As someone who did natural sciences at Fen Poly in the UK (it’s called Natural Philosophy in Scotland I believe) I agree in re natural science, but natural processes usually mean something different, Tectonic plate movement is a natural process, so is a star going supernova, but cooking up rock in the lab or building a fusion reactor are regarded as non-natural in this context.
Of course some things do turn out to be naturally occurring that were not expected, like (creationists don’t read this bit) the archaic natural uranium reactor that operated in Africa a couple of billion years ago when the U235/U238 ratio was higher. (Uranium salts were concentrated in a rock formation and when water entered it, the result went critical and blew out the water. When it eventually cooled the water started to trickle in again, repeating the process. Don’t try this at home should you have a big handy lump of enriched uranium.)
Now I agree that is a natural process and had there been any kids around at the time they would have been suitably impressed (Remember, kids, if there’s no water between you and the blue glow dig a hole and lie down in it.) But nowadays most kids are only likely to come up against explosions that are the result of applied natural science, but not natural processes.
1 Like
