Conquering nature is only a recent phenomenon.
After accumulating unimaginable wealth through global trade, nineteenth-century societies began to look for challenges of a different type – Battling nature.
For thousands of years, storms, droughts, and other natural phenomena brought devastating destruction and even wipe-outs to societies. Thus, the hardly understood nature, enormous in scale and unlimited in power, became worship idols for most of the ancient civilizations.
But the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution changed the landscape. Medicine, saving lives by the thousands, trains, crossing mountains and hinterlands of extensive distance and elevation, and ships, voyaging seas and oceans under unforeseeable storms, all brought some aspects of nature down to their knees. While it is worth discussing how we humans became overconfident in our selves in this never-ending duel, the achievements made by our predecessors are nevertheless impressive.
Today, following the trails of prior explorers, we get to find exotic animals in rain forests, ascend to the tip of the world, plunge into the deep sea, and, if we were lucky enough, even step foot on the moon. Even “marvelous” cannot fully appreciate the great feats of human conquest.
But the future is still uncertain. It is our responsibility to steer the direction of discovery, and I hope it is a good one.
* The photo was taken during my trip to Yosemite