Natural

There's a fascinating debate running on the VINE Project Forum covering definitions of words like biodiversity, wilderness and, particularly, natural.

My view this morning is that the differences in understanding communicated by words, especially words such as these, can't be resolved by debating and agreeing definitive definitions. The points and research raised about perceptions (understanding) of wilderness are very illuminating. One clear agreed definition does not exist, and in this debate, even within professionals more or less in the same field, the differences can be very significant.

There is a different way of looking at this debate, and that is to treat each communication event as a unique creation dependent on the people involved and their contexts as well as the subject. The debate above focused for a while on the subject and clear definitions of it, and then attracted contributions that show the importance of these other factors.

To my mind, every time we communicate, by whatever means, we are starting with a new (not blank!) canvas, or block of marble, or film or whatever. The 'artist' and the 'viewer' start a new creation together, and words, their definitions, and the background and desired and possible undesired outcomes of the communication are all vital factors that influence and change one another in a unique combination each time.

This sounds like hard work maybe? I'm not suggesting that we have to start everything from scratch, only that the particular combination for each communication event is unique. This doesn't mean I think that 'everything is relative' and is not a call or basis for losing the baby with the bathwater. The factors I mention are active factors, elements like colour in an image, tools like brushes and palette knives, and techniques of application and combination.

What we risk doing by defining and sticking to an agreed definition for a particular word is losing much of its potential to communicate, and having to define it anyway. If we can think of words as colours, we can see a valuable degree of common sense 'truth' that blue is really blue, and natural is really natural; a brush is a brush not a spoon. But we can also see that blue next to yellow really looks different from the same blue next to red or green for example. there are alos different blues, some of which might appear green for example to some people. Where do you draw the line? Using (both expressing and listening to) words in the way we use colours means we have to maintain an awareness of the other factors and how they modify each other and blend to create the unique communication event. We have to be aware of the limits of precision in words in the same way as in colours.

Communication is a very rich and demanding activity; I don't think we can make it easier by trying to find an agreed single definition of 'natural' any more than we can do so for 'blue'. We can enhance our communication by recognising that there are real meanings in the word natural as there are real characteristics of the colour blue, but also raising our awareness of how dynamic communication is, and understanding what happens when we use a particular word at one time in one place, with one group or person. Every time is different. And I think that's a good thing!