- For alternative meanings, see nature (disambiguation).
Nature (also called the material world, the material universe, the natural world, and the natural universe) is all matter and energy, especially in its essential form. Nature is the subject of scientific study. In scale, "nature" includes everything from the universal to the subatomic. This includes all things animal, plant, and mineral; all natural resources and events (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes). It also includes the behaviour of living animals, and processes associated with inanimate objects - the "way" that things change.
Nature outside Earth and its atmosphere
Events and phenomena outside Earth and its atmosphere are in the natural science of astronomy.
Life
Life, the characteristics and behaviors of organisms, how species and individuals come into existence, and the interactions they have with each other and with their environment are all in the natural science of biology.
Chemicals
The structure, properties, composition, and reactions of chemical elements and compounds are part of the natural science of chemistry.
Matter and force
The behaviour and interactions of matter and force are a part of the natural science of physics.
Earth
Everything relating to the planet Earth is a part of earth science.
The supernatural
- Main article: Supernatural
Most people believe in the existence of a non-material world in a sense beyond that of just mental experience. They rather believe in supernatural beings and in a supernatural reality absolutely different in kind to that of the natural world. If such a reality exists, many scientists and others assert that it is beyond the reach of science. Science has been very successful in bringing apparently inexplicable and supposedly supernatural phenomena within its scope. On the other hand, it uses one assumption about the super natural (that which is apart from matter in motion) - that there are "laws of nature"; regularities which are permanent and outside time.
Metaphysics
In philosophy, the view that the material world of atoms, animals, gravity, stars, wind, microbes, etc., actually exist independently of our observations of them is termed realism; the opposing view is called idealism.
The natural and the artificial
A distinction is often drawn between the "natural" and the "artificial" (="man-made"). Can such a distinction be justified? One approach is to exclude mind from the realm of the natural; another is to exclude not only mind, but also humans and their influence. In either case, the boundary between the natural and the artificial is a difficult one to draw (see mind-body problem). Some people believe that the problem is best avoided by saying that everything is natural, but that does little to clarify the concept of the "artificial". In any event, ambiguities about the distinction between the natural and the artificial animate much of art, literature and philosophy.
Another approach is to distinguish natural processes and artificial (man-made) processes. In this viewpoint, a process is deemed to occur either at the behest of man, or not. For example, flipping a light switch might illuminate a room, or perhaps a sunrise might illuminate that room. In this viewpoint, the sunrise would be termed a natural process; the decision of a human being to flip the light switch would be termed an artificial illumination, in contrast. In this viewpoint, artifice (art or literature) is clearly the result of willful human action; furthermore, the act of stating a philosophical position could also be a willful action (and hence at the behest of man), whether or not the content of the philosophy were to be about science.
The distinction between what is natural and artificial was initially important, as far as we know, to the ancient Greeks. Perhaps their main interest was in distinguishing good aims from ones that have been distorted.
Related concepts
The term natural science is used in a variety of ways, primarily:
The term natural philosophy formerly named the scientific discipline now known as physics.
Natural theology straddles the disciplines of theology and philosophy of religion.
In education and related areas, the contrast "natural/artificial" can appear as " nature/nurture".
See also: praeternatural, unnatural and supernatural.
Mother Nature
- Main article: Mother Nature
The word nature comes from the Latin word, natura, meaning birth or character (see nature (innate)). In English its first recorded use, in the sense of the entireity of the phenomenon of the world, was very late in history in 1662; however Natura, and the personification of Mother Nature, was widely popular in the Middle Ages and can be traced to Ancient Greece in origin. The pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece had invented Nature when they abstracted the entirety of phenomenon of the world into a single name and spoken of as a single object: Natura. Later Greek thinkers such as Aristotle were not as entirely inclusive, excluding the stars and moon, the "Supernatural", from the concept of Nature. Thus from this Aristotilian view; nature existing inside a larger framework and not inclusive of everything; Nature became a personified diety, and it is from this we have the origins of a mythological goddess Nature. Later medieval thinkers also did not see Nature as all-inclusive, considering her as the world that lay beneath the heavens and above the underworld. For the medieval mind she was only a personification, not a goddess. The modern concept of Nature, all inclusive of all phenomenon, has returned to its original pre-Socratic roots, not a personification or deity except in a rhetorical sense.1
Notes
See also
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about:
|
