Karim Chouchane wrote: What about a naked Pleistocene hunter transporting something, on purpose or not? Or a today's naked hunter in Kalahari, doing the same, for that matter? Where's the borderline?
This is quite racist! Both the Pleistocene hunters and and the bushmen are human and have a culture!
Please, don't use terms like "racist" so lightly, as well as incorrectly. Otherwise you'll soon end up with "fascist"
and alike. Young people like you are, it seems, overdosed with terminology like that, and use it ... see above.
Of course
Homo sapiens in Pleistocene had some kind of culture, but that was not my point at all. Also, WHEN
did this damn "HUMAN culture" emerge for the first time? And "take it over", from "purely natural evolution"?
(BTW, I'm one of those who don't believe in "COevolution of culture and "purely natural" evolution" regarding
Homo sapiens. With this disbelief of mine I'm in quite a respectable company, though.)
I understand perfectly your point: human should be considered as an animal like any other so its culture should be included in "nature".
That's a highly controversial thesis that has been very much discussed, for more than a century at least, within some other circles of human mental activities.
I bet the admins would not allow it to be much expanded here and now...
In any case, I do not endorse it, as such, whatever "culture" might mean. But it
is a "slippery" concept, I insist on that. And I avoid it whenever possible. Sorry, old school. And certainly not a postmodernist.
BUT once you have said that, they are solid reasons to exclude the results of human culture from result of other natural phenomenon: the timescale at witch theses phenomenons occur (e.g. isolation of an island for millions of years vs extinction of its endemics in decades) and their magnitude.
?! Logic? If "human should be considered as an animal like any other so its culture should be INCLUDED in "nature""
(which I didn't say), then where are "the solid reasons to EXCLUDE the results of human culture from result of other natural phenomenon & c."?! If I've understood Ilian right, he thinks there are no such solid reasons at all. Personally,
I do understand what you INTENDED to say, but...
Otherwise everything could be qualified as natural and this word wouldn't have any significance.
In my personal opinion, it does not. Which doesn't prevent me from living and doing science. Grin and bear it.