Reason and Nature

Spinoza's statement, from II, 8 of the Political Treatise, that "the bounds of nature are not the laws of human reason, which do but pursue the true interest and preservation of mankind, but other infinite laws, which regard the eternal order of universal nature, whereof man is an atom", has two main points.  1. It denies Anthropocentrism, thus complementing the Copernican repudiation of Geocentrism; and 2. It asserts the inadequacy of human understanding to Nature, thus anticipating Kant's critique.  However, the distinction between Natural Law and Human Reason is not as sharp as the statement seems to imply.  For, first, the human capacity to adapt natural causal relations, e. g. agricultural processes, proves that the two are not absolutely incommensurate.  And, second, since  Humanity is part of Nature, then the laws of its reason must be a special case of natural laws, and, likewise, human interests and preservation must play some role in the larger order.  So, Spinoza misses an opportunity here to consider some Ecological implications of his Naturalism.