a whatchamacallit

So I was thinking about our discussion, and the role language plays in defining our perception of the world, in particular of nature. I began to wonder about the word "nature" itself. If we had no such separate word for "nature," would we still have the concept of it being separate from us? I began to wonder if there existed other cultures and languages that do not even have this capital N word Nature to name that over-arching "other," and if not, if it was a culture that would not perceive the same divide that we do. The Google search for "languages that do not have a word for Nature" proved a bit unyielding (due to the nature of the word nature), but I did come up with a site "The Origin of the Word Nature: How Nature Entered the English Language" http://www.suite101.com/content/the-origin-of-the-word-nature-a85523

It was unexpected to me that the site focused more on the evolution of the word nature as meaning that sort of underlying and driving essence of everything, rather than this separate entity to be combated, controlled, or preserved that we have created with a capital N. I guess I just keep coming back to the same: we are nature just as anything else is; there seems nothing to me that is not nature. I suppose our species may be a very anomalous one with all sorts of peculiar habits and trajectories of development, and even maybe too maladaptive to be kept in the evolutionary pool indefinitely, but it does not alter that nature is us and we are nature. I like the idea I once heard that we are nature with consciousness, undoing itself. Not that I like that practice, but I think it a paradox to be dismantled after its recognition.

Another site I stumbled into: "Wildlife Promise: 50 + Nature Words Taken Out of Dictionary" http://blogs.nwf.org/arctic_promise/2009/03/endangered-words-nature-terms-taken-out-of-dictionary.html

Following the same line of mind that words allow us to hold concepts, this is terrifying. At this rate the next generation of youngin's will all be robot-brains, slaves to screens, and word for word losing the quiet and tender sensitivity to nature that has marked childhood. Of what images, colors, textures will their nostalgia be?