Nature has two interrelated meanings in philosophy. On the one hand, it means the set of all things natural, or subject to the normal workings of natural law. On the other hand, it means the essential qualities and causes of individual things.
How to understand the meaning and significance of nature has been the theme of a consistent discussion in the history of Western Civilization, in the field of philosophical metaphysics and epistemology, as well as in theology and science. The study of natural things and the regular laws that seem to govern them, as opposed to the discussion of what it means to be natural, is the realm of the natural sciences.
The word "nature" comes from the Latin n? T? Ra , a philosophical term derived from the verb for birth, used as a translation for the previous Greek term (pre-Socrates) phusis , comes from the verb for natural growth. Already in classical times, the philosophical use of these words combines two related meanings that have in common that they refer to the way in which things happen by themselves, "naturally", without "interference" from human reasoning, divine intervention, or anything beyond what is considered normal for the natural things being considered.
An understanding of nature depends on the subject and the age of the work in which they appear. For example, Aristotle's explanations of natural qualities differ from what is meant by natural properties in modern philosophical and scientific works, which may also be different from other scientific and conventional uses.
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The classical and metaphysical properties of Aristotle
Physics (from natural "ta phusika") is Aristotle's main work of nature. In Physics II.1, Aristotle defines nature as "the source or cause of being moved and resting in its place." In other words, nature is a principle in natural raw materials which is the source of a tendency to change or rest in a certain way unless it is stopped. For example, the stone will fall unless it stops. Natural objects are different from artifacts, formed by human intelligence, not because of innate tendencies. (The raw material of the bed has no tendency to be a bed.) In the case of Aristotle's theory of four causes, the word nature is applied both to the innate potential of material causes and forms to which this problem tends to be natural.
According to Leo Strauss, the early philosophy of the West involves "discoveries or discoveries of nature" and "pre-philosophical equivalents of nature" supplied by "such ideas as 'custom' or 'way'". In ancient Greek philosophy on the other hand, Nature or nature is a "truly universal" way "at every time and place". What makes nature different is that it requires not only that not all customs and ways are equal, but also that one can "find one's bearing in the cosmos" "on the basis of investigation" (not for example on the basis of tradition or religion). To place this "discovery or discovery" into traditional terminology, what "by nature" is contrasted with what is "by convention". The concept of nature taken so far remains a strong tradition in modern Western thought. Science, according to Strauss's commentary on Western history is a contemplation of nature, while technology is or is an attempt to imitate it.
Furthermore, the philosophical conception of nature or nature as a particular kind of cause-effect - for example that a certain human way is partly due to something called "human nature" is an important step towards Aristotle's teaching on causality, which is standardized in all Western Philosophy to the coming of modern science.
Whether it is intended or not, Aristotle's question of this has long been felt to have completed a discussion of nature in favor of a solution. In this account, there are four types of causes:
- The material cause is "raw material" - a problem that has changed. One cause of the statue is what is possible that it is a bronze. All the meanings of the word nature include this simple meaning.
- An efficient cause is the movement of another object, which makes something change, for example a chisel that crashes into a stone causes a broken piece. This is the way in which matter is formed into a form so that it becomes a substance as Aristotle says that a substance must have the form and matter to call it substance. This is the movement of turning one into two. This is the most obvious way in which cause and effect works, as in the description of modern science. But according to Aristotle, this has not yet explained what his movement is, and we must "ask ourselves the question of whether there is any other cause other than matter".
- The formal cause is a form or idea that serves as a template for development - for example following Aristotle's approach we can say that a child develops in a way that is partly determined by something called "human nature." Here, nature is the cause.
- The last cause is the goal toward which something is directed. For example, a human is aiming for something that is considered good, as Aristotle says in the opening line of Nicomachean Ethics.
The formal and final causes are an important part of Aristotle's "Metaphysics" - his attempt to go beyond nature and explain nature itself. In practice they imply consciousness like humans who are involved in the cause of everything, even things that are not made man. Nature itself is associated with having a purpose.
The artificial, like the conventional one, is in this Western branch of thought, traditionally different from nature. Technology is contrasted with science, as mentioned above. And another important aspect for understanding this cause and effect is the distinction between the intentional properties of something and other substances that have lost support in the modern era, having long been widely accepted in medieval Europe.
To describe it in other ways, Aristotle treats organisms and other natural integrity as being at a higher level than mere matter in motion. Aristotle's argument for formal and final causes relates to the doctrine of how people might know things: "If nothing separated from the individual things, nothing will be understood, everything will make sense, and there will be no knowledge about anything - it is not maintained that sense-perception is knowledge. " The philosophers who disagree with this reason therefore also see the different knowledge of Aristotle.
Aristotle then, describes the nature or nature of the following, in a very different way from modern science...
" Nature " means: (a) on the one hand, the origin of things that develop - as will be suggested by saying? ????? long - and (b) elsewhere, the immanent thing from which the first growing thing begins to grow.
(c) The source from which the main movement in each natural object is induced in that object. All things are said to grow that increase through something else through contact and organic unity (or adhesion, as in the case of an embryo). Organic unity is different from contact; because in the latter case there is no need for anything but contact, but in both cases constituting organic unity there is one and the same that produces, not just contact, an organic, sustainable and quantitative (but not qualitative) entity. Again, "nature" means (d) the main, unformed and unchangeable things of its own potential, in which each natural object consists or from which it is produced; for example, bronze is called the "nature" of a statue and articles of bronze, and wood from wood, and also in all other cases. For each article consisting of these "traits", the main ingredient survives. In this sense humans refer to elements of natural objects as "nature", some call it fire, others on earth or in air or water, others are similar, others some of them, and others all. Again in another sense "nature" means
(e) the substance of natural objects; as in the case of those who say that "nature" is the main composition of a thing, or as Empedocles says: Nothing is there nature, but only mixture and separation from what has been mixed ; nature is just a name given by humans. Therefore regarding things that exist or are produced by nature, although from whence they are naturally produced or existed, we say that they do not yet have their properties unless they have their shape and form. It consists of both there naturally; such as animals and parts thereof. And nature is the main problem (and this is in two terms: either primary in relation to it, or primers in general; for example, in bronze articles the main material in relation to the article is bronze, but in general perhaps water - if all that can be melted is water) and the form or essence, that is the end of the process, of the generation. Indeed from this sense of "nature", with the expansion of meaning, every essence is generally called "nature", for whatever nature is a kind of essence. From what has been said, then, the main and precise sense of "nature" is the essence of things that contain themselves as the source of motion; for this problem is called "nature" because it is capable of accepting nature, and the process of generation and growth is called "nature" because they are movements that come from it. And nature in this sense is the source of motion in natural objects, somehow embedded in them, either potentially or in fact.
It has been argued, as will be explained below, that this type of theory represents an overly simplistic deviation from the debates in Classical philosophy, perhaps even Aristotle sees it as a simplification or a summary of the debate itself. