First and Second Nature

The figure of thought Ananta Kumar Giri introduces in his poser, namely 'roots and routes', is thoughtprovoking. His interpretation of it is apparent from conceptual pairs such as 'tradition and modernity', 'home and world', 'near and far' and 'closed and open'. The dialectic these formulas capture allows him to offer a penetrating diagnosis of the currently fraught situation, particularly in parts of India, and to suggest ways of interpreting and ameliorating it. The key component of his proposal turns on a single vital idea expressed in a variety of ways: 'dynamic process', 'cross-fertilisation', 'bordercrossing', 'bridging', 'translation' and 'communication'.Formally, fault cannot be found with Giri's argument and much of the substance is convincing, but there is nonetheless something striking about his development of his figure of thought: the confinement of the argument to socio-cultural parameters and, hence, the corresponding lack of attention to nature. The rootedness of the sociocultural world in nature and the consequences thereof are not contemplated. In response, therefore, I propose to introduce yet another figure which assumes the same meta-problematic but embeds it considerably deeper: first and second nature.This conceptual pair invokes the relation between nature and the socio-cultural world which can no longer be ignored, given our appreciation today that the human form of life is part of nature. Awareness has to be maintained of our acute ecological consciousness, but even more important is that the evolutionary descent of anatomically modern humans, the natural roots of their form of life and their cognitively fluid species mind be considered. To compensate for any vestiges of sociologism, culturalism or idealism, I thus introduce a weak-naturalistic cognitive perspective to offer suggestions as to the relation in question. Since Giri (2017: 5) aims to improve our ability 'to understand ... multiple and multi-dimensional processes of genesis, on-going dynamics and reconstitution', I simultaneously suggest strengthening social science's formal grasp of its object and of its methodology which could enhance its critical capacity and practical efficacy.IAn elucidation of roots in the case of humans and their form of life is inadequate as long as it remains confined to ethnicity, community or the sociocultural world to the neglect of the natural historical processes which spawned them in the first instance. Humans and their characteristic mind are products of nature, as is also their unique form of life which itself presupposes the workings of both nature and the mind. After 5.6 million years, the process of hominisation 400,000 years ago gave rise to archaic Homo sapiens who were superseded by anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, with a brain size of 1200-1700cc. Between 60,000-30,000 years ago, however, the mind enabled by this neurological infrastructure was remarkably enhanced by the acquisition of a meta-level capacity.Two aspects of human evolution are crucial for an adequate grasp of their roots and routes. One is the very core of the microbiological form of the human species, the other the form of the human mind.First, having inherited the life-giving, oxygen-processing mechanism in our cells which is passed on to their offspring only by women, all the humans alive today are descendants of the formally identified, closest direct ancestor in the female line. However pronounced ethnic, communal and socio-cultural differences may be, it has thus been demonstrated that all of us have one and the same arch-mother, in biology known as 'Mitochondrial Eve'. This evolutionary fact reveals a much deeper dimension that sheds light on the roots of humans and their form of life which are in need of being made explicit and appropriated generally.The second fact is equally important but has a bearing on the variety of routes taken by humans and, hence, the diverse forms of life they create. …