This is one of those things that irks me. Because it's gibberish. What's the difference between "natural" and "artificial"? There's no good definitions, but the most common feel of things seems to be natural is something not made by mankind, while artificial is.

The biggest problem with this definition is it only means anything if you assume humans are something separate from nature. And that's probably the first fundamental reason I find the distinction so annoying. Dudes. Humans are animals. We're a part of nature. Which means nature makes artificial things, at which point the crazed supercomputer in a Star Trek episode would burn out and explode.

Yes, humans are intelligent, and we can make things that don't occur often. And some of the things we make don't break down without special processes, or they're poison, or so on. But see, that leads to the second main problem.

Chemicals are chemicals. It doesn't matter how they're produced. Ammonia made by cow farts, nitrogen fixing bacteria, or a factory in Sheboygan are all chemically the same. NH3. If I give you a sample of the ammonia from each, there'd be no way to tell them apart. Cyanide is cyanide. And so on. Now, while it's not exactly true to say the process used to make something has no effect on the end product, but for the most part, well, it doesn't. Cheese is made using rennet, which is found in the stomachs of young milk-fed calves. So most cheese used to involve processed calf stomachs to curdle it. Now, thanks to genetic engineering, fungi and bacteria can be used to make the active ingredients in the rennet. You can tell the difference with a spectrometer, but probably not with your taste buds. Because the important parts are the same stuff.

A lot of things proudly proclaim "NO ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS OR PRESERVATIVES!" and you hear a lot of scare stories about how this that or the other additive can cause cancer. And it's true, some chemicals can cause cancer. Or people use poisons as pesticides. Or so on. But the thing is, plants use chemicals too. All living things do. Plants develop poisons to fight off bugs and browsers. So even if no "artificial chemicals" are added to, say, a cup of coffee, it's still made of chemicals, by definition. But it also contains a bunch of "natural" carcinogens, even in the most "organic" coffee. "Coffee is one example of the background of natural chemicals to which humans are chronically exposed (Table 1). A cup of coffee contains more than 1000 chemicals (12, 13). Only 26 have been tested for carcinogenicity, and 19 of these are positive in at least one test, totaling at least 10 mg of rodent carcinogens per cup. The average American coffee consumption is ~ 3 cups per day (11)."

Differences in process do matter on some things. Like making fertilizer, even though the ammonia in a bag of fertilizer and from nitrogen fixing bacteria are the same, the bag of fertilizer has a lot more waste products and energy that went into making it, but that made it quicker and more potent than growing a field of peanuts. The bag of fertilizer can run off in the rain and cause algae blooms and kill fish and all that, because of how it's applied. But those are problems of how it's applied and the production, it's not a problem just because the fertilizer is "artificial". And sometimes the "natural" process is worse.

For instance, pig farming. Pigs, you see, don't digest phosphorous very well. But pigs need phosphorous to live. Most of the phosphorous they eat goes out in their manure, and is one of the major pollutants from pig farms. There's ways to reduce it, such as adding enzymes to the pigs' food or by mixing limestone with the manure. Or there's a new kind of corn developed by a USDA researcher. Or there's genetically engineered pigs, who secrete their own enzyme to help them digest the phosphorous. Which of these is "natural"? All of them involve mankind "meddling" in nature. Which is what makes the whole argument so ridiculous.

I'm going to be mean to Enya here. Not because I don't like her, I don't even know her. And not because I don't like her music, because for the most part, I do. But it's on in-store play at work, and it illustrates exactly what I'm talking about here. One lyric in particular.

"Who can say why the wind blows, why the water flows, only Time."

Well, no, Enya. Not at all. I can tell you both why the wind blows and why the water flows. Water's simpler. It's gravity. Water flows down from higher places to lower places. And then it evaporates and gets carried back up to the higher places by rain. And the wind blows because the Earth is spinning, and because warm air rises and cool air sinks, so one section gets warmer, it goes up, then air rushes in from all over to replace it.

I know, I know, she was just being poetic. Or something. And I also know the descriptions I gave weren't poetic. That was partly deliberate. And partly laziness. So, let's be poetic, shall we? The water flows because the seas rise up upon the air, then fall as rain in the mountains and seek to return to their home. That's poetic, and true-ish. It doesn't cover the details, but poetry usually doesn't. So how about the wind? The wind comes from the churning of the sky and the rise and fall of mountains of air. Truish, and poetic.

But the deliberate part was to illustrate why the "Gasp! You want to understand something! You have no poetry in your soul, or sense of wonder! Evil!" reaction sometimes works. Because people are looking at things differently. Some people look at the surface of things, and see poetry and beauty and wonder thee, and resent anybody who tries to look past that, saying they're trying to destroy the wonder or beauty or mystery.

Which I understand to an extent, but I'm one of the other kinds of people. There's as much, or more beauty and wonder in understanding things. And seeing how they work. And the truth.

I mean, honestly, which is more awesome? That the sun's a golden ball pushed across the sky by a giant dung beetle, or that it's a hugely gigantic mass of hydrogen held together by its own mass, and so hot it's fusing the hydrogen into other things? That diamonds are the crystallized tears of somebody or other, or that they're carbon that's been squeezed and heated so much they've become the hardest substance on Earth?

There's more to awe than just size, of course. But none of the beauty of a rainbow is destroyed in knowing how they come about. None of the beauty of a flower is lost when you know why plants make flowers. There's no loss of wonder in the universe when you accept it's bigger than just the Earth. That leaves much more room for wonder, really. There's many layers of beauty and wonder, and none of those are destroyed when you understand the other layers.

Heck, it seems to me one of the most wondrous things about the universe, and science, is that we humans can understand so much of it, and model it in ways that work, both for us, and for how the universe works. Out brains evolved on the East African plains to gather food, hide from large creatures with sharp teeth, then to hunt (starting with smaller stuff, then moving up to large creatures with sharp teeth). Three dimensions, running around and throwing sticks and rocks at things. And now we've managed to understand the universe well enough to build a massive network of computers that teenagers can use to bitch about their love life and post which muppet they are. We can build things on scales so tiny our minds can't even properly understand them. And if THAT doesn't fill you with a sense of wonder, you have no poetry in your soul.