All-Natural Ingredients

An interesting article in the April 4 edition of New York Times Magazine asking, "Can Animals Be Gay?" This is a silly headline for a very thought-provoking article on the complexities of drawing implications from scientific research.

The most interesting paragraph, for me, was this one:

But later in our conversation, Esseks paused and stayed silent for a while. He was thinking like a lawyer again now, and found a hole in that line of reasoning. “I guess, some of these animals could actually be quote-unquote making a choice,” he said. How could we, as humans, ever know? “Huh,” he said. “I’m just stopping to think that through. I’m not quite sure what to do with that.” Esseks had stumbled right back into what he originally identified as the underlying problem. Those wanting to discriminate against gays and lesbians may have roped the rest of us into an argument over what’s “natural” just by asserting for so long that homosexuality is not. But affixing any importance to the question of whether something is natural or unnatural is a red herring; it’s impossible to pin down what those words mean even in a purely scientific context. (Zuk notes that animals don’t drive cars or watch movies, and no one calls those activities “unnatural.”) In the end, there’s just no coherent debate there to have.

I've often wondered about the word "natural" and the way it's thrown around. Kind of like when my cereal advertises itself as "all natural". What does that mean exactly? Even the most synthetic concoction wasn't brought here by aliens from Alpha Centauri.

The article's title isn't so much as asking if homosexuality exists in the animal kingdom, but does it make sense to speak of certain animal behaviors between two animals of the same sex as "homosexual" or "gay" - human words with loads of baggage. It goes on to talk about various scientific observations of animal behavior we might identify as human-like - an octopus hiding under a coconut shell, for instance.

Reminds me a bit about discussions around the implications of quantum theory which I've had with friends. (Not that I pretend to understand that.) But it also reminds me of Kierkegaard, who said, "If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe."

These types of very practical questions about how given data is interpreted make me question how much sense it makes in this postmodern world to be dogmatic about anything . . .