Nature - the best teacher of Man!

People have a tendency to believe that nature is something that we leave behind in our sojourn towards development and modern civilization. This is necessarily because the ancient man came from the jungle and he now lives in modern cities and thus in our thinking we always equate the jungle to nature and modern cities to development. Hence the concept of development or civilization appears the anti thesis of nature.

This however is a great fallacy, and humans being essentially a part of nature, could never visualize a civilization devoid of nature's laws and a development beyond the natural habitat, the environment. Another incongruent thought that we always entertain is that modern day discoveries of science are in conflict, or rather in contrast to nature, and this too emanates from the same line of thinking based on wrong reasoning.

Human civilization

When Newton discovered the law of gravity he did not discover anything new but he only realized a basic law of nature that eventually helped science to make inventions based on that law of nature. When man lived in the jungle he first learned to make an abode for his dwelling and make implements for hunting and gathering by using wood, a basic ingredient of nature. By and by he mastered the laws of nature to make his life more secure and comfortable. Man's mastery of agriculture ushered in a new epoch in human civilization. Thus science is nothing but mastering the laws of nature and the better man understands his environment the more modern would be the civilization he lives in. Mahatma Gandhi once observed that. "Any departure from the laws of nature, consciously or unconsciously, is inimical to the future of man".

The irony in today's world however, is that man with his obsession for development, courting its ugly cousin consumerism, has started disregarding these very laws that sustain him. And this has resulted in a host of global problems starting with global warming to environmental pollution. World Wide Fund for nature (WWF) spokesman Chris Chaplin has observed, "If everyone in the world enjoyed the same level of consumption as an average Singaporean we would need three planets to meet the demands placed on our resources."

Industrialized countries

Singapore was last month listed by the British Global Risk advisory firm Maplecroft as the world's seventh largest Carbon Dioxide (Co2) emitter relative to its population size. Ahead of it were only the United Arab Emirates, Australia, USA, Canada, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.

Annually, more than 60 percent of global industrial Carbon Dioxide emissions originate in industrialized countries, where only 20 percent of the world's population resides, according to the Washington D.C. based World Resources Institute (WRI). In contrast much of the growth in emissions in developing countries results from the provision of basic human needs for growing populations, while emissions in industrialized countries contribute to growth in a standard of living that is already far above that or the average person worldwide.

Former American President George W Bush, when accused of leading the atmospheric pollution, often maintained that 'science will soon find a solution for that'. It is true that we owe most of our modern day life's conveniences to the inventions in the West. But quite unfortunately Western thinking lacks balance in that they believe that the world should be at the command of man. The danger in this thinking is that if science has to follow man's needs rather than the man's needs following science, the global balance will be effectively disturbed and presently there is all the evidence of that happening. Thus this present attitude of world leaders is destroying the environment that provided the whole human race its sustenance and succour; the environment that taught man his very lessons of 'science'.

Environment friendly

Therefore if man is to preserve the only planet that is available to him as his home it is imperative that this trend is reversed. Man has to live within the rules of nature realizing that his advancement lies in mastering them and not in flaunting them. They say wise men see with their brains rather than their eyes and thus if man is able to see with his brains this world has all the ingredients to give him all what he aspires for. And ironically these most useful laws and ways of nature could be learnt from the simple things in the environment that man has either taken for granted or considers unimportant.

For instance take the case of a house fly; can modern day helicopters compete with his agility and swiftness in movement? What forces facilitate the fly to make that graceful and watchful landing and then that swift take off? Try to squash a skittering Cockroach - they are masters of quick and precise movement.

Zoologist Prof. Amir Ayali of the Tel-Aviv University has said that the study of cockroaches have already inspired robotics and will give engineers the information they need to design more compact and efficient robots in terms of energy, time, robustness and rigidity.

Such superior robotics can even be used to explore new terrain in outer spaces. Hydraulic energy is as powerful as oil in running the motor vehicles and it is perfectly environment friendly. But it is said that the oil barons in developed countries are so powerful that they do not welcome research and development in that field.

Human needs are unlimited and life and sustenance is when those needs are within his capacity follow him like a cart following a horse. Yet the day the human needs precedes human capabilities that would be case of cart before the horse and is a sign that things are going down the precipice.

[email protected]