 Humankind is seen as being part of, and dependent upon, the natural world. However, nature is initially somewhat stingy with its blessings; as a result, human beings confront the natural world from an original position of scarcity, struggling through productive activity of various kinds to change the material form of nature—typically through making things—in ways that make it better reflect and satisfy their own needs and interests. In that evolving process, both the natural world and humankind come to be transformed. Through this collective shaping of their material surroundings, and their increasing productivity, the natural world is made to be, and seem, less ‘other’, and human beings thereby come to objectify themselves, to express their essential powers in concrete form. These world transforming productive activities, we might say, embody the progressive self-realisation of humankind.