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If, from Part I there is a general duty to protect Nature (phusis), then ceteris paribus one should only make things that are in accord with nature (kata phusin). But what would this mean? How much elasticity does Nature possess? At what point are we really harming Nature? And to what extent is the harm?
This is an issue in much dispute.38 In the nineteenth century in Britain, during the rise of the first Industrial Revolution, the climate was heavily affected.39 The conceptual dissonance on this is noted in a painting of J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway. In the painting we are presented with three facts. (1) There is a train (a new making) coming right at us over the Waterloo Bridge in London (metaphorically a symbol of augmented Nature going into the future). (2) There is a row boat (the old kata phusin) going in the opposite direction (a vision of the past). (3) In the midst of it all is an atmosphere of pollution (the present para phusin caused by the new technology). Turner makes his visual case that this is the direction of human makings in the nineteenth century in Britain. Depending upon whether one identifies with the locomotive or the row boat determines whether the critic judges positively or negatively on this.40