The current concern about our connection to nature has a long history. The Victorian nature writer Richard Jefferies (1848 – 1887) founded a form of naturalism that recognised an increasing divide between people and nature, and his writing also explored the relationship between mind and nature.
Adapted from my book A Blackbird’s Year: Mind in Nature – out now.
My previous posts have a basis in research and science. However, I’m also interested in more creative routes to nature connectedness and the resulting insights into how mind and nature occupy one another. For me, writing on foot in the local landscape, describing the joy of shared nature, is also thinking about the process that is mind. The act of writing is not simply an output of thought, a substitute for speech or recording of knowledge – writing enables and shapes our thinking. Sentences carry thought and help create new thinking, so writing in nature also develops our thinking about our relationship to nature.
A brief post to invite submissions to Nature Connections 2015, an interdisciplinary conference to examine routes to nature connectedness. This will take place at the University of Derby, Thursday, 26 March 2015. As the benefits of a connection to nature become more apparent the timing is right for a focussed event to bring together practitioners, researchers and beyond. Continue reading
If pushed for the ultimate point of economic growth I imagine many politicians and economists would arrive at improving life conditions, things such as people’s opportunities, education and income, for their ultimate wellbeing and happiness – see happiness economics and the UNs World Happiness Report. A recent paper highlights the role our relationship with nature has to play in our happiness.
Many people give human characteristics to nature. This tendency to ‘anthropomorphise’ wildlife can be very appealing and persuasive, leading to greater moral care. Or, unfortunately, it can lead to abuse, with misconceived negative qualities being transferred – magpies and crows come to mind as suffering from such attributions, but judgements based on superstition and perceived otherness are at best a loss, at worse pernicious to a realisation of our shared place in the landscape. However, let’s keep positive, if anthropomorphism can capture attention, change attitudes, behaviour and connection to nature it’s worth thinking about further. And recently a couple of research papers have done just that. Continue reading
Finding Nature 