with the message of stewardship understanding biodiversity.
But at the same time time, we see that that
very savior message, uh, you know, invoked in materials promoting

(41:06):
Edward Wilson and biophilia that like that Harrison Ford video
we're talking about. He describes that quote as an epic
battle to save our planet and it will involve swords
and magic staves. And then you know there are some
people will actually bring a technology into this argument as well.
Wilson himself said that the more we understand organisms through science,

(41:29):
the closer we become to them. Uh. And while technology
can arguably distance ourselves from nature as well, it can
bring us closer. Molecular biology and genetic engineering, for example,
bring us closer to nature because is a greater understanding.
And you can even argue that the search for extraterrestrial
life too is a biophilic endeavor. Oh, I mean, the

(41:50):
CT is almost perfect example of biophilia, if there is
any merit to the idea, because like, there are millions
of planet it's out there that we could be interested in,
and what are we interested in? We're interested in the
ones that have life on them. Now that could you
could say that there there's just sort of like a
cognitively recognized self preservation instinct right that we we say, okay,

(42:15):
if there's another planet with life on it out there
could be a threat to us, could help us so
that we have motivations based in our cognitive capacities to
understand that life has this this value out there. But
that's not the only kind of life we're interested in.
People have been looking for microbes in the soil of
Mars for decades. Now, you know, we scoop up the
soil of Mars and we want to see things alive

(42:37):
in it. Why do we care so much about that?
I mean, and that's not just scientists who care. I
understand why scientists care, because it's part of their life's work.
But the average person really does care. Usually whether there's
life on Mars, that's an interesting question to them. Why. Well,
because the answer ends up saying I mean, ends up
saying something about ourselves and about life itself, you know.

(42:58):
But but also I think just because life is interesting. Yeah,
the presence of life somewhere makes that place so much
more fascinating than an otherwise dead rock covered in loose
soil and stones. This makes me want to see more
sort of darkly Edward Wilson type characters and some of
our sci fi horror. You know, someone who's gonna really

(43:20):
just reach out and touch the xenomorphs and love them.
I guess we do see characters like that in the
various alien films that Brad Dwarf comes to mind in
the Alien Resurrection. I can't speak any anything positive by
the Alien Resurrection. Let's move on al right, Well, let's
move on to day. Let's take one more quick break,

(43:42):
and when we come back we'll get into measurable bio
biological evidence for biophilia as well as some evidence against it. Alright,
we're back. So so far, we've been talking not super
rigorously about science. We've been talking about general anecdotal observations

(44:02):
about people's behavior, about culture, about our own feelings. And
that's fine, but that's not going to prove a scientific
hypothesis and make it a workable theory, right. And and
Edward Wilson has has been pretty clear throughout his career
with this that like, there's not strong evidence for it,
that there I think he more recently said, yeah, there's
stronger evidence for it, but he's not He realizes that

(44:24):
the evidence is not there yet. A lot of more
research is required. But some of the measurable evidence that's
out there. We've already touched on this a little bit,
but measurable physiological responses and humans that are exposed to
sometimes just images of snakes or spiders. Right, there has
been actual empirical research on this, and and it's comparing
our responses as humans to the responses especially of other primates,

(44:47):
to say, like, is there some inherited, uh genetic component
to our reactions to these animals that's not just culturally learned. Yes,
that in a way, there's just like there's there's awareness,
there's an important like cognitive awareness, you know. And to
go back to the the idea of biophobia, this would
be a biophobia that Wilson would include underneath his definition

(45:10):
of biophilia. It would be a natural focus or attention
that we give to certain types of organisms. Now, another
big area and this is this is certainly an area
where there's been a number of of studies over the years,
and we could easily do a whole episode on it.
But the importance of sunlight on mood and productivity. Mm hmm,
Now how would that because obviously the sunlight is not

(45:33):
like an organism, so right, but it's it's I believe
the argument is that you're getting into the idea that
like being being outdoors, being in nature, there are there
are aspects of nature that yes aren't directly aligned with
organisms but aren't, but is responsible for organisms that we're
going to have this innate connection with. So this is

