Final answer:
The statement is true; Dr. Rearick's lecture on Isolation highlights how the sea, storms, and sickness are natural forces that can separate individuals from their communities, a concept corroborated by historical events and literary works.
Step-by-step explanation:
True, in his lecture on Isolation, Dr. Rearick notes that the sea, storms, and other natural events serve as powerful forces that can separate individuals from their families and communities. In literature and history, these elements have been depicted as capable of imposing isolation on people, either through physical distance or by creating situations in which individuals must be segregated, such as during outbreaks of sickness.
Throughout history, extreme hurricanes, rising sea levels, and other environmental conditions have played a critical role in human ecology by affecting the availability of resources and influencing human settlements, trade, and migration. Sickness, whether it be pathogen-borne diseases or plagues, has also caused separation, forcing communities to implement quarantines to control the spread of illness, thus isolating the sick from the healthy.
Naturalist writers have explored themes of humans at odds with nature, often highlighting how individuals are at the mercy of natural forces that are indifferent or hostile to human suffering. This aligns with Dr. Rearick's observation that nature possesses the power to create isolation among humans.