Donna Haraway’s book The Haraway Reader in her chapter entitled “The Promises of Monsters” discusses nature as its entity and its unpredictable force. Nature in theory is vast with many influences that adjust the development of organisms. Nature itself is difficult to define with certain parameters as it encompasses many complex inter-reliant systems and depends on ever-changing circumstances. Haraway argues that man-made elements and influence can also be considered natural development. Humans are a product of nature and as a process of nature have continued to evolve. As human civilization has progressed, so has its effect on the natural world and the environment.
Nature has its own systematic and technical processes that occur. Processes build and adapt over time to create new and different organisms. Environmental change alters these processes and some organisms evolve and some extinguish.
Take for example the sophisticated life and purpose of bees pollinating, and making honey. They have their communication, and societal rules and their colony can be looked at as a complex system of natural occurrences. These complex systems “…are not pre-existing plants, animals, protistes, etc., with boundaries already established and awaiting the right kind of instrument to note them correctly” (Haraway 298). The systems of living organisms are correlated to luck and chance where animals are not subjugated to societal roles. The amount of ownership and control organisms have over their environment is unclear. As simple as bugs, they interact with some of the smallest organisms contributing to the cycle of life. Bugs eat decaying carcasses of animals, the carcass then decays and becomes part of the soil, combined with seeds and fertilizer so plants and organisms grow.
Modern-day science allows man to contribute, alter, and control the outcome of natural occurrences. Humans and technology have grown significantly and there are positive and negative results in society. Take for example the evolution of the automobile. Automobiles and their technology have altered society and changed everyday life. Vehicles use natural resources for fuel. The burned fuel causes emissions that destroy our atmosphere and even contaminate the ground and water. In such an example the natural resource becomes its poison as it pollutes and kills wildlife. In another example, as man and science have evolved, humans have developed medicines and technology to alter the quality of life and life span. These medicines and adaptations reroute the natural order where a living thing (person or animal) has been given medicine to treat a disease or even replace a body part. Historically the natural order would be for that organism to suffer and or die. This is the case in humans using and creating technology to alter naturally occurring states. “Productionism and its corollary, humanism, come down to the storyline that ‘man makes everything, including himself, out of the world that can only be [a] resource and potency to his project and active agency’” (Haraway 67). When humans domesticate animals from their native land, they adapt the land into a duality between the co-creation of nature and controlling nature for humankind.
Such as in a dog that has lost the use of its hind legs, man has manufactured a cart to allow the animal mobility.
Paul G. Arau, Patricio Chiriboga, María-Gabriela García, Imin Kao, and Eduardo A. Díaz’s article “New technologies applied to canine limb prostheses: A review” from the 2021 open-access journal Veterinary World highlights how “[v]eterinary medicine has adapted human technologies and surgical procedures in the development of animal prostheses. [Recently,] several studies have reported on the successful replacement of lost and/or damaged limbs, beaks, fins, and tails with man-made devices” (2794). With human help, prosthetics and electronic technology take over natural abilities where they have not developed or have been lost.
Ideological and theoretical perspectives debate how the progress of human civilization affected the natural order of organisms. Humans and nature coexist and collaborate, but humans’ high intellect and technology can alter and control natural occurrences. Humans’ intellect allows them a sense of understanding, autonomy, and agency over their environment. The intellect of humans has questioned the natural order of organisms and reconciled with the posthuman.