Conclusion
In his elegant essay in praise of natural philosophy, Nicholas Maxwell identifies two great problems of learning that confront humanity as it faces an uncertain future: ‘learning about the nature of the universe and our place in it, and learning how to create as good, as wise, as civilized a world as possible’.1 Significant progress in achieving the first objective, he argues, was made during the seventeenth century; the second, however, seems further away than ever, as an increased ability to exploit the natural world leads to the destruction of natural habitats, the extinction of species, and the crisis of climate change. This demands new ways of thinking, he suggests, that require a redrawing of the intellectual landscape, leading to a transformed science and transformed philosophy becoming a single domain of thought—natural philosophy.2
As earlier chapters will have made clear, I am in sympathy with many of Maxwell’s concerns and aspects of his analysis of the problems we now face, including the question of how we cultivate wisdom in a culture dominated by purely explanatory notions of truth.3 In this final chapter of this study, I shall set out a more modest way of retrieving natural philosophy which I believe can avoid some of the potential difficulties that might stand in the way of Maxwell’s ambitious project of reframing the relation of science and philosophy in a new style of natural philosophy, while at the same time expanding its scope. Those difficulties relate primarily to the institutional embeddedness of disciplines in western academia, which so easily can become an obstacle to interdisciplinary undertakings, or to radical disciplinary realignments. The challenge is to reimagine natural philosophy.
Popper’s three worlds can be seen as distinct aspects of the human engagement with the natural world, possessing a coherence and unity within the mind of the individual beholder. Distinguishing these three worlds does not amount to disconnecting them; it is rather a mapping exercise which facilitates an understanding of their mutual relationship, and helps to identify the intellectual territory that a natural philosophy was once understood to occupy. The question is whether (and how) we can weave these components together in a coherent whole.
I prefaced this book with a short passage from John Banville’s novel Kepler, describing how Kepler’s theoretical unification of the solar system allowed him to grasp the fundamental interconnection of things. Before, he had ‘voyaged into the unknown’ and created ‘fragmentary and enigmatic charts apparently disconnected with each other’. Yet following his theoretical breakthrough, he came to see that these were not ‘maps of the islands of an Indies, but of different stretches of the shore of one great world’.4 The point that Banville makes in this passage is that a set of seemingly disconnected fragmentary charts were brought together in Kepler’s fertile imagination to disclose a map of a single greater reality. The individual islands remained; yet they could now be seen in a new way—as interconnected features of a larger and more complex landscape.
But how might such unification proceed? For Isaiah Berlin, the ‘ideal of a unified system of all the sciences, natural and humane, has been the programme of the modern Enlightenment’.5 This lingering agenda of the Enlightenment for the unification of the multiple domains of human knowledge underlies the biologist Edward O. Wilson’s influential manifesto Consilience: The Unity of Human Knowledge (1998), which is the culmination of the unificationist programme he initiated twenty years earlier with the publication of his Sociobiology.6 Though ingenuously framed as a responsible quest for a foundation of the unity of human knowledge, Wilson is actually proposing the subordination of the humanities to the norms and methods of the natural sciences, by which they are to be judged. ‘We have the common goal of turning as much philosophy as possible into science.’7
The Enlightenment’s ‘dream of intellectual unity’ having foundered through an accelerating process of disciplinary fragmentation,8 Wilson suggests that this dream can now only be realized by permitting the natural sciences to re-establish this unity through judicious extension of its methods to other disciplines. For Wilson, consilience is ultimately a ‘metaphysical world view’, which is ‘allegiant to the habits of thought that have worked so well in exploring the material universe’.9
Wilson’s attempt to unify human knowledge by reducing it to physics has been subject to considerable criticism. The most effective response came from the palaeontologist Stephen J. Gould, who disputed Wilson’s interpretation of the term ‘consilience’ (borrowed from the philosopher William Whewell). For Gould, Whewell does not treat consilience as a method of reduction. Where Wilson interprets consilience as the ‘unification of all knowledge along a single chain of rising complexity’, Gould insisted that it was about recognizing ‘irreducible different ways of knowing’.10 Where Whewell ‘regarded the humanities (particularly moral and religious reasoning) as a set of logically and inherently separate ways of knowing’, Wilson wants to subsume them within a ‘single reductionist chain’ offered by the natural sciences.11 Where Wilson tends to think of science as a superpower exercising influence over smaller intellectual nations, Gould tends to think of them as autonomous nations, engaged in dialogue and collaboration for their greater good.12
