"Willi" wrote in message
...

...Here's a challenge to you guys that have a problem with the definitions
of native and natural being based on mans' intervention:

Come up with a meaningful definition for either that doesn't specify an
arbitrary, specific time. I don't think you can do it without your
definition logically leading to accepting genetically engineered animals
as native or a nuclear wasteland as natural. Maybe for some of you a
genetically engineered animal could be native and a nuclear wasteland is
a natural environment. If so, we're on different planets when we're
having discussions using these words.

Definitions are beautiful and terrible things.

A definition of anything as "native" or "natural" that takes human
intervention into account may seem simple at a glance, but it ain't so.
Looking at North America (with which I am most familiar) for example, the
hasty will be willing enough to declare anything that predates Columbus as
native. Aside from the obvious introduction of humans anywhere from about
20,000 to 100,000 years ago.....I think that pretty much covers the spectrum
of estimates.....there is also the problem of whatever microflora and
microfauna they brought with them, in addition to the possibility of larger
species. While this may seem like a niggling detail as compared to the
wholesale introductions that occurred in the 15th through the 20th
centuries, anyone familiar the basic principles of epidemiology will
understand its significance.

Language is always fraught with slippery and often hard to detect biases.
"Genetic engineering", as the term is generally understood today, typically
refers to various techniques...recombinant DNA being the most
familiar...developed over the past few decades. IF the term is used with
that in mind, some of the obstacles to understanding and agreement may be
removed, but others remain in place, and most stubbornly so. In fact,
humans have been actively and very busily engaged in genetic engineering of
another sort for thousands of years.....compare teosinte with modern hybrid
corn (aka maize) for one of the classic examples. Human induced selective
pressures are so pervasive, in fact, that virtually NO important vegetative
food crops can be considered "natural" in the sense that they are free of
human meddling. Basmati rice, apples, sweet corn, cauliflower, Carpathian
walnuts, Peruvian purple potatoes, tomatoes, wax beans, Bing cherries, and a
host of other things we take for granted simply didn't exist 50,000 years
ago. Animal species, for reasons that should be obvious (think motility,
for instance) have been somewhat less tractable than plants, in the main,
but the principle holds nevertheless.

The best we can hope for, and it really isn't too complicated (which is not
at all the same thing as not too difficult), is to find a definition for
terms that is simple enough to work with within a given context and for a
specific purpose. Unfortunately, and as is virtually always the case, the
best we can hope for is always more than we can reasonably hope for. The
barrier to fruitful discussion is not a matter of a dearth of useful
definitions, but rather a plentitude of agendas to which mutually acceptable
definitions are anathema.

So, the by now bored reader might wonder, what does all this pompous
pedantry lead to? Well, the CAREFUL reader will have noted that the terms
"understanding" and "agreement" were used above in a manner that suggests
they go hand in hand but, more often than not, people looking for one are
working at cross purposes to those interested in the other. For people
striving toward agreement, understanding is a gross impediment, while those
for whom understanding is the goal must eventually come to the conclusion
that agreement is a chimera.

Wolfgang
who would be happy enough to supply useful definitions......if it weren't so
much fun to watch people thrash each other over things that are
comprehensible to none of them.