Connecting Humanity to the Natural Environment

To the editors:

In her article "Moving Beyond the Spotted Owl," (March 18) Yuri Agrawal asks "whether the natural world has any value in and of itself, divorced from any utility to the human species." It may be argued that to divide humanity from the rest of the natural world is antithetical to the cause of environmentalism, which seeks to include humans in its calculus, as a part and parcel of the complex processes that drive natural systems. But apart from the emotional "tree-huggers" and "rainbow children" whose goal is caricatured as a return to some form of noble savagery, there appears to be no viable intellectual remedy to the schism that divides conscious human life from the rest of nature.

But it may be of interest to the writer and her readers to consider a scientific movement generated by the prominent Harvard biologist E.O Wilson in his book Biophilia. The term is coined to describe the complex emotions that compel us to often unconsciously seek contact with living organisms--an urge that, if left unfulfilled, endangers our psychological well being.

Wilson argues (and here I grossly paraphrase) that we should put aside the materialistic arguments about sustainable development and saving resources for future generations, or even planetary colonization. What really matters, what will really convince people to care about the health of ecosystems and their appropriate care, is the realization that by cutting down the last grove of forest outside the city limits, we lose a haven for our souls, a place of rest for our often flooded and discombobulated minds. In stronger terms, our love of life is hardwired in the material of our genome and brain, and we must not deny it a lover.

Whether or not this notion is ultimately a romantic construction is a matter for further debate and research, and I thank Yuri for initiating talk on a most important and vital subject. PETER D. PLATT'00   MARCH 18, 1999