The Appeal to Nature

The appeal to nature, also referred to as the naturalistic fallacy, is the increasingly marketable logical fallacy which assumes that “A is natural and is therefore good while B is unnatural or artificial and is therefore bad.” While not a pseudoscience itself, the naturalistic fallacy forms the foundation of many popular contemporary and historical pseudosciences including the organic/natural/free range food movement and the rising tide of traditional and herbal medicines and supplements inundating consumers, but this stumbling block in critical thinking can also be cited as a source of justification for detoxification crazes and even homophobia.

The attractiveness of this way of thought comes from privileged, urban societies who are themselves largely removed from nature. This lack of a relationship with the natural world is used as a scapegoat on which to place the ills of that particular society, resulting in the desire to return to a more “natural” way of life and an idealized way of living in harmony with nature. One way that people feel they can accomplish this is by turning to consumer goods which have been labeled “natural”, “organic”, or “traditional”, seeing them as inherently superior to “in-organic” or “un-natural” products despite the amorphous nature of those terms.

The movements mentioned above are pseudoscientific because they rely primarily on marketing jargon defined in terms of law rather than of science, which may also be different from the broader public understanding of the term. For example, “free range” is often a label attached to kinds of meat, particularly chicken, which defines it from “non-free range” meats, often under the assumption that “free range” meat is more natural and therefore better tasting or healthier for the consumer and the environment. The reality is that simply providing caged chicken with a windowed enclosure is enough to legally warrant the “free-range” distinction and, usually, a higher price tag.

Companies have latched onto the “natural” bandwagon in droves, often creating entirely new lines of products with “natural”, and lately "green", labels. For example, the Whole Foods supermarket chain specifically caters to seekers of so-called natural products, marketing itself as "Selling the highest quality natural and organic products". Even widely available, mainstream brands like Kellogs have introduced organic labeled varieties of popular breakfast cereals including Frosted Mini Wheats, Raisin Bran, and Rice Krispies.

In an alarming trend, practitioners and advocates of so-called natural medicine have also prospered with the growth of the naturalistic movement. After losing his wife to breast cancer, YouTube user Seth Aronsen launched a video campaign lashing out at modern breast cancer treatments in which he champions laughter, exposure sunshine, meditation, visualization, vitamin supplements, "healthy food & herbs", "exercise & massage", rest, relaxation, and water over what are portrayed as excessively expensive, needlessly painful, and ultimately unhelpful chemotherapy treatments.

However, it is not the case that all natural things are necessarily better than artificial things, for example, hurricanes, poison ivy, mercury, sunburns, cancer, E. Coli, Ebola, bad breath, and dying from childbirth are all very natural things that our modern world attempts to insulate itself from. While houses, shoes, indoor heating/cooling/plumbing, refrigeration, airplanes, computers, and stoves are all very artificial inventions of humanity yet we nearly define our modern society in terms of their use.

-Nick