W.B. Yeat - The Second Comming (And Our Troubled Times)

This has nothing to do with natural vs. artificial. But, it caught my attention. So I thought I'd comment on it. 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

Comment 1: The poem, this excerpt is taken from, was written in the wake of WWI. About 45 years later the last line (not shown here) was picked up by Joan Didion, in the title of an essay, on the rising youth counter culture, called Slouching toward Bethlehem. Now, another 45 years later we find the center is not holding again. It seems like the human race has periodic growing pains. Eventually, we will have to pick up the pieces. But, which of the pieces will we choose to pick up? And, did we pick up the right pieces in the past?


Comment 2: This poem also inspired the title of a book on Western Philosophy by Donald Palmer entitled "Does the Center Hold? An Introduction to Western Philosophy". Philosophy attempts, among other things, to maintain the center. It has been somewhat successful for three millennia. Will it continue to work? Who knows?

If you would like to read the whole poem, you can find it at: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In his essay "Nature" (1836) Ralph Waldo Emerson observes "Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences untouched by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture." Given the line of reasoning that I have been developing, this is an interesting observation for two reasons. First, this dichotomy is much older than I originally thought. And second, according to Emerson, the artificial must be intentional as he requires "the mixture of will". This is interesting because, if we follow Emerson, epiphenomena or side effects don't count. This makes the dichotomy a trichotomy: the natural, the artificial, and the epiphenomena.

Here is a link to the essay Nature  The quote is in red in the last paragraph in the introduction.