General Knowledgespeaking topic
The orange is not actually natural; it is a fruit created by human hands through crossbreeding citrus varieties, so what we call 'natural' is a design. The color orange is named after the fruit, not the other way around. If so much of what we take for nature is the product of centuries of our own meddling, what does 'natural' even mean?
— botany, the history of citrus hybridization
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Why does Rumi's 'Masnavi' still speak to people from so many different cultures? Let's talk about Sufism's universal language of love.
- In some cultures the past lies 'in front of us' and the future 'behind us,' because we can see the past but not the future. We, on the other hand, say we are 'moving forward' into the future. If two communities imagine the same time in exactly opposite directions, does time have a real direction at all?
- Some languages use one word for both 'blue' and 'green'; in Japanese, the 'green' of a traffic light is still called 'ao' (blue), so the lights are made to lean bluish. Language can bend even the color our eyes see. Do words describe reality, or shape it?
- Butter or olive oil for cooking? Butter is saturated fat but stable at high heat; olive oil is monounsaturated, but extra virgin does not hold up well to frying. Should health or cooking chemistry make the call, and why?
- Natural or synthetic? 'Natural' is not automatically safe (arsenic is natural too), while synthetic is controlled and consistent. Why does the appeal-to-nature fallacy mislead us so easily?