(45:54):
expanding the definition. And I have seen this done and
some people who talk about the subject expanding the definition
to say that it's not just the desire to affiliate
with organisms, but with natural environments, like when people talk
about how it's people want to seek out water, being
by the water, or something like that. And that's you know,
not necessarily being by a pool, but being by a

(46:16):
natural river or lake or something like that. Uh, that
could be yeah, I guess that could be a peripheral
or related type of idea. Now another area of measurable
effect here ties in with the study by Roger Yuruk
which found that patients recovering from surgery actually recovered much
more effectively, uh if they were viewing trees and shrubs

(46:39):
as opposed to those that would just had a view
out their window of a brick wall. They also ended
up taking half the painkillers and made half the nursing calls.
So there was like a change in their behavior and
not just in their reported affect but in what they
actually did. If they could see some vegetation, Yeah, if
they just if they could just see some trees and
you know, and you know, presumably maybe some squirrelding birds

(47:02):
in there as well. So this is part of a
broader body of literature on the benefits of vegetative environments.
There's been a lot of research like this, some of
it also associated with the same guy, uh, Roger Ulric
and across different studies. People have this positive aesthetic reaction
to plant filled environments, and these environments are usually found
to have some kind of stress reducing effect or somehow

(47:25):
this otherwise restorative effect on mood and on behavior. And
this goes beyond vegetation as well. For example, people tend
to report reductions in stress or show fewer stress behaviors
in the presence of an aquarium that has live fish
in it. Or how about the often report. I mean,
we don't need to tell you about all of the

(47:46):
tons of studies that report the health benefits and mood
benefits of exposure to pets, companion animals, you know, lowering
your blood pressure and all, you know, all the stuff
like that over the years. Yeah. I think it's one
of the reasons that you you you have these hospital
animals that make the rounds and just meet in Greek people, uh,
just the idea being that this will this will improve

(48:08):
their their condition at least in you know, a small sense,
but a measurable sense. One other thing I've read about
this interesting is the idea of humans preference for certain
geometric patterns. For example, uh, so, geometric patterns can be
expressed in terms of what are called fractal patterns. That
are repeating patterns that are often said to resemble designs

(48:29):
found in biological organisms and in nature. So if you
look down at surfaces of the earth from above, say
winding rivers through a plain or how mountain, how you know,
the drainage areas in mountains form these these spiky patterns
looking down from above, Or if you look at the
branches of trees, or of ferns, or of the spirals

(48:53):
and flowering plants. I mean, it gets into the golden ratio, right,
I mean the idea that if you if you do
any image editing out there, you you know, you often
bring in one of these overlays. Even sometimes like I
use the rule of thirds one a lot, which is
a very inorganic way of of breaking up your photo.
But you can also bring in essentially a snail shell,

(49:15):
so you can see this curve. Because so you end
up with situations where people are like, they may not
be actually thinking this, but essentially they're looking at an
image and saying, oh, this this photograph of race cars
is great, but I'd love it a little bit more.
It evoked an image of a snail shell. You know. Now, yeah,
you probably don't think it consciously but people do. In
some studies show preferences for fractal patterns, geometric fractal patterns

(49:40):
at certain levels of of density branching, and these basically
are said to correspond to the most common patterns seen
in natural organisms. So if you're thinking about branching trees
or mangrove roots or things like that, these are geometric
patterns that are brains seem to prefer looking at. Now.

(50:00):
Of course, one question about that is if we're responding
to geometric patterns through some innate preference in our brain.
It's not just culturally learned, but we we've got these
inherited genetic preferences for things that spike at this angle
this many times. One wonder is if that means you
could trick your brain into satisfying any kind of biophilic

(50:22):
impulse to whatever extent that is real, just by looking
at dead geometric patterns or things like that that simulate
whatever it is we notice in nature that we like, Yeah,
and I think here we get we get down to
this situation where biophilia it's kind of like the echoes
of biophilia throughout our our life and our culture and
our creations. Even things that don't you know, aren't overtly

(50:44):
a statue of an animal or the the the avocation
of of an animal's form. Uh, there's still aspects of
it there that are resonating through most of what we do. Now.
I think it's time to talk about some criticisms of
the idea, because as if you if you can't tell,
I've got some reservations about biophilia. At the same time

(51:04):
that I find it strongly intuitively persuasive, I also recognize
that the idea it's got some problems. So I wanted
to talk about one study I read that was published
INN and the General Environmental Values, which is a peer
reviewed environmental ethics journal by the author's joy and to
Block called Nature and I are to a critical examination

(51:26):
of the biophilia hypothesis. And like I said, while I
I intuitively respond to a lot of what Wilson and
people like him have said, I think this article makes
some good points. So they're arguing against the biophilia hypothesis.
And they don't argue that we don't have natural inherited
tendencies to focus on living things. But they're more talking

(51:47):
about whether biophilia as a commonly understood idea is a
coherent scientific construct. So this is the author's take. Biophilia
is presented as a hypotheists and they say, okay, that's fine,
because when you're at the hypothesis stage in science, you're
not saying this is a proven theory or something like that.
You're just saying, we're speculating about something that appears to

(52:09):
be the case. Let's do some experiments and find out
if it's true. That would be fine. But there's one
key criterion for a hypothesis, and that's that it needs
to be falsifiable. Now, this is buying into one particular
theory about the demarcation problem separating science from pseudoscience. We've
talked about that before, but this is a very commonly
accepted solution of the demarcation problem. A hypothesis should be

(52:34):
a statement that you can come up with some kind
of way of showing whether it's true or false, that
you could prove it false. Now, they turned to the
biophelia definition that's often offered by EO. Wilson, which is
quote the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes,
and they break that into three key parts, which is

(52:55):
a the innate tendency be to focus and see on
life for lifelike processes. So they start by talking about
life or lifelike processes, and this is a good point,
they say, Okay, so how is life like defined? The
hypothesis is often expanded to include things like, we've been
talking about natural landscapes water features as the object of biophilia.

(53:17):
So is a waterfall an object of biophilia? Obviously a
waterfall is not alive, but biophilia theorists sometimes assert that
moving water features and other things are lifelike enough that
they can be grouped under the biophilia rubric. And on
what basis do we conclude that? Like what gets ruled in?
And do people looking at a waterfall really start thinking

(53:40):
of it in the same way they would think of
an organism. I'm not sure that there's strong evidence for that. Well,
I mean, I mean, if you take the waterfall and
you just think about flowing water, I mean, flowing waters
is a habitat for organisms. Uh, And then you know,
in any place where there's some sort of a dynamic
with flowing water, there's a potential for the the capture

(54:02):
and consumption of set organisms. Yeah, I see that but
that that almost begs a greater expansion of the statement
of the hypothesis. Right, it seems like that would make
it an innate tendency to focus on life or lifelike
processes or environments that could sustain life or lifelike processes. Okay,
But then you can also come back and say, what

(54:24):
is a what is a branching uh, waterway, but a
bit of branching vein through a body, Like there's the
form of the flowing water. Evoke the flow of blood
through an organism or the you know, the chambers inside
a plant. I mean, that's a good point, but I
guess I guess the question would be are people really
seeing it that way? Like, is that is that entering

(54:46):
their minds or are they just responding to water because
sometimes you get thirsty, yeah, or it's just really loud,
or they just like these moving features, or there's some
other thing about it that's yeah. So I think that's
a decent point to raise. The next thing they focus
on is the idea of focusing. So in that definition,

(55:06):
there's some wishy washing us about what the human who
experiences biophilia does, Like sometimes biophilia is treated as the
desire to quote affiliate with other organisms. And to me
that means we would assume it to mean that you
want to be near them, you want to look at them,
you want to touch them, you want to interact with them.

