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Originally Posted by Mith
Just to clarify do you mean naturalist (as in one who studies fauna and/or fauna) or as your examples suggest rather environmentalist - though I suspect the term was not used much until the end of Tolkien's life.
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In the academic circles 'naturalism' is something that is adopted by people like Dawkins and Dennet. That means taking a stance that: a) there is only the natural world (and thence nothing "supernatural" like gods, fairies, telepathy, fate...) and b) the natural sciences are the best guide for humans to understand how this world works.
So the word 'environmentalist' would suit your examples better.
It's easy to see Tolkien as a "proto-greenie" as Lal names him but then again that goes to much of the old time conservatism & radical luddites in general.
One should be careful with labels that have arised after the time the persons to whom those labels are applied to have thenselves lived.
Like:
Plato is the father of totalitarianism.
Democritos formed the theory of atoms.
Michelangelo was an artist expressing his emotions.
The "founding fathers" were for the NRA principles.
Nietzsche was a nazi.
Samuel Beckett was a post-modernist.
Tolkien was an environmentalist.
Looking from one angle these statements make sense but with some understanding of both history of ideas and the persons involved one sees the connection is more than less awkward and fabricated to suit some agendas of today / yesterday.
But yes. Tolkien didn't like felling down trees or putting up factories. But his "feelings" probably weren't aroused by any general environmental concerns that would apply to global circumstances. On the contrary it looks like the romanticism of one's own neighbourhood. "When I (my parents) was a child there was this great birch and a meadow but now there's a road with cars in it..."
That's not environmentalism but more like a wish to see the world unchanged.
Nothing bad in that reaction in itself but worth noticing.
PS. I am a card-carrying environmentalist myself: with two children what else could I be?