 We can create a sword, but we cannot create the metal that makes up a sword. Perhaps we can do it in the current day, but Cavendish would insist that if so, nature figured it out first, and we are just imitating the skill of nature and following its lead. There is also a sense in which we can make a tree, but not really. We can certainly plant a shrub, or what Cavendish is calling a “slip.” But when we do that, we aren’t doing all the productive work, and indeed the contribution on our end is fairly minimal. We put a seed or shrub in the ground and water it, and a tree eventually forms. All of the real work is done by the complicated genetic and physical structure of the seed or shrub, and if it did not have that structure, we could water the thing all day long and nothing would grow. Two people might also announce that they made a baby together, but the same applies again: the real legwork is done by the sophistication of the reproductive organs and the infrastructure by which nutrition is redistributed to the growing fetus – for example through the placenta. A human being forms, and it consists of things like the human eye, which is about as intricate an entity as could be. Perhaps we have caught up to nature in some instances – for example we can now create synthetic seeds that become plants – but again Cavendish would insist that in such a case we are imitating the wisdom of nature and that nature figured it out first. But we still cannot make a human eye or much else that nature has been manufacturing seamlessly and skillfully for eons.