Consilience thus ‘arises from a patchwork of independent affirmations, not by subsumption under an imposed ensign of false union’.13 In making this incisive criticism of Wilson’s unificatory imperialism, Gould offers an alternative intellectual vision of ‘quilting a diverse collection of separate patches into a beautiful and integrated coat of many colours’.14 Though Gould’s ‘patches’ are linked together by theoretical threads, they nevertheless retain their distinct disciplinary identities. Why, he asked, should we not ‘enjoy the differences’ between these disciplines, while at the same time ‘find some meaningful order in the totality?’15
A similar point was made by Mary Midgley in her critique of aggressive scientific reductionism, when she pointed out that science is not ‘an isolated monarchy’, but is rather ‘a republic, doing constant business with the other republics around it’.16 Midgley is inviting us to imagine the breadth and depth of a broad disciplinary domain which, like the Swiss Confederation, brings and holds together a set of distinct cantons, each with their own history, languages, and boundaries. Midgley’s critique of the monarchia of the natural sciences is a helpful way of challenging the colonial outlook of scientism, making the critically important point that the natural sciences are part of a wider federal framework of human knowledge production.
This, however, does not resolve the question of the disciplinary location of a retrieved and renewed natural philosophy. Where others might propose a new discipline of natural philosophy, I offer something more modest: an understanding of natural philosophy as a voluntary confederation of disciplinary territories, none of which are required to give up their distinct identities and interests, but which can join together in exploring the greater question of understanding how humans interact with the natural world cognitively, affectively, aesthetically, and morally. I shall explore this in what follows.
John Cottingham makes the point that the human response to a complex reality is multi-layered, carrying ‘a rich charge of symbolic significance that resonates with us on many different levels of understanding, not all of them, perhaps, fully grasped by the reflective, analytic mind’.17 The notion of a ‘disciplinary imaginary’, discussed in , clearly has potential for retrieving the original vision of natural philosophy, holding together these multiple levels of insight. What the Italian philosopher Chiara Bottici describes as the recent transition from ‘the Reasonable to the Imaginal’18 offers us what seems to me to be the best solution to the issue of disciplinary fragmentation—to reimagine their relationships. As we saw earlier (pp. 164–5), this kind of ‘disciplinary imaginary’ allows us to visualize bringing Cottingham’s ‘levels of understandings’ and Midgley’s ‘multiple maps’ together, without becoming trapped in technocratic discussions of the precise conceptual formulation and justification of this enterprise.
The natural philosopher may indeed be an individual observer of nature; yet she has at her disposal multiple windows through which nature can be seen, each disclosing its own distinct insights.19 This goes beyond Aristotle’s use of other observers or agents—such as farmers and fishermen—in order to expand his factual knowledge about the natural world on the island of Lesbos;20 it is about adopting the theoretical lenses used by others, in the expectation that these will allow us a deeper quality of engagement with the natural world than any single way of seeing it. This idea is expressed in Proust’s declaration that the ‘only true voyage of discovery’ is ‘to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others’.21
The natural human capacity to incorporate other perspectives or visualizations of reality into their own way of thinking reflects this ability to construct and hold together such complex renderings of the world.22 A natural philosophy might ‘behold the universe’ through a number of different disciplinary eyes, each distinct yet offering perspectives that can be woven together. In what follow, I shall note four representative windows or lenses on the natural world, each of which is represented in early modern natural philosophy.
So how do these reflections on seeing a complex world through many eyes help us reflect on how natural philosophy might be retrieved? The intellectual and cultural history of the European Renaissance offers us two models of understanding how what are now seen as interdisciplinary sights can be integrated. One is the notion of the uomo universale, the idealized polymath of the Renaissance, who was able to master multiple disciplines and integrate them within a coherent worldview.31 The other is the vision of communal interdisciplinarity, in which scholars, writers, and artists from diverse disciplines would gather in the spacious and secluded gardens of their wealthy patrons to discuss the great questions of life, sharing wisdom across what have now become disciplinary boundaries.32
The first approach sees natural philosophy as an individual synthesis, a personal way of imagining how the multiple aspects and levels of the human engagement with the natural world can be held together. This way of conceiving natural philosophy as a disciplinary imaginary enables an individual to see the world through multiple windows, and hold these insights together in a coherent and plausible manner. It respects the privileges of individuality, while responding to its limitations by offering a wider imaginative horizon. Natural philosophy thus becomes an exercise in self-transcendence, a willingness to acknowledge individual deficits and heal these by immersion in the wisdom of other disciplines.
