Nature readings: discuss

It's a shame so few are interested in nature.

Yea I feel the same. I wish I could popularize it and make it more as only fragile species. Make it interesting, cool and so on.

I mean, I do not want most species to go extinct, but the emphasis on nature being fragile I think doesn't help the popularity of nature.

That and I think that nature is losing cultural significance.

One important thing is the divide between culture and nature. You see this in the famous BBC documentaries, regular pop culture and even the creation of national parks. There are very clear boundaries.

Well that's what I think.

Very true. This might sound cynical, but I often think how arrogant humans can be. It's not a novel ideal, but I really dislike how superiour most of us think we are. We're not. We're just one branch of a collosal tree of life. We got lucky. I don't mean to sound like an edgy nihilist though.

Abrahamic religions are very anthropocentric. One would think that after Darwin we would think more humble. It seems not so.

Science while improving our lives has also created hubris.

At the risk of sound like an edgy antitheist (I'm really not) I think the monotheistic patriarchal anthropocentric religions are a disease of the mind. I've likened it to standing on top of a mountain and closing your eyes to look inside your self for "god". That goes against all of science, all of humanism. I argue that people should be looking at nature, not themselves. The idea that a lot of people still believe in a deity constructed by the minds of men is abhorrent Think of how vast the cosmos is. And what does God care about? He cares about what we do with our sex lives. He cares about what we wear. The idea of gods are debunked as soon as you realise that so many cultures have had gods. It's just a biological phenomenon. No one religion is right. It's insane how Christians can't see this basic fact. They think they of ALL people are correct. It's delusion.

Nature is so much bigger than man. Gods are just man's ego reflected.

Again, these aren't novel ("I'm a special snowflake ideas") I'm just saying my point of view. I know I'm not an intellectual genius for stating these facts.

>At the risk of sound like an edgy antitheist
Doesn't matter. Let's keep the discussion open.

I think at least Greek, Norse and Aztec mythology taught some humility: they did not put humans in the center as much as Abrahamic religion. At least from what I understand.

But I am also not a fan of neopagan stuff.

The interesting thing is I love the aesthetics, the culture, the mythology and history of the Celto-Germanic religions. It's fair to say that the pre-Christian religions were far more involved in nature. It's a shame they have been butchered due to the lack of information we have about them. So instead of something like Celtic Reconstructionist Polytheism we get nonsense like Wicca.

In all, I can appreciate certain aspects of pagan religion, but I fundamentally disagree with the superstitious elements. You can see why the greeks and others would imbue rocks and trees with their own spirit, but humans should not hold such beliefs these days.

I suppose a religion with a focus on nature, although not great since it doesn't actually champion understanding natural phenomena in a scientific way, is miles better than Christianity.

Christianity literally teaches that man is superiour in every way to "the beasts of the earth" and the we should have "dominion over everything."

Disgusting.

Just throwing out a second topic to keep the thread dynamic. What is your favourite habitat/biome/ecosystem?

I would say mines if woodland, more specifically the Caledonian pine forest of Scotland. Look it up and be amazed. Aside from that it's atlantic british Oakwoods.

Forests, bogs + swamps and abandoned places in cities. Woods near rivers, not sure what you call 'em in English are kind of cool too.

I come from the countryside and like a mixture of farmland with forests.

When it comes to woodland, I prefer oak with birch or linden forest (have disappeared mostly tho). I am not too fond of beech forest as nothing tends to grow underneath it, but this is partly a manmade problem.

Nice, yeah I'm a fan of palustrine/riverine ecosystems. Beech forests are bit dull, yes. They're almost like monocultures really. It's the tannin in the leaves and the fact that they cause such dense shade.

Yep, where I'm from the nitrogen also keeps the leaves from being 'digested' (can't think of the English word right now).

Oh, do you mean something like anaerobic conditions at all? The sort of thing you'd find in acidic peat bogs. But I don't know if we're talking about that or the beech woods. Doesn't really apply to beech woods.

The beech forest. I hope I am not saying it wrong. Nitrogen from agricultural industry keeps the leaves from being biodegraded (the word I was looking for).

A botanist told me this, but maybe I remember it incorrectly.

Ah, that makes more sense. I was the one who started going on about something completely different. Yeah, I can imagine that, big loads of NPK fertilizing the leaves and sending the photosynthetic machinery into overdrive, I suppose? I'm not a professional!

I love going on walks on the countryside, but I'm a complete moron when it comes to nature.

Where should I begin in order to know more about it? I'd really love to be able to at least identify the most common trees in my region...

That's great, man. Where are you from? I'll tell you a quick story. I was once a shut-in with no interest in nature. I didn't know what a single tree was. I didn't even know that my own home country, Scotland, had mountains and amazing scenery. I changed. A lot. I recommend nature as a source of infinite curiosity and freedom. Before getting into the science I would simply suggest getting a reputable identification book and going round your local patch of woodland and trying to identify as many trees as possible.

>Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind
>Weeds: How Vagabond Plants Gatecrashed Civilisation and Changed the Way We Think About Nature

Is this way of naming books (Short Title: How This Changed The World) a specifically American thing? I'm not against it, I just rarely see it in books from elsewhere.

Ha, it is kind of silly yea. Dunno.

The horseshoe book I am currently reading, but the author seems to be British actually.

I've already tasted the marvels of losing your Self in Nature, user, and it truly is a powerhouse of a spiritual experience.

I'll try doing what you said, but I don't even know where to cop such a book around where I live (Portugal).

Also, Scotland has an amazing countryside, been there last year and it blew me away. Bonus points for making me love Whisky, as well.

I personally use this site a lot:
portugal2.observation.org/foto/index?lang=en&local=xx

But outside of the Netherlands it isn't used as much.

I just check pictures from time to time or search for specific species and my knowledge increases.

Cool site, thanks a bunch!

Thanks for the thread. Seems to be dying, but it was a good departure from the usual Veeky Forums stuff.

Crap, I'm late to this thread.
Presumably since you are on Veeky Forums most would be interested in literary and philosophical books that deal with nature in adition to purely scientific stuff.
For those who are inetersted, I highly recomend the works of Loren Eiseley.
Oh, and favorite ecosystem: probably montain coniferous forests, specifically ponderosa pine/Douglass fir associations.

Well, you don't have to be late to the thread. Add to it and keep it alive, mate.

I'm probably make another similar tommorow (I'm not OP but the guy that's been talking most in the thread. Scottish in-training ecologist)

Non-fiction science books are still literature though, I reckon.

Nice, conifer forests are good... just not when they're crowded plantations. I do like my Larix decidua and Norway Spruce trees. When it comes to mountains, I love small upland wildflowers. I particularly like upland birchwoods with ferns.

no one cares about boring modernist ecology textbooks

pop science != nature readings

>Loren Eiseley

Only ever heard of the Immense Journey by him, is there any other book you'd reccomend?

The Unexpected Universe is his other most famous one.
I also like The Firmament of Time.
They are all essay collections.
Some of the science is outdated, but they are still well worth the read.

ThIs is a story commonly ripped off from one of his [Loren Eiseley] short stories called The Star Thrower.
It's over sentimentalized and it isn't actually much like the actual storey, but some of you may have heard it before.

I highly recommend this book. It's a bit old now and the latin names are out of date, but this is by far the best natural history book for those living in Britain. It's not particularly scientific for the most part, but every page is brimming with top tier illustrations and photographs. It's a massive book, like the size of a small tv monitor... and has about 300-400 pages or so if I recall. All British habitats are photographed and illustrated, as well as trees, shrubs, herbs, grasses, birds, insects, you name it.

>tfw you have an opportunity to recommend
Henri Bortoft's _The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature_ on Veeky Forums
>tfw no one will read it or get into Goethean science but you still got to recommend it

I love these old fucking things, holy shit.

I worked at a huge library warehouse for a while and we had to store tons of old books, usually in batches. We once got this whole batch of old Victorian nature books, some 150~ years old and the size of a house. I took a picture of one that was an ecological "walking tour" of either Britain or all of Europe, describing all the ecosystems and habitats and flora and fauna along the way, with beautiful illustrations. I'll try to find it and post the name.

I will read it if I can get my hands on it. Promise.

This kind of threads is one of the reasons I still go to this board.

Sorry that I have nothing to offer. I read some Dawkins and Darwin books when I was a kid but that's it.

I'm more into reading bird books than general ecological books, but I will always try and recommend more ecological books to people.
I recently picked up pic related at a second hand store and I fell in love with it. It's an overview of birds in general; movement, feeding, behaviour, then going into specific species- but the style of writing is amazing. It was published in 1880 and has that amazingly descriptive style that the old field guides had, rather than the very formal style in a lot of ecological books nowadays.

And the illustrations in it are breathtaking! Basically every single page has an illustration on it, and each of those were engravings. I can't imagine how long it would have taken the artist to produce enough to illustrate the entire book, because it's 464 pages long.

If any of you can find a copy, I would definitely encourage you to get it; even if just for a laugh because the descriptions are hilarious.

(It is a little depressing to read about extinct species in it though; I was confused reading about Tasmanian Emu's, which the author described as hard to find, before I remembered they went extinct a decade or so after this was printed :( )

cool