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Nature (philosophy)

Overview

Nature has two inter-related meanings in philosophy and natural philosophy. On the one hand, it means the set of all things which are natural, or subject to the normal working of the laws of nature. On the other hand, it means the essential properties and causes of individual things.

How to understand the meaning and significance of nature has been a consistent theme of discussion within the history of Western Civilization, in the philosophical fields of metaphysics and epistemology, as well as in theology and science. The study of natural things and the regular laws which seem to govern them, as opposed to discussion about what it means to be natural, is the area of natural science.

The word "nature" derives from Latin nātūra, a philosophical term derived from the verb for birth, which was used as a translation for the earlier (pre-Socratic) Greek term phusis, derived from the verb for natural growth.

Already in classical times, philosophical use of these words combined two related meanings which have in common that they refer to the way in which things happen by themselves, "naturally", without "interference" from human deliberation, divine intervention, or anything outside what is considered normal for the natural things being considered.

Understandings of nature depend on the subject and age of the work where they appear. For example, Aristotle's explanation of natural properties differs from what is meant by natural properties in modern philosophical and scientific works, which can also differ from other scientific and conventional usage.

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 (philosophy) is discussed.

I also take the homogeneity of thought about nature as excluding any reference to moral or aesthetic values whose apprehension is vivid in proportion to self-conscious activity. The values of nature are perhaps the key to the metaphysical synthesis of existence. But such a synthesis is exactly what I am not attempting.
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
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ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, OR THE REIGN OF MAN I. To generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures, upon a given body, is the labor and aim of human power: while to discover the form or true difference of a given nature, or the nature[71] to which such nature is owing, or source from which it emanates (for these terms approach nearest to an explanation of our meaning), is the labor and discovery of…
Francis Bacon, Novum organum
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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
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The Understanding by the possibility of its _a priori_ laws for nature, gives a proof that nature is only cognised by us as phenomenon; and implies at the same time that it has a supersensible substrate, though it leaves this quite _undetermined_. The Judgement by its _a priori_ principle for the judging of nature according to its possible particular laws, makes the supersensible substrate (both in us and without…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
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Leibniz culminates his discussion of classification as a method of translating the empirical into the rational, by pointing out that it rests upon the law of continuity; and that this law contains two factors,--one equivalent to the axiom of the Realists, that nature is nowhere empty; the other, to that of the Nominalists, that nature does nothing uselessly. "One of these principles seems to make nature a prodigal…
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
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Nature (philosophy)

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Nature (philosophy)

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