What do we mean by nature? To answer this question we have to discuss the philosophy of natural science. Natural science is the science of nature. But what is nature?
Nature is what we observe in perception through the senses. In sense-perception we are aware of something which is not thought. This property of being self-contained for thought is the base of natural science. It means that nature can be thought of as a closed system, and thus, in a sense, nature is independent of thought. If sense perception is an awareness of something which is not thought, then nature is not thought.
The study of nature brings with it a world view which is dominant in the culture/community. Those world views always suggest cosmologies, and each age has its dominant concerns. Cosmologies treat the universe as an orderly system. These concerns are not always explicit and one of the functions of philosophy is the criticism of cosmologies. Philosophy can attempt to harmonize, refashion, and justify the different intuitions as to the nature of things. It has to scrutinize the ultimate ideas, and view the whole evidence in attempting to express a cosmological scheme. It is the task of philosophy to render explicit the process which is unconsciously developed without rational thought.
Greek Cosmology
So it is to Greece that we must look in order to find the origin of our modern ideas. The Ionian philosophers were interested in theories concerning nature. Greek thought was preoccupied with the quest for simple substances in terms of which the course of events could be expressed. The question was what is nature made of? The answers which the Greeks gave to this question and the concepts which underlay the terms in which they framed their answers, have determined the unquestioned presuppositions as to time, space, and matter which have been the key concepts in science ever since.
When the Ionian Presocratic philosophers asked, "What is Nature?" they assumed that the question demanded an answer in terms of primitive substance or substances out of which the world is constructed.
Last Updated: 10/19/22 |