Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The sum total or aggregate of natural things. A natural thing is distinguished from an artificial thing, or ARTEFACT: the latter owes its existence to human ingenuity or artifice. Since human beings can create material artefacts only by imposing novel shapes on pre-existing materials or by rearranging pre-existing objects, material artefacts not only consist ultimately of natural things or materials but result from the activities of natural things, which human beings certainly are. As a result, material artefacts are also, in an important sense, natural things and belong to the system of nature. In addition to belonging to nature, every natural thing has a nature. As originally understood, a thing's nature is the internal cause of its behavior. If a bullet flies through the air, it does not do so by nature or because of its nature but by constraint: it is forced to fly because of an explosion. Once it is moving, however, it will “by its nature” continue to move until something stops it. The ancient Ionian thinkers were the first to offer theories about a thing's nature so understood ( see presocratics ). According to some, the internal cause of a thing's nature is the matter of which it is made; according to others, its nature is form or the arrangement of its constituent parts. A nature so understood is tied to the individual things possessing it; and in ancient Greek philosophy ... log in or subscribe to read full text