The scientist vs. the naturalist
As a wildlife biologist, I find myself contemplating a duality between my spiritual connection to nature and my scientific perspective of the environment. I have spent many hours and weeks walking through unexplored places, mostly in the deserts of Southern California, looking for wildlife. During what biologists call the survey process, I connect with myself and nature in a deeply spiritual and profound way that science could never explain.
The naturalist in me has an unwavering love for nature that transcends any boundaries that a scientific study might impose for data analysis purposes. Of course, the purpose of science is to formulate a hypothesis and create a study that will help you answer your questions. Naturalism, however, encourages you to take a back seat to science and let nature be your guide; it allows for awe and wonder in nature and it is this curiosity that leads you to want to understand flora and fauna.
In that way, nature guides my own questions about the state of the world and I don’t necessarily need to sit in the seat as a scientist to make these conclusions. Instead, I can sit in the seat as an observer, of myself and of the natural world around me. I can make connections between people and planet by seeing them as one, thus seeing both as a solution to protecting the planet. It is these connections that makes the very foundation of why I believe in an empathy-coded approach to conservation.
An empathy forward approach to studying science is at the core of what it means to be a women caring for the planet. It means you have compassion for how you study your subjects rather than passionless behavior towards a study object instead. For instance, Dr. Jane Goodall is a pioneer for her research of studying chimpanzees but it is how she studied them that is an important learning lesson. She was a trailblazer for naming the chimpanzees and David Greybeard is one such subject that became famous for the first observation of chimpanzees using tools ever recorded in history. In that way Jane saw her subjects as equals and provided them with names to humanize them and this allowed her to study them with empathy.
In this way I find that a feminine coded approach to using empathy is equally as important and effective as using science to make conclusions about our connection to the planet. I claim they are equal because it is with this interweaving of a scientific approach with an empathy and reminded coded approach that can be applied to one’s personal ethics as both a scientist and a naturalist.
The meaning lies in the middle and for someone like myself who finds this duality interesting to navigate, I know I can always lean into the web of life to guide myself through scientific and life experiences. When I embody the naturalist in me, I embody the women I want to be on the day to day. Someone who lives within the means of the planet and amongst all the wild moments because I know when I see myself as equal and part of nature, that I am living the most full I can be that the scientist in me would be limited to understanding.
At this point in my life and career I am proud that I have embodied the naturalist in me as compared to the scientist box, which felt limiting to who I could be in a spiritual and empathetic capacity. To be a women in the field of sciences it to be a women who has a deep sense of nurture, and that is what my guiding force will be for years to come.