New Natures

Weller, Chapter 3

Linguistically, it's interesting that ziran is "nature", considering that there are so many other words (as we discovered in Chapter 2) that can represent nature. Of course, I had no idea who on earth the Jesuits were (besides being a Christian group), so I had to look them up.

On p.46, the excerpt from White's opinion that the environment was merely there for human exploitation is crazy. Within the Bible (something all Christians should be working from) God tells Adam that he is to care for God's other creations (animals, plants, etc.). Considering it to be something that is to be exploited is actually really strange.

The Great Leap Forward seems to mark the point where China began disregarding nature/the environment in favor of human superiority. Even with the more advanced technologies, they lacked the philosophical environmentalism that shows up from time to time in Western culture.

Obviously nobody can agree either on man's relation to nature, or which word (tian & ziran seem to be in the lead) is best.

Night of the living dead fish

Weller, Chapter 2

Chinese Words for "Nature":
ziran: "self-evidently"+"spontaneously". The most recent word for nature, though not directly related to the western ideas; this is more along the lines of "within something's nature", I think.

tian: "Tian comes closest to the meaning of nature as an inherent force directing the world" (Weller, 21).

sanshui: "mountains and water", far closer to the Western concept of nature than most of these.

benxing: "the inherent quality of something" (Weller, 23)

Of course, with so many ideas of nature, it's clear that there will be different ideas about how man can (or should) interact with it. Most of the concepts discussed in chapter 2 feature religion and nature; Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Fengshui each have their own concepts of man's role in nature. It's more than a little confusing.

Also, the huoyu and dongchong xiacao sound completely disgusting. Just had to say it. I don't think I could bring myself to eat that, even to be polite.