Children, Books, and Nature

What is a child? If you asked someone this question, the most common response would have something to do with age. They may say “a young human being,” or something to that extent. But, when someone accuses an adult of being a child it has nothing to do with age. So, being a child must mean more than merely age. To tell someone they are acting like a child is to tell them that they are irresponsible, careless, maybe naïve. Being a child has as much to do with behavior as it does age. Children are incredibly malleable and imaginative; they are not small versions of adults, they are biologically and behaviorally distinct from adults. Neurons are still dividing, the brain is developing, the restrictions of adulthood are not yet in-place. I think these characteristics of childhood are at the root of the “willing suspension of disbelief” that is impossible to achieve as an adult, especially when reading fairytales!

What is a book? Something you read, need I say more? But, you also read magazines and pamphlets so this definition does not work.

What if a book could be defined as collection of ideas? Nope, can’t be that. It could be argued that a symphony, in its most expansive form, is a collection of ideas, and a symphony is definitely not a book.

So a book must just be words on paper that are bound in a fashion not resembling a magazine. Is that all a book is?

You would be doing a book a disfavor to define it, because the definitions you give it would either be too expansive and fail to explain exactly what a book is (as demonstrated above) or they would be too constraining and fail to encompass the true identity of a book (also demonstrated above).

What is nature? Are we talking about human nature? mother nature? the whole-of-
nature? natural foods? Wikipedia’s disambiguation of nature is as follows:

Nature (as distinct from natural and naturalism) refers to the natural world, especially in its essential form, untainted by human influence.
Nature may refer to:
Nature (philosophy) as a philosophical concept
Mother Nature, the personification of nature as a maternal figure
Nature (innate), the innate behaviour, character or essence of a human or another living organism
As a title, Nature can refer to:
Nature (journal), a general-purpose scientific journal published since 1869
La Nature, a French journal founded in 1873 by Gaston Tissandier
Nature (radio programme), a BBC Radio 4 programme
Nature (book), an essay and collection of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature (TV series), a television program that has been broadcast on PBS since 1982
The disambiguation of “nature” by wikipedia breaks up the different types of Nature so as not to confuse you This article is about the physical universe. For other uses, see Nature (disambiguation).
"Natural" redirects here. For other uses, see Natural (disambiguation).


Lightning strikes during the eruption of the Galunggung volcano in 1982


Much attention has been given to preserving the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia, while allowing ample access for visitors.


Bachalpsee in the Swiss Alps; generally mountainous areas are less affected by human activity.
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. Manufactured objects and human interaction are not considered part of nature unless qualified in ways such as "human nature" or "the whole of nature". Nature is generally distinguished from the supernatural. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the galactic.
The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "the course of things, natural character."[1] Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord.[2] This is shown in the first written use of the word φύσις, in connection with a plant.[3] The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.[4][5]
Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" may refer to the general realm of various types of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects – the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness – wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the latter being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human or human-like consciousness or mind.