I've become very unhappy with the phrase 'back-to-nature'. It seems to mean something, then as you look more closely the meaning evaporates.
For example, there was an industrial revolution in the 19th century, so I used to not think very hard and imagine that back to nature meant going back to how persons lived in the 18th century. Then I read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.
The full title of the book is
AN
INQUIRY
INTO THE
Nature and Caufes
OF THE
WEALTH OF NATIONS.
My copy contains a facsimile of the original title page,
whose layout I have reproduced for you. The book was
published in 1776. One tends to assume that Smith was a
visionary, laying out the path by which nations might become
wealthy in the future, but I see no trace of this in his
work. He wanted to know why England was richer than France
which was richer that Poland which was richer than Africa
and Native American kingdoms. The book was the result of his
inquiry.
The book is famous for describing the division of labour, and giving this a key role in the origin of wealth. The particular example he gives, and which has become famous, is that of pin making. The impression that the modern reader gains is that he gave this example because it was the hi-tech of his day - look at the enourmous gains in productivity from this new fangled factory method, imagine if it were applied through out the economy.
Reading the full text, not just a quotation, we find something very different. The preceeding paragraph explains the rational for his choice of example.
... In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch. Though in such manufactures, therefore, the work may really be divided into a much greater number of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less observed. To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin maker;...Smith's book, written in 1776, is a synthesis. From the explanations already on offer for why some countries are so much richer than others, he selects the division of labour as the explanation he thinks best. The factory system is already well under way, and transportation between factories, ie the supply of components to OEM's (Original equipment makers) is causing the full extent of the division of labour to escape popular notice.
There cumulative total number of steam engines built in Britain at this date was six or seven hundred. This was the era of factories powered by water wheels, and goods moved by horse drawn canal boat.
The technology of Smith's day seems laughably primitive. It is what springs into my head at the mention of getting back to nature. The Haber process and INorganic farming is still 125 years in the future. Yet to its own inhabitants that time seemed sophisticated and modern. Does "back to nature" mean a retreat from whatever-it-is-we-have-now to sophistication and modernity?
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