#8 Science Is Nature

Why the Scientific Mind Is Not Separate from the Natural World

We tend to think of science as something humans do — a rational, deliberate activity by which we analyze, understand, and manipulate the world around us. In this view, nature is the object, and science is the method by which we interrogate it.

But this perspective quietly maintains an illusion — that humans are somehow outside nature, standing apart, equipped with a unique cognitive tool called “science” that no other creature possesses.

This is false. Science is not a human invention. It is not distinct from nature.
Science is nature.


Behavior Without Purpose

Imagine a single-celled organism, like an amoeba, suspended in fluid. It senses food in the distance — a glucose gradient — but between itself and the nutrient lies a region patrolled by a predatory paramecium. The amoeba must “choose”: take the direct but dangerous route, or curve around the threat, consuming more energy in the process.

It does not deliberate. It has no consciousness, no language, no internal monologue. And yet, it behaves in a way that seems to reflect analysis — a weighing of costs and risks, based on sensory information and internal state.

We must be careful not to misinterpret this behavior. The amoeba is not “trying” to survive in any teleological sense. It is responding to stimuli in ways shaped by evolution — by chemical sensitivities, reflexes, and physical constraints. But its behavior reveals something fundamental:

Nature models itself.

The amoeba’s action is not a symbolic act, but it is an information-driven adjustment to external conditions. In this sense, it shares a structural resemblance to science. It is a primitive, embodied form of inquiry and response.


Humans Are Not an Exception

When a human scientist constructs a model of planetary motion or examines the structure of DNA, what is happening? Observation. Representation. Prediction. Testing. Adjustment.

These processes are more abstract and symbolically elaborate than the amoeba’s, but they are built from the same basic architecture:

  • Sensory input
  • Information processing
  • Decision-making
  • Feedback

The difference is not one of kind, but of degree.

Human science emerges from the same evolutionary soil. It is an outgrowth of nature’s long experiment in adaptation, perception, and systemic stability.

To say that “humans do science” is like saying “trees do photosynthesis” — true in one sense, but in another, it misses the point.

Photosynthesis is not a behavior trees invented; it is what nature does through trees.
Science is not a behavior humans invented; it is what nature does through humans.


The Elimination of Teleology

This argument works only if we resist the urge to sneak teleology back in through the human door.

It’s tempting to believe that humans have purposes, that we seek truth, that we are trying to understand the universe. But this ascribes to human behavior a kind of metaphysical direction that science itself does not allow.

From within science, there are only causes and effects. If we deny purpose to the amoeba, we must deny it to ourselves. Our actions — however symbolic, abstract, or deliberate they may feel — are also the results of biological, cultural, and environmental forces.

To say that a scientist “seeks” understanding is a shorthand, a linguistic convenience. What’s actually happening is a complex, evolved pattern of behaviors that enhance the organism’s capacity to navigate and persist within a dynamic world.


A Behavior of Nature

Seen in this light, science is not an external tool applied to nature, but a behavior that arises within it.

It is part of nature’s own unfolding — its recursive loop, its way of refining the fit between structure and environment. The scientific method is not unnatural. It is the natural logic of adaptive systems pushed to a symbolic extreme.

When we look at the world scientifically, we are not standing outside it. We are nature reflecting on itself, just as surely as the amoeba curls around a threat or a forest adjusts to a changing climate.

Science, then, is not the conquest of nature.
It is the self-interpretation of nature, in us and through us.


This article resonates with themes explored in The Metropolis Organism — a video series examining cities as literal biological systems, where human beings function not as masters, but as necessary organelles in a living urban body.


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