In Lorraine Daston’s book Against Nature, she wants to look into the reason why nature is held so dearly by human beings: “why should nature be made to serve as a gigantic echo chamber for the moral orders that humans make?” (3) I would like to look into the ‘Specific Natures’ chapter in Datson’s book and describe her theory while comparing it to the descriptions of nature in Perlita Gardens in The Pearl from the website describing this island. Applying The Pearl website to Datson’s theory shows that people do find nature important, but that they still do not only want to live beside nature and want to live beside non-nature too.
The theory of ‘Specific Natures’ defines ‘nature’ “as the essence of a thing, that which makes it what it is and not something else, its ontological identity card.” (7) Overall, as Datson explains, the reason that ‘nature’ is so important to people is because people associate nature with structure. (5-6) People tend to put things in the world into groups and those groups are made up of things with a known trajectory. (10) The groups “carry nestled within themselves the essence and the narrative of their being: not only what they are at the moment but also what they have been and will become.” (10) With Specific Natures, we are able to dictate that a thing is part of ‘nature’ if the thing is able to birth a thing concordant with itself, and if it cannot, the thing would not be a part of what makes nature according to Specific Natures structured and is not nature. (11) Thus, nature is held dearly by people because “we can barely imagine a world without specific natures, in which everything would constantly be morphing into everything else and what a thing is would be no guide to what it was and will be.” (14)
Datson’s theory has explained what something that is conceived as part of ‘nature’ is, and also why people find nature to be important. I will apply this theory onto a description of one of the locations in The Pearl, Perlita Gardens, on The Pearl website. This part of the website advertises Perlita Gardens as: “characterized by lush landscaping, it gives the impression of living in the heart of nature.” This sentence makes it seem as though it is intuitive or obvious that living beside nature is a good thing. It does not explicitly praise nature but considers nature to be the appealing characteristic of the place. I can argue that this sentence shows that The Pearl follows the theory of Specific Natures because it advertises nature in a way that suggests people should already be aware of why they would want to be beside nature. Specific Natures explains that people find nature to be important because of the structure and information it provides as to the trajectory of things as well as what they will birth, if they are part of nature. A sentence that advertises being beside nature as an obviously appealing aspect of Perlita Gardens shows that The Pearl’s website believes people should be beside nature, and the “lush landscaping” part of the sentence points to what is ‘nature’.
Yet, if The Pearl was trying to say that people should be beside nature then the sentence: “while seclusion is the defining feature of Perlita Gardens precinct, the lovely shopping outlets of Medina Centrale precinct are never far away.” makes no sense. After all, shopping districts are not part of nature because as Specific Natures states, it is not a thing which can birth something from itself. The shopping district is still part of the advertisement though, which means both the ‘nature’ of Perlita Gardens and the non-nature are considered things people should want. The Pearl’s website’s descriptions of the artificial island show that it does not fully apply Datson’s theory. It seems that even though nature is very important to people, it is not too big a problem if people did not have structure by living beside things that are not nature.
The advertisement of The Pearl which praises both nature and non-nature shows that people might not only need structure in their life. Indeed, the sentence about the non-nature not being too far from the houses that are beside nature shows that people might enjoy nature but that people do not want to be missing the non-nature amenities. Connecting Datson’s article to The Pearl shows that people might enjoy nature and structure to the extent that it is not the only part of their life. The sentence that reminds the reader that the non-nature is close to the residents as well feels like it is trying to reassure the reader, almost like being beside only nature is a bad thing. This blog post raises questions in the future about why living beside nature only is a negative thing, which is something I might look into in future posts.
Bibliography:
Datson, Lorraine. Against Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019.
