Lucy Jones is not alone in calling a natural process a “mechanism”, but to do so draws us into a reductionist worldview of cause and effect that is not only wrong but misleadingly dangerous (In times of uncertainty, let nature be your refuge, 20 March). The word draws us into a view of the world as machine, what William Blake called a “single vision”, just at the time when we are learning that ecological systems are far more complex, maybe mysterious. Words matter: they build our world.
Peter Reason
Professor emeritus, University of Bath
