With the past four decades, research has been increasingly drawn toward understanding whether there is a link between the changing human - nature relationship and its impact on people's health. However, to examine whether there is a link requires research of its breadth and underlying mechanisms from an interdisciplinary approach. This article begins by reviewing the debates concerning the human -nature relationship, which are then critiqued and redefined from an interdisciplinary perspective.
The concept and chronological history of "health" is then explored, based on the World Health Organization's definition. Combining these concepts, the human - nature relationship and its impact on human's health are then explored through a developing conceptual model. It is argued that using an interdisciplinary perspective can facilitate a deeper understanding of the complexities involved for attaining optimal health at the human - environmental interface.
Introduction
During the last century, research has been increasingly drawn toward understanding the human - nature relationship and has revealed the many ways humans are linked with the natural environment. Some examples of these include humans preference for scenes dominated by natural elements, the sustainability of natural resources, and the health benefits associated with engaging with nature.
Of these examples, the impact of the human - nature relationship on people's health have grown with interest as evidence for a connection accumulates in research literature. Such connection has underpinned a host of theoretical and empirical research in fields, which until now have largely remained as separate entities.
Since the late nineteenth century a number of descriptive models have attempted to encapsulate the dimensions of human and ecosystem health as well as their interrelationships. These include the Environment of Health, the Mandala of Health, the wheel of Fundamental Human Needs, the Healthy communities, the One Health, and the bioecological system theory. Each, however, have not fully incorporated all relevant dimensions, balancing between the biological, social, and spatial perspectives.
In part this is due to the challenges of the already complex research base in relation to its concept, evidence base, measurement, and strategic framework. Further attention to the complexities of these aspects, interlinkages, processes, and relations is required for a deeper sense of understanding and causal directions to be identified.
Defining the Human - Nature Relationship
It is beyond the scope of this paper to review the various connections at the intersect of humanity and the natural environment. Instead, I summarize key concepts and approaches from those four research fields (Evolutionary Biology, Social Economics, Evolutionary Psychology, and Environmentalism) outlined below, which have paid most attention to studying this research area. I then summarize areas of convergence between these connections in an attempt to describe the human - nature relationship, which will serve as background to this review.
Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary biology is a branch of research that shortly followed Darwin's Theory Evolution. It concerns the adaptive nature of variation in all animal and plant life, shaped by genetic architecture and developmental processes over time and space. Since its emergence over a century ago, the field has made some significant advance in scientific knowledge, but with intense debate still remaining among its central questions, including the rate of evolutionary change, the nature of its transitional processes (e.g., natural selection).
This in part owes to the research field's interdisciplinary structure, formulated on the foundations of genetics, molecular biology, phylogeny, systematics, physiology, ecology, and population dynamics, integrating a diverging range of discipline thus producing a host of challenging endeavors. Spanning each of these, human evolution centers on humanity's life history since the lineage split from our ancestral primates and our adaptive synergy with nature.
Evolutionary PsychologyEvolutionary Psychology is a recently developed field of study, which has grown exponentially with interest since the 1980s. It centers on the adaptation of psychological characteristic said to have evolved over time in response to social and ecological circumstance within humanity's ancestral environments. This reverse engineering approach to understanding the design of the human mind was first kindled by evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin in the last few pages of Origin of Species;
As such, evolutionary psychology is viewed by some to offer a metatheory that dissolves the traditional boundaries held in psychology (eg., cognitive, social, personality, and development). With this metatheory, all psychological theories implicitly believed by some to unify under this umbrella. However, the application of evolution to the study of psychology has not been without controversial debate in areas relating to cognitive adaptation, testability of hypotheses, and the uniformity of human nature.
Social Economics
Social economics is a meta-discipline in which economics is embedded in social, political, and cultural behaviors. It examine institutions, choice behavior, rationality as well as values in relation to markets. Owing to its diverse structure, the human - nature relationship has been explored in various contexts. These include the reflections of society's values and identities in natural landscape, condition of placelessness, and humanity's growing ecosynchronous tendencies as well as how the relationship has evolved with historical context. While the dynamics of human and nature coupled systems has become a growing interdisciplinary field of research, past work with in social economics has remained more theoretical than empirically based.
The connection between the start of industrial societies and the dynamically evolving human - nature relationship has been discussed by many, revealing a host of economic - nature conflicts. One example includes those metaphorically outlined in the frequently cited article "The Tragedy of the commons". In this, it argues that the four laws of ecology are counter intuitive with the four laws of capitalism to one of exchange value, where adverse cost to the environment are rarely factored into the equation. However, this is not to say that humanity's increasing specialization and complexity in most contemporary societies are distinct from nature but still depend on nature to exert.
