Humans dominating nature with science and technology – how do we use nature and solve problems?

This article argues that humans use nature for survival and development, and that science and technology are essential for this. It also emphasizes that the problems that arise from our use of nature can be solved through science and technology.

 

Humans need to dominate nature. We have no choice but to use nature. Not only the food we eat and live, but also the many objects and environments in front of us, there is hardly anything that does not utilize nature. And for this utilization of nature, a lot of science and technology has been needed and developed, and as a result, we experience various problems. However, we do not remove science and technology from our lives because of problems, but we use them to improve and make them more environmentally friendly. Seeing these points, I would like to talk about how humans use science and technology to use and dominate nature, and the problems that arise from it are also improved through science and technology. Therefore, science and technology are necessary for us, and I will give several examples to support my argument. One such example is the movie Planet of the Apes, released in 2001. First, let me give you a short synopsis of the movie.
The movie starts on a spaceship. The ship is conducting several expeditions, and they are using chimpanzees to explore untested places where humans have not yet been. One day, one of the chimpanzees is magnetized and goes missing, and the pilot of the ship, Rio, sets out to find him. Along the way, Rio is also blown away by the magnetic field, which acts as a time machine and causes him to fall to a star in the far future. He lands on a planet where chimps rule over humans. In order to get out of there, Rio uses his equipment to find his old friends. But what he finds on the planet is the spaceship he was once on: the research they were doing had made the chimps smarter, and they had begun to overwhelm and dominate humans. Unable to find a way to escape, Leo ended up joining the others on the planet to fight against the apes. Suddenly, long after the war between humans and apes has begun, an ape in a spaceship appears in the sky, and it is the chimpanzee that he has been searching for. The movie ends with Rio returning to Earth, which is now under the control of the apes.
Many people might watch this movie and think that it’s about people getting revenge for their reckless animal testing, and they might think about bioethics. However, I would like to point out a couple of other things here. The first is the need to utilize nature. We have no choice but to use nature for survival or progress. The movie is about space exploration using chimpanzees, and as the plot says, the space we send them to is a dangerous place where humans have not yet been. Instead of sending humans to such places, chimpanzees are first sent to check if it is safe. I think this is necessary for human safety. Some people may ask why it is necessary to explore space and sacrifice chimpanzees. I would like to point out that humans do not necessarily live only for the sake of consciousness. Not developing space does not mean that humans cannot live. However, humans also have a desire to explore new things, and the vast universe is one field to fulfill that desire. And there are places where we can’t go with our bodies, so we use chimpanzees to explore that universe. Furthermore, when the Soviet Union and the United States were at the height of the Cold War and the race to develop space was fierce, the first creature to go into space was a dog named Leica. Many of the information we now take for granted from satellites has been made possible through research and experiments with nature. Even the medicines we take when we get sick are tested on animals first. We wouldn’t want to give a drug to humans without knowing what the risks are, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take it, so we have no choice but to use nature to advance our technology. There are other examples besides animals, such as plants. In the past, we used wood to build houses, and now we study plants to get medicines. In this way, we have been using nature to help us throughout our lives.
In order to better utilize nature, science and technology have been developed. Of course, science and technology have not only been developed to use nature, but to a large extent, they have been developed to improve our quality of life by utilizing the nature around us. In the movie, for example, in order to train chimpanzees, they give them various injections, analyze and study them, and develop better drugs and better training methods to make better use of them. In some cases, it worked so well that it increased the intelligence of the chimpanzees and led to their domination over humans. Also, if we talk about the example above of using wood to build a house, there are many other uses for wood, not just houses. In order to better utilize them and cut them better, technology has evolved from axes to saws and from saws to chainsaws, and better feeds have been developed to raise pigs and cows better and produce more. In this way, we are trying to use nature to improve our quality of life and increase our efficiency by using more advanced technology.
While these technologies have made our lives better, they have also brought us many revenges from nature due to our indiscriminate use of them. The first thing we see in movies is the phenomenon of apes dominating humans, as described in the paragraph above. In the real world, examples include the ozone layer depletion caused by the use of freon gas and global warming caused by industrialization. Or landslides caused by cutting down mountains to make roads for cars. These are certainly the consequences of our use of science and technology to enrich our lives without harmonizing with nature. Some might argue that chimpanzees don’t want to be used, and they wouldn’t want their mountains cut down. But that doesn’t mean we can’t preserve all of nature as it is. Humanity is driven to seek things that are more comfortable and faster, so we can’t help but develop and change nature more and more. The air around us, the railroads, they are all part of nature. What I’m trying to say is that even in the midst of this, we can use science and technology to overcome this challenge.
In the movie, during the fight between the apes and humans, Rio uses the power of the ship’s nuclear fuel to kill a large number of apes. This doesn’t completely stop the apes, but it does show the power of humans and is effective enough to baffle the apes. At the end of the movie, an ape descends from the sky, and what I noticed is that it descends in a spaceship, which is the epitome of science and technology. In other words, science and technology can end nature’s rebellion. While the movie example is a bit unrealistic, other examples are more relatable. For example, in the case of global warming, we have tried to develop and use better materials, and as a result, we have been able to slow down the rate of global warming. In the case of landslides, we have been able to take some action by studying them based on science and technology, and in many other cases, we have been able to find better solutions through science and technology, rather than inhibiting further development of technology. Of course, in this process, the rate at which we destroy nature may be faster than the rate at which we restore it, but I think it’s up to science and technology to slow it down.
In the end, what I’m trying to say is that as humans, we have no choice but to utilize the natural things around us. And in this process, we can develop science and technology, and solve the problems of the relationship between nature and humans through science and technology. In other words, science and technology are essential to our humanity. And before thinking about the right to life of nature, we should acknowledge that we cannot help but use them, and pay attention to what direction we should develop science and technology in order to better utilize and control nature, and to form a more natural and ideal relationship with nature.