The appeal to nature as naive reality is often linked to a second major cluster of ideas that surround this word: nature as moral imperative. One need not travel a very great distance in speaking of “the nature of x” to get from “this is the way x really is” to “this is way x ought to be […] When we speak of “the natural way of doing things”, we implicitly suggest that there can be no other way, an that all alternatives, being unnatural, should have no claim on our sympathies.

William Cronon – In Search of Nature