What is natural?

I haven't spent much time on it, but Postrel's website www.dynamist.com looks pretty cool, at least from a design perspective. Will need to read more of her blog posts and see if they get me thinking as much as her book.

I think this thought comes partially from her book, but it has been something that has been floating round my head for a while. When we justify something by saying it is natural, what value does that hold? If an action is natural, does that make it moral?

Nature is constantly changing. I don't know enough about biological history, but I have always tried to picture what Wild Cows must have been like? I presume the modern descendants are nothing like their ancestors. Apparently most of the fruit we eat today is nothing like the wild fruits that used to grow before mankind began to farm.

Living in a house is not natural. Neither is wearing clothes. Or cooking with fire. If you define natural as anything without human intervention, then you start to struggle to find many parts of our daily lives that haven't in some way been changed by man.

I guess my point is that everything is natural in that everything comes from nature. It may have been changed and adapted, and in cases we may not like the consequences, but isn't it great that we have the ability and capacity to think about what effects we may have and steer them in the way we want to.

When a new alpha male Lion takes over a pride, he kills all the young of the Lionesses. The Lionesses protect their young, but if they are killed, they give up and mate with the new alpha male.

All very natural. Good thing we get to choose.