(55:27):
But other times there's this more neutral word focus used.
And and because of our biophilia, the ideas we focus
on living organisms, they sort of command our attention living
organisms or lifelike processes. But they point out that there's
there's not necessarily consistency here. Ulric seems to define biophilia
as a positive affiliation with life forms. Wilson himself includes

(55:50):
biophobia within the definition of biophilia, and one of his
primary examples, as we talked about, is this nearly universal
mental obsession with snakes and frightening snake imagery. Um, so
they say that, you know, this part of the definition
really does need to be more specific. We need to
figure out what we're talking about here. Is it just
what we like or is it what gets our attention

(56:12):
or what is going on? Well, and this raises questions too,
And I mean it makes me think about about deer hunters,
you know, which you can relate to. Having grown up
in the South in Tennessee. It was not a deer
hunter myself, but nor I have known many. Yeah, and
there's a it's sometimes tricky, I think for for people
who aren't affiliated with that culture or haven't really given

(56:33):
it much thought to understand. But there is a love
for nature, and you're gonna love for deer, I think
with with a lot of maybe even most, maybe all
deer hunters. You know, there's a and there's this, at
times kind of difficult to understand reverence for the deer.
You know, you see like deer stickers on people's car
and the trophies of their heads, um, you know, hung

(56:55):
in their homes, almost with a like a religious zeal,
almost like it's some some shent uh you know antler god, Well,
I mean it mimics the behavior of our ancient ancestors.
Who would you who might, in some kind of religious
way take pieces of an animal that they had killed
primarily for material resources. You know, you'd want its meat,

(57:16):
you'd want its hide for clothing or something like that.
But what do you do with the antlers? They become
some kind of religious artifact, your tools? Yeah, all right,
Well what about part A that innate part? Right? Then
this is another important part. So this means that biophelic
tendencies are are not learned through culture, but they're inherited biologically,
and this would generally be accepted to mean that they

(57:38):
had adaptive value in the past. Right, they served us
some purpose and so we adapted to favor them. And
there's not always agreement on what form these adaptive mechanisms take,
what whether they stem from the same general mechanism, or
what their relative importance is. So the authors reformulate the
hypothesis to fit all the nuances as they've just brought in,

(58:01):
and it becomes there is a set of genetic predispositions
of different strength, involving different sorts of affective states toward
different kinds of lifelike things. You can see the problem here, right,
that this is becoming so broad as to accommodate almost anything,
and it becomes really hard to falsify since there's just

(58:21):
so much wiggle room in that in that definition of
the proposition, and it creeps more towards just a pure
ethos or philosophy as opposed to something you can scientifically
test for. Right uh now, To be fair to the
biophilia theorists, the authors point out that this could be
a sort of unreasonably broad definition. Uh, that's an artifact

(58:42):
of the fact that they're trying to synthesize the work
of different researchers working within the biophelia framework, and that
it's possible for one individual scientist maybe to have a tighter, sturdier,
more testable version of the hypothesis. Though the authors don't
really seem to favor any of the particular ones they've
come across. But if so, I think what they're thinking
needs to happen is that biophilia theorists should identify the leaner,

(59:05):
more specific hypothesis and unify their experiments underneath it. They
also they attack some of the specific evidence given for
the common legs of the biophilia hypothesis, For example, the
savannah preference hypothesis, the idea of us a loving companion
animals and are quote vegetated settings. You know that we

(59:26):
surround ourselves with potted plants and things like that, even
though there's no apparent material reason or benefit for doing so.
And whether or not these criticisms of the lines of
supporting evidence are correct, I'm somewhat persuaded by their criticism
of the biophilia framework definition. Uh, And at the same time,
I still feel persuaded by something about the general idea

(59:49):
um Like I, I do feel this urge to connect
with nature in some sense, and in the same way
I was talking about Mars. Obviously, I think life commands
our attention in a way that non living matter really
does not seem to, even if it's not of immediate
relevance to our survival or something like that. But I

(01:00:09):
don't know, maybe this could be culturally learned. I'm open
to that possibility. So I'm somewhere in the middle on biophilia.
I find it intuitively persuasive, but I also recognize that
there could be a lot of problems with how it's
framed as a scientific proposition, and maybe it needs to
be narrowed down and made more specific and more falsifiable. Yeah,

(01:00:30):
on a rational um level, I'm I'm I'm, I think
I'm right there with you. But then if I if
I look at it more emotionally, you know, and uh,
you know, philosophically, I guess I tend to decide with biophilia,
especially since I my son is so biophilic, you know,
he's just he loves animals. So much like he's not

(01:00:54):
interested in cars or trucks or superheroes, but it's just
it's just animals. He wants to draw animal as he
wants to his the toys he has are generally animal related.
He needs to see animals. And and I do pick
that apart. I think, well, how much of this is,
you know, something that we have have nurtured in him?
How much of this is just you know, has to

(01:01:15):
do with his you know, with with nature itself and
something out of our hands. Um, yeah, Like where does
it come from? Is it? Is it biophilic and just
a mirror like learnable sense or is it something deeper,
something that that does have an origin in his genes?
So here's the real question. The thing we need to

(01:01:36):
test for is we need to completely remove some human
test subjects from all culture and put them on another
planet and never communicate them with them at all, except
we put some hidden cameras in and we give them
the opportunity to either live in a in a in
a sterile environment that satisfies all their material needs and

(01:01:57):
gives them uh, food and entertainment and stuff like that,
or an environment that's full of house plants and cats.
And dogs and uh and gardens and flowers and access
to walks in the woods. If they would go for
the ladder, it does raise the question why do they
want that? What what is telling them to do that

(01:02:19):
instead of just go to the place that meets all
their material needs. You know, in discussing like sci fi scenarios, here,
I can't help but look back on the fabulous Bruce
den movie Silent Running. Oh yeah, where he's trying to
save the plants. Yeah, and he's yeah, this is the
situation in this movie. It's a great movie. See if

(01:02:39):
if you if you haven't, But Bruce Dern basically plays
like the the last biophilic human in our civilization. Like
the forests of Earth are gone, and they're only maintained
within these giant biospheres aboard a series of they're not spaces,
they're space ships, but they're kind of just in orbit.
And and then the the ruling comes up, the orders

(01:03:02):
come up that they need to jettison and detonate all
of the forests. Bruce Durn's character goes rogue and uh
and you know, takes off towards Saturn with the last
forests of Earth. It's the adult version of the lorax
he speaks for the trees um. But yeah, it in
that case, like he is the that's a vision of

(01:03:23):
a humanity that has lost its biophilia, that has drifted
so far from it that they no longer feel and
any attachment, and they no longer recognize the value of
the natural world. Concrete, plastic, and steel environments are good enough. Yeah, yeah,
like cubes of food as opposed to the stuff that
Bruce Durn's character is growing. I mean, that's part of
my intuition. I just can't see us ever being cool

(01:03:45):
with that. I just can't. But you know, maybe it's
hard to it's hard to do an experiment to really
test that. But maybe somebody will come up with a
good way. So my my outlook on biophilia now is
I recognize their problems with the a work, but but
I think it could be salvaged. I think people could
come up with a with a leaner, more falsifiable version

(01:04:07):
of the hypothesis and test the dickens out of it. All. Right, Well,
there you have it, biophilia. Hopefully we provided a nice
introduction to this if you weren't familiar with it, uh
and and and if you're familiar with it, we uh
we helped remind you about some of the I think
some of the important tenants of it. You know, certainly
some of the potential problems with it, but also I

(01:04:30):
think the overall positive message of biophilia as a you know,
bio diversity focused view of humans humanity's interaction with nature. Now,
take your dog out in the woods and get some ticks. Yeah,
get out there, all right. Hey, If you want to uh,
check out more episodes of stuff about your Mind, head

(01:04:50):
on over to stuff to a Boil your Mind dot com.
That's the mother ship where you will find uh all
of our podcasts attached in wonderful biospheres and you can
you can listen to everything back to the very beginning.
You can check out blog post videos as well as
links out to our various social media accounts so as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Humbler,

(01:05:11):
and who knows what else. And if you want to
get in touch with us directly, you can email us
at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does

(01:05:31):
it how stuff works dot com