Concept
Nature
Overview
natural, physical, or material world and its phenomena
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Nature is discussed.
But this is not an action of nature on the mind. It is an interaction within nature. The causation involved in this interaction is causation in a different sense from the influence of this system of bodily interactions within nature on the alien mind which thereupon perceives redness and warmth.
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; the book is about it; opens on it
Since we have undertaken to make a diligent search into Nature, I cannot but conclude it necessary to declare what Nature is. It is very absurd to attempt a discourse of the essence of natural things, and not to understand what is the power and sphere of Nature.
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
For if phenomena are things in themselves, freedom is impossible. In this case, nature is the complete and all-sufficient cause of every event; and condition and conditioned, cause and effect are contained in the same series, and necessitated by the same law. If, on the contrary, phenomena are held to be, as they are in fact, nothing more than mere representations, connected with each other in accordance with…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
(2) The _Realism_ of the purposiveness of nature is also either physical or hyperphysical. The _former_ bases the purposes in nature, by the analogy of a faculty acting with design, on the _life of matter_ (either its own or the life of an inner principle in it, a world-soul) and is called _Hylozoism_. The _latter_ derives them from the original ground of the universe, as from an intelligent Being (originally…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
It is thus that MAN is, as a whole, or in his nature, the result of a certain combination of matter, endowed with peculiar properties, competent to give, capable of receiving, certain impulses, the arrangement of which is called _organization_; of which the essence is, to feel, to think, to act, to move, after a manner distinguished from other beings, with which he can be compared. Man, therefore, ranks in an order…
Paul Henri Thiry Holbach, The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
names the idea; states what it is; the book is about it; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Nature
- Gilles Deleuze
- Ludwig Büchner
- Mulla Sadra
- Immanuel Kant
- Xenocrates
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Hermann Lotze
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Maimonides
- Sage (philosophy)
- Leo Strauss
- Thomas Aquinas
- Plato
- Roger Bacon
- Jews
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Dio Chrysostom
- Thales of Miletus
- Baruch Spinoza
- Zeno of Citium
- Plotinus
- Richard McKeon
- Jeremy Bentham
- Ernst Bloch
Related ideas
- E. O. Wilson
- Mantle (geology)
- Fossil
- Geology
- Genetics
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Homer
- Heraclitus
- Hydrosphere
- Industrial Revolution
- Academic discipline
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Habitat
- Transcendentalism
- Karl Marx
- Latin
- Physical property
- Substantial form
- Life
- Harvard University
- Argentina
- Gas
- Mass
- Virus
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.