1. How do the paragraphs by Heller, Fuller, and Eiseley reflect what happens to
ID: 445971 • Letter: 1
Question
1. How do the paragraphs by Heller, Fuller, and Eiseley reflect what happens to man’s
significance in Naturalism? Why does this happen based of the Naturalist view of man?
Man as Garbage
In Catch 22 (1961), Joseph Heller describes. Yossarian, the book's hero, discovers that Snowden, one of his comrades, has been mortally wounded. Hoping that none of you will be unduly nauseated by this vivid passage: “Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden's flack suit and heard himself scream wildly as Snowden's insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile and just kept dripping out. A chunk of flack more than three inches big had shot into his other side just underneath the arm and blasted all the way through . . . Yossarian screamed a second time and squeezed both hands over his eyes. His teeth were chattering in horror. He forced himself to look again . . .Yossarian . . . turned away dizzily and began to vomit, clutching his burning throat. . . "I'm cold," Snowden whimpered. "I'm cold." "There, there," Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard. "There, there." Yossarian was cold too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'd fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret” (429-430).
Man as Machine
R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), in his “A Definition of Man,” pictures man as: “a self-balancing, 28 jointed, adapter-based biped, an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with the segregated storages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for the subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries, millions of warning signals, railroad and conveyor systems; crushers and cranes. . . and a universally distributed telephone system needing no service for seventy years if well managed; the whole extraordinary complex mechanism guided with exquisite precision from a turret in which are located telescopic and microscopic self-registering and recording range finders, a spectroscope, et cetera.”
Man as Animal
Loren Eiseley (a distinguished scientist sets forth this model of humanity in his 1974 Encyclopedia Britannica article, "The Cosmic Orphan": “What is man? He is a cosmic orphan, a primate which has evolved into a self-conscious, reflective, symbol-using animal. Man is a cosmic orphan, a person aware that he has been produced, unawares and unintentionally, by an impersonal process. Thus when this cosmic orphan inquires, "Who am I?", science gives him its definitive answer. You are a changeling. You are linked by a genetic chain to all the vertebrates. The thing that is you bears the still-aching wounds of evolution in body and in brain. Your hands are made-over fins, your lungs come from a swamp, your femur has been twisted upright. Your foot is a re-worked climbing pad. You are a rag doll resewn from the skins of extinct animals. Long ago, 2 million large. We are not confident that you could speak. Seventy million years before that you were an even smaller climbing creature known as a tupaiid [a squirrel-sized insect eater]. You were the size of a rat. You ate insects. Now you fly to the moon” (16-19)
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Explanation / Answer
According to naturalism concept the worldview is based on senses. From the viewpoint of naturalist, the only things that exist are those that can be measured, observed or quantified.
In the mentioned paragraphs provided by Heller, Fuller, and Eiseley following views of Naturalism are observed:
In the first paragraph of Heller, man is considered as garbage. This view satisfies the basic proposition of naturalism that “human death is equivalent to merely the ceasing of biological life including the extinction of personality.
In the second paragraph of Fuller man is compared with machine. This view is in accordance with the fact that “Man is a machine and its personality and thinking are only the results of matter’s properties.
In the third paragraph given by Eiseley, man is compared with the animals. This satisfies the basic presumption that man whatever they are the result of natural evolution. Furthermore, man is nothing more than a highly evolved animal over millions of years.
This has happened to naturalist view of man as each one sees the world from their own perspective. Some of them might consider human life without purpose treating them as garbage; while other might consider them well-structured machine having unlimited capabilities. Different perspective of each person has changed their views towards naturalist view of man.
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