Against Nature
A lecture by Baroness Mary Warnock DBE at Gresham College, London, 15 May 2001

Mark Tyson

It is commonplace to hear environmentalists and critics of science argue that developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering are in some sense unnatural or against nature. Prince Charles has recently enhanced his own reputation by rebuking scientists for straying into God's domain.

There is a widespread fear that scientists do not have sufficient understanding of where their research is leading and of its incalculable consequences. Prince Charles and others contrast genetically modified crops with traditional agriculture, which they argue is working with the grain of nature. So what is the idea of nature to which they are appealing? Baroness Warnock set out to address the question of what we mean by nature and to examine the validity or otherwise of arguments that suggest scientists are interfering with it.

Warnock began by citing David Hume, whose A Treatise on Human Nature concluded that nature is everything that is not miraculous, "in which sense every event that has happened in the world (except the miracles on which our religion is founded) is natural"; so in saying that something is natural, "we make no very extraordinary discovery". Hume's view is appealing but does not get us far with regard to the contemporary debate.

We are living in risk-conscious times and it has been argued that the appeal to nature is a disguised form of risk aversion. Baroness Warnock believes this does not adequately explain people's fears of the new technologies. She argued: "Prince Charles did not speak in terms of risk but of certainty, the certainty that nature was being assaulted, that barriers were being crossed that should be respected as unbreachable."

Warnock believes that our concept of nature changes through time. In the 17th and 18th centuries nature was broadly divided into the Wild and the Cultivated, of which the cultivated was much preferred "on grounds of both utility and aesthetics". By the middle of the 18th century, however, the balance began to tip in favour of "the wild over the cultivated, the Gothic over the classical, the solitary over the civilised". She quoted from the opening of Rousseau's novel Emile (published 1762) "Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the author of nature, but everything degenerates in the hands of man." Warnock suggests a link with the views of Prince Charles and contemporary sensibilities.

The new respect for nature as a phenomenon apart took two different directions, which Baroness Warnock characterised as the scientific and the Romantic. By the middle of the 18th century nature was being studied and categorised in a systematic way. Increasingly it was regarded as separate from humanity. Running parallel to these developments in science, Romanticism was born. Baroness Warnock argued that this is "a second inheritance we keep from the late 18th and 19th centuries, as reflected both in literature and painting - a longing to be what we in fact are, a part of nature, with nature as our dwelling."

Fear of science has persisted, particularly with regard to scientific reductionism, which some would argue diminishes the mystery and wonder of life. Warnock quotes DH Lawrence: "Knowledge has killed the sun, making it a ball of gas with spots…the world of reason and science, this is a dry and sterile world the abstracted mind inhabits." She counters with Shakespeare who "was well aware that the very same phenomenon could be described as the vibration of cat-gut, or as music that pierces us to the heart".

I hope people will not be denied the medical benefits and improvements in agriculture that the new technologies can provide on the basis that these new technologies make us feel queasy. We should expect that people will defend their long established and cherished beliefs; it is right and proper that they should do so. The onus is on the scientists to convince the sceptics.