John Fowles: Nature, Art, and Science

Written on 07/02/2025
Poetic Outlaws

The modern version of hell is purposelessness.
John Fowles resting in the woods near his home in Lyme Regis, Dorset, c. February 1970

“It is not necessarily too little knowledge that causes ignorance; possessing too much, or wanting to gain too much, can produce the same result.”

— John Fowles

Achieving a relationship with nature is both a science and an art, beyond mere knowledge or mere feeling alone; and I now think beyond oriental mysticism, transcendentalism, ‘meditation techniques’ and the rest—or at least as we in the West have converted them to our use, which seems increasingly in a narcissistic way: to make ourselves feel more positive, more meaningful, more dynamic.

I do not believe nature is to be reached that way either, by turning it into a therapy, a free clinic for admirers of their own sensitivity.

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