The Biophilia Hypothesis and Notes on Nature-Deficit Disorder

Biophilia: 
Tree-Sky-Horse-Mud-Hay-Child Assemblage 

(SA/2019)

I. Opening Remarks

According to figures, only ten per cent of children in the UK still play regularly in natural areas and green spaces, whilst forty per cent never play outside at all. This not only shapes their attitudes to the environment and to wildlife in later life, but also has serious health implications ...

In the final chapter of her book Wilding (2018), Isabella Tree makes reference to the research evidence showing the links between natural play and wellbeing on the one hand, and between disconnection from nature and numerous physical, psychological and social ills on the other:

"Measurements of blood pressure, pulse rates and cortisol levels of young adults demonstrate a decrease in anger and an increase in positive mood when walking in a nature reserve, while the reverse is true walking in an urban environment. Low levels of self-discipline, impulsive behaviour, aggression, hyperactivity and inattention in young people all improve through contact with nature."

"For Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson the human connection with nature - something he calls 'biophilia', the 'rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms' - is rooted in our evolution. [...] The need to relate to the landscape and to other forms of life - whether one considers this urge aesthetic, emotional, intellectual, cognitive or even spiritual - is in our genes. Sever that connection and we are floating in a world where our deepest sense of ourselves is lost."

"Stephen and Rachel Kaplan take the psychological implications of this dislocation further. Their research [...] focuses on the burden that living outside the natural world imposes on the brain. Modern life, loaded with stimuli, multiple forms of communication and information requiring rapid processing and selection, demands what they call 'directed attention' from the right frontal cortex of the brain - the same part of the brain that appears to be affected in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This kind of focused attention is tiring and requires enormous effort to block out distractions, resulting in symptoms of impatience, planning impairment, indecision and irritability. The natural environment, on the other hand, holds our attention indirectly, providing what the Kaplan's call 'soft fascination', a broad absorption that demands little or no effort and provides plenty of space for reflection and mental recovery."


II. Nature-Deficit Disorder

I don't know if all (or any) of the above is true and it's worth pointing out that nature-deficit disorder - a term coined by the American author and journalist Richard Louv in 2005 is not officially recognised by the medical profession (indeed, Louv himself concedes that NDD is merely intended to serve as a convenient fiction via which we can describe certain conditions that we see manifested in contemporary society) - but one suspects that there's at least some truth in it; and certainly enough to justify further research in this area.     

Those who pooh-pooh the idea that it's beneficial for children to spend as much time as possible playing outdoors in a natural environment with grass, trees, insects and dogshit - who think such an environment is too dangerous for children unless accompanied by a supervising adult and are happier seeing little Johnny and Jane safely indoors surrounded by electronic media - seem to be in denial about what might be described as a crisis of childhood in our times; a crisis that includes everything from allergies and eating disorders to knife crime and substance abuse. 

Of course there are other (often very complex) reasons for these things. Arguably, we live in a dysfunctional culture, so a few hours spent playing in the park or fishing in a stream isn't going to provide a panacea. But I do believe that flowers and birdsong (and even just stroking next-door's cat) make happy and that happy children, as a rule, don't self-harm or want to stab other people. 


III. The Biophilia Hypothesis

Finally, I'd like to say a little more about E. O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, which, as we noted above, is the idea that human beings possess an innate tendency to seek out connections with nature and affiliate with other forms of life.* Romanticism and vitalism are, if you accept this, not just cultural and philosophical dispositions, but sensibilities encoded in our DNA. 

Again, I'm not entirely convinced of this: no one has yet identified a nature gene as such. Nevertheless, it's true, I suppose, that most people like flora and fauna; otherwise why would they buy indoor plants and voluntarily keep pets? The rich diversity of forms that compose the natural world is universally appreciated by artists, poets, and children who delight in colours, shapes, sounds, and other physical properties. And I suppose the spiritual reverence for animals and other natural phenomena in human cultures worldwide might also be cited as evidence for biophilia. 

However, what's also true is that modern humanity defines itself by its divergence and difference from nature and prides itself on its intimate relationship with machinery and technology and has spent the last 250 years or so (i.e. since the industrial revolution) wilfully exploiting natural resources, destroying habitats and exterminating species. **

Indeed, what is modern nihilism if not this ecocidal drive?  It might be suggested that the only thing more innate than our biophilia is our biophobia. People like to think they are defined by love, but actually it's fear, hate and cruelty that have shaped human history.

Notes:

* The term biophilia wasn't coined by Wilson: it was first used by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in his 1973 work The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Fromm defined it as 'the passionate love of life and of all that is alive'. Whilst I share this love, I also understand (after Nietzsche) that being alive is just a very rare and unusual way of being dead, so don't make such an absolute binary distinction, nor do I disprivilege, disparage, or denigrate the non-living objects that make up the vast majority of things in the universe.  

** It's important to note that biophilia isn't always juxtaposed in opposition to technophilia; that some theorists insist that man's technological drive is itself an extension of human evolution (and is therefore perfectly natural). Heidegger famously writes of a more original revealing outside of technological enframing, that would allow man to experience the call of a more primal truth, but as Keith Ansell-Pearson points out this appears to underestimate "the extent of technology's invention of the human animal and the nature and extent of its investment in mankind". See Heidegger, 'The Question Concerning Technology', in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, (Routledge, 1994) and Ansell-Pearson, Viroid Life, (Routledge, 1997), p. 153.        

See:

Isabella Tree, Wilding, (Picador, 2018), pp. 295, 297. 

Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books, 2005).

Richard Louv, The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder, (Algonquin Books, 2011)

Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, (Harvard University Press, 1984).

Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis, (Island Press, 1993). 


For a related post to this one on why the language that speaks us as children matters, click here.