One of the most insightful accounts of this process is found in a late work by C. S. Lewis, which highlighted how reading literature ‘heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality’. Lewis’s point is that such a literary immersion enables us to see the world through other people’s eyes, opening up new possibilities which transcend the individual’s limitations.
My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others.…In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.33
If nature is imagined as a theatre, immersion in writers from other disciplines allows us ‘to occupy, for a while, their seat in the great theatre, to use their spectacles’ in order to augment and expand our own limited vision.34 However, there are clear limits placed on the capacity of individuals to do this, not least because of the scholarly burdens demanded by responsible approaches to interdisciplinary projects, and the risk of superficial engagements with its constituent fields.
The second approach addresses some of these concerns about the limits of individual imaginings of natural philosophy. This sees natural philosophy as a form of shared knowledge and reflection involving a coalition or network of individuals, each steeped in the wisdom of their own disciplines, who are willing and able to work collaboratively to offer a grander overall vision of the natural world than any single discipline can offer. Such an enterprise is perhaps more difficult than might be imagined. The issue of disciplinary hegemony remains problematic; some will insist that their viewing windows on nature are at least privileged, and some might suggest that they are the only valid means of securing reliable insights into nature. Equally problematic is the tendency of such collaborations to yield an accumulation of unintegrated insights, in effect placing perspectives in parallel columns. Each creates a map of its own territory, which needs to be correlated with other such maps.
This approach allows us to look through different disciplinary windows, and see the world from their perspectives. Happily, each specialist can explain what we are seeing through their window, ensuring that we understand this distinct perspective. Yet this process yields a plurality of insights, a set of different patches that can be quilted together to yield a natural philosophy. Identifying the components is one thing; putting them together to yield an integrated whole is another. Yet this is not a new problem. It is familiar to most scientists, particularly those who resist Nancy Cartwright’s view of scientific knowledge as a patchwork of essentially unrelated ideas, and prefer to see scientific knowledge as a web of distinct yet interconnected ideas. ‘In the modern state of science, no discovery lives in a cocoon; rather it is built within and upon the entire interconnected structure of what we already know.’35
So how might we try to integrate different disciplinary perspectives? How can such rationalismes régionaux (Bachelard) be mapped onto a larger intellectual landscape?36 Some might rightly respond that it is a simple fact that people do weave together ideas which some might consider to be incompatible, in that they result from the application of quite different intellectual methods. The ‘weaving’ in question here may be psychological, as much as philosophical—namely, accounting for an actual practice which is theoretically questionable, yet which is widely encountered and regarded as significant and productive.37 Einstein’s correlation of science, religion, and ethics is ultimately a matter of personal intuition on his part; yet he clearly saw this integration as satisfying. Einstein in effect offers a bricolage of unintegrated insights and perceptions,38 without clarifying what methods and assumptions govern his bringing them together in this way.
There is a clear parallel here with the common practice of speaking of ‘science’ in the singular as a way of enfolding the individual natural sciences.39 As we noted earlier (p. 90), the establishment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831 was partly motivated by a desire to recapture a sense of scientific unity, which was seen to be threatened by disciplinary fragmentation. While a number of unificatory projects were proposed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century,40 none of these have proved entirely satisfying in capturing a common essence of the individual disciplines usually referred to as ‘science’.41 Yet the singular term ‘science’ has functioned satisfactorily for many as a disciplinary imaginary for two centuries.
It is a matter of observation that human beings regularly bring together multiple perspectives or insights—whether scientific, ethical, political, or religious—without feeling the need to offer a rigorous intellectual justification for doing so.42 One important approach was developed by the natural philosopher John Wilkins in the seventeenth century—the development of a language that integrated every aspect of natural philosophy, including religion, science, and education.43 Where some early modern thinkers tried to develop intellectually rigorous conceptual frameworks for such an integration, poets and literary writers of this period argued that the answer lay in what we might designate an ars combinatoria, an act of imagination in which nature was conceived as a whole, despite its complexity and diversity.44 The unity lay in the subjective imagination of the beholder of nature, not in an objective account of its aspects.
A classic example from the field of early modern natural philosophy may help us visualize a possible way ahead. In 1672, Isaac Newton published a paper reporting on some experiments involving passing beams of sunlight through prisms which, he declared, proved that sunlight consists of a heterogeneous mixture of variously coloured light rays.45 Newton declared that a beam of sunlight could be split up into a continuous spectrum of seven colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Medieval descriptions of the rainbow recognized five colours: red, yellow, green, blue, and violet; Newton added orange and indigo to increase this number to seven, possibly because this allowed correlation with the doctrine of harmonious relationships set out in Kepler’s Harmonices Mundi.46 Newton’s experiment showed that these seven colours were originally present in the sunbeams, rather than being added to them by his experimental equipment; and that they could subsequently be recombined into white light. Newton’s optical experiment might serve as a parable for reflecting on how we might reconfigure natural philosophy. Any reliable account of the natural world must enfold analytic, imaginative, symbolic, and poetic forms of understanding, in that we are trying to understand both the world we inhabit, and its impact upon us.
Earlier, we noted Ian McGilchrist’s remark that ‘our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole.’47 The range and depth of the human engagement with the natural world is such that it now constitutes a spectrum of disciplines, each arising in response to a perceived research need. Each allows a concentration on a specific range of topics, and for that reason is necessarily incomplete. Natural philosophy now enfolds a spectrum of institutionally disconnected parts, each of which can be isolated for close inspection; yet, like the colours which can be distinguished within Newton’s spectrum, they can be brought together again to allow us to see the whole. A natural philosophy is the grander vision of nature that arises from transcending disciplinary divisions, affirming the value of all its disciplinary components while actively seeking to discern the larger picture of the natural world that they disclose.
Aristotle’s programmatic move from theory to practice included the development of appropriate practices or disciplines as an embodied enactment of such a theory, particularly as this was framed by Hans-Georg Gadamer (pp. 133–6). Gadamer’s analysis allows us to distinguish the two distinct processes of looking at and seeing the natural order. For Gadamer, seeing involves a ‘hermeneutical consciousness’, a process of interpretation which enables us to grasp the meaning of what we look at. This process of seeing is informed by a theory, and leads to certain ways of behaving within and towards the natural world. For early modern natural philosophers, seeing nature properly led both to self-knowledge and self-reformation.48 To learn about nature leads to learning from nature.
So how might this expanded disciplinary imaginary of natural philosophy help shape informed attitudes towards the natural order? To use Aristotelian terms, what appropriate practice or discipline (askēsis) might arise from, and represent an appropriate expression of, its associated theōria? Many themes might be considered here, including the appreciation of the complexity and beauty of nature, the development of gratitude for nature, and reflection on the paradox that the human observer of nature is also part of that same nature. Given limits on space, however, I shall focus on two important outcomes: the cultivation of attentiveness towards nature on the one hand, and of a proper respect for nature on the other.
Human Attentiveness towards Nature
One of the most interesting aspects of early modern natural philosophy is its patient, respectful, and disciplined attentiveness towards nature. Rather than impose predetermined conceptual schemes upon the natural order, natural philosophers aimed to allow nature to disclose its own intrinsic rationality, through careful observation or judicious experimentation on their part.
The American novelist Henry Miller, who cultivated this askēsis of attentiveness to improve the quality of his writing, captured its essence in an often-cited maxim: ‘The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.’49 Miller here hints at Scotus’s notion of haecceitas, a theoretical device which accentuates the importance of observing and appreciating the distinct identity of any particular aspect of the natural order.50 Artistically, this line of thought leads to a deeper appreciation of the beauty and diversity of the natural world, which demands to be seen, not merely reduced to manageable categories. John Ruskin expressed this point in his declaration that ‘to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion – all in one.’51
This heightened attentiveness is evident in the English poet Thomas Traherne (1636–74) who exemplifies the outcomes of such a theologically attentive reading of the natural world.
You never Enjoy the World aright, till you see how a Sand exhibiteth the Wisdom and Power of God: And Prize in evry thing the Service which they do you, by Manifesting His Glory and Goodness to your Soul, far more than the Visible Beauty on their Surface, or the Material Services, they can do your Body.52
The poet who is most noted for an attentiveness to nature is Gerard Manley Hopkins, particularly in his poem ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’.53 While the extent of Hopkins’s debt to Scotus’s notion of haecceitas remains under scholarly consideration,54 he has clearly grasped the importance of the respectful celebration of the complexity of nature, and the individual significance of its elements. Yet Hopkins’s attentiveness towards nature reflects more than an awareness of its beauty and fragility; it rests on a theōria grounded in a theology of creation, which invites us to see the natural order as rich in signs and symbols pointing to its origins and final goal in God.55 This theōria, which represents ‘the church’s “sanctified intuition” of the meaning of the world’,56 heightens our attentiveness, creates expectation and anticipation, and invites participation. To study nature is, in some way and to some extent, to deepen both cognitive and affective appreciation of God as its creator.
This same attentiveness to nature underlies the scientific enterprise, which is dependent upon the precise and meticulous observation of nature,57 prior to its theoretical interpretation. While there are several scientific explanations of what is to be understood by ‘attention’—such as the active filtering of perceptual information58—its intuitive sense remains helpful in expressing an attitude of focalization and concentration, evident in a willingness to absorb and appreciate the fine detail of the vast world we inhabit, while at the same time exploring how this might inform a deeper understanding of this world.
Iris Murdoch saw such an attentiveness as a moral issue, in that it required a truthful engagement with the world, and an attempt to ‘decentre’ this process of beholding from the vested interests and personal agendas of the observer. At points, Murdoch suggests that this process can be seen as amounting to the virtue of obedience.59 For Murdoch, this process is enabled by art.
Great art teaches us how real things can be looked at and loved without being seized and used, without being appropriated into the greedy organism of the self. This exercise of detachment is difficult and valuable whether the thing contemplated is a human being or the root of a tree or the vibration of a colour or a sound. Unsentimental contemplation of nature exhibits the same quality of detachment: selfish concerns vanish, nothing exists except the things which are seen.60
Through its correlation of Popper’s ‘three worlds’, a natural philosophy enables this same ‘unsentimental contemplation of nature’, while at the same time allowing this to be connected with—but not determined by—the personal subjective world of the individual.
Human Respectfulness towards Nature
It is perhaps a small, but important, transition from cultivating attentiveness towards nature to respecting the natural world. As Murdoch makes clear, there is a moral dimension to both our intellectual reflections about nature, and our ethical responsibilities towards nature. In both cases, there is an underlying moral imperative—to do justice to what is being seen, both intellectually and practically.
Classic natural philosophy regarded human beings as an intellectually privileged part of the natural order, with the ability both to make sense of the natural world, and to live appropriately within it. Yet the biological advances of the nineteenth century which ultimately led to the fragmentation of natural philosophy also confirmed the importance of reflection more closely on the place of humanity within nature disclosed by evolutionary theory, and appreciating the entanglement of human well-being with that of the wider biological world. An integral element of the philosophical agenda of the philosopher Mary Midgley is the recognition that human beings emerged from within the natural order, and are dependent upon the sustainability of that order for their future survival.61
Yet Murdoch’s emphasis on the importance of morality raises an important question. In the early modern period, many would have agreed with the classical view that nature disclosed a moral way of life, and that morality lay in discerning and enacting this. Yet this view was called into question by David Hume’s argument that there was no simple logical connection between the observation of nature and the construction of moral values.62 Hume was not suggesting that it was impossible to derive moral values from the natural world; rather, he highlighted the need for bridging theories to establish a connection between the ‘is’ of observation and the ‘ought’ of moral obligation.
One such ‘bridging theory’ which was of major importance to early modern natural philosophy was the Christian notion that the world was God’s creation.63 This theoretical reading of the natural world was echoed in early modern physico-theology, enabling nature to be interpreted as God’s creation,64 thus pointing to the idea of disclosure of divine beauty and harmony within nature, and to the ethically important notion of respecting the natural world as God’s creative work of art.65 For example, both James Thomson’s The Seasons (1730) and Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (1733–4) can be seen as ‘eco-theological’ poems,66 advocating a theologically grounded environmental ethos and ethic, even though they adopt quite different perspectives in developing this theme.67
Such a Christian theological approach to nature illuminates what appears to be a general principle: developing an environmental ethic appears to be dependent on articulating a persuasive interpretation of the natural world—an interpretation that is neither given within nature nor can be considered to represent an overwhelmingly persuasive public reading of nature.68 Neo-Confucianism, for example, offers a coherent environmental ethic;69 this goes far beyond what can be understood of nature on the basis of mere observation. An additional theōria is required to develop an appropriate askēsis of respect, which is in conflict with interpretations of science which emphasize the role of instrumental reason in enabling the human domination and exploitation of nature.70
More pragmatic reasons for respecting nature can, of course, be articulated, without requiring an additional theōria, such as that noted in this discussion. The empirical demonstration of the vulnerability of ecosystems, and the potential implication of their failure or collapse for human well-being and survival, offers an important rationale for respecting the natural world. Yet the motivation here is anthropocentric, aiming to elicit action which indirectly preserves the future for humans. While some strands of early modern natural philosophy saw the judicious use of resources within the natural world to improve the human condition as being acceptable, other strands—such that represented by Thomson’s Seasons—emphasized the human responsibility to preserve and improve nature as a thing of beauty and harmony, to be respected and valued for what it is, rather than as something that serves human interests.71
Our story began with Aristotle’s observations of the natural world on the Aegean island of Lesbos around the years 346–343 bce, and his quest for recurring patterns that might help explain how this rich and complex world could be understood. Although others had opened up similar questions in ancient India and China, Aristotle would prove to be the catalyst for an increasingly sophisticated engagement with the natural order in the West, which gave rise to the evolution of what we now know as ‘natural philosophy’. Perhaps western natural philosophy is seen at its best in the seventeenth century, when natural philosophers such as Kepler and Newton were able to demonstrate the coherence of the external world, and the remarkable capacity of the human mind to capture this intellectually, and represent it mathematically. Far from being an unsophisticated and primitive ancestor of today’s natural sciences, natural philosophy sought to cultivate human wisdom and understanding through an intellectual and affective engagement with the world. It possessed a depth and range that modern scholarship is in the process of uncovering, and that speaks to many of our concerns about the abuse of instrumental reason and the technocratic languages and practices that now distance us from nature.
We clearly need this wisdom and this intellectual discipline today. In 2017, the Museum of Natural History in Paris issued a manifesto, arguing that the environmental crisis demanded a new attentiveness towards the place of humanity within nature, and the responsibilities that this entailed. ‘Grounding human beings in nature’, it was argued, allowed us to see ourselves as ‘active agents within, and also as victims of, the transformation of nature that we ourselves have brought about’.72 Those themes are not new, nor can they be detached from deeper and broader questions once engaged by a natural philosophy. We need a holistic view of nature if we are to engage such questions about the natural world in their full complexity, and develop responsible answers and strategies in the light of the challenges we face.
This book has argued for an expanded imaginative vision of our encounter with nature, enriching but not contradicting the natural sciences. Yes, human beings long for understanding; yet they also want to know how they fit into a larger scheme of things, what gives meaning to their lives, and what their place is in this strange world that we call ‘nature’. William Blake protested that the rationalists of his day had imprisoned the natural world within the narrow confines of their ideologies, and were unable to break free from this self-imposed, constricted, and impoverished account of nature. ‘Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.’73 To be truly human, we need an extension of our vision of our world, expanding our minds and imaginations to embrace the vast natural world for what it is, rather than reducing that world to what we consider manageable and palatable.
The natural sciences are rightly celebrated for their precision and objectivity of judgement—yet can only offer us a partial account of the human engagement with nature, failing to do justice to the passion, emotion, delight, and joy that it evokes within us, or to the ‘ultimate questions’ that seem to be embedded and embodied in our lives. There is nothing wrong with science, save that there is more that needs to be said and seen. It is a role that the disciplinary imaginary of natural philosophy played in the past. Perhaps it might help us reflect on these same questions today.