Blackwell Reference Online

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The sociological analysis of nature as it is used in the modern West (by specific cultures and space(s)) is fraught with definitional problems, notably the seemingly very different and overlapping senses of the word nature. “Nature,” says Williams (1983 : 219), “is perhaps the most complex word in the language.” However, on the same page, he is able to show that it is usually not difficult to distinguish its varied meanings: “indeed it is often habitual and in effect not noticed in reading.” Three meanings can be distinguished: (1) nature as an essential quality of something; (2) nature as a force at large in the world; and (3) nature as the world itself including objects, humans, and non-human organisms. Williams says that the meanings are variable across (2) and (3) but that the area of reference is broadly clear; that these senses relate to each other in an important historical developmental sequence and that all three senses are still common and actively used. The first sense is a specific singular and was in use in the thirteenth century. The second and third senses are abstract singulars, the former deriving from the fourteenth century and the latter from the seventeenth century, though they overlapped in the sixteenth century. Williams relates this linguistic transformation to changes in religious and scientific thought where sense (1) derived from a more plural pantheistic ... log in or subscribe to read full text