I mean, weren’t they? My kids can name more superheroes and Pokémon than animals and plants. My neighbors don’t notice when it doesn’t rain in March and April (when there should be 22 rainy days) and get annoyed when it does because it ruins the nice weather.
Why would your neighbors worry about rain, unless they are farmers or otherwise directly impacted?
We've generally abandoned "being in touch with nature" for focusing on specific niches, and it's so incredibly more efficient that you can have large groups of people who focus on systems based on purely made up things, like sports.
If they both needed the probability of rain three days from now, who do you think would fare better, the ancients with their ancient wisdom, or your neighbors with modern sensors and meteorological models?
You may be thinking about a short term need only. Longer term (annual and more) if you are in a state that is susceptible to drought and wildfires, you would worry about the lack of rain during a period when it is supposed to rain. The rain fills aquifers and increases soil moisture content which carry you through the dry season.
In general, yes. But most advanced societies delegate these topics because it's very inefficient if you and everyone else studies wild fires, rain patterns, deer impact on soil compression and what not -- it'll be much more efficient if a few study it deeply and then present the results and concrete actions.
Division of labor goes for division of scientific labor, too.
Granted, there seems to be an increasing trust issue in taking those results as true, but that's a separate issue.
Oooh yes let’s be efficient. Only thing that’s important. No curiosity, sense of awe or belonging to something greater. Let’s do away with art unless it’s funded by Netflix and has a direct effect on subscription numbers. We could and should have both.
Sure, but one is much more important than the other. You can commit 50% of your resources as a society towards art and religion and the other half to science and production, and your standard of living will be much lower than if you committed 10% towards art and religion.
The disconnect between observation and understanding is the whole point; without western ideas like trends, records, and measurement, you can have no better understanding than, "sometimes wet, sometimes not".
The only part in tune with nature is that in bad periods the population dies back.
The Spanish colonists would have no problems with those things though, they just were out of their element there but people were in touch with nature almost everywhere until very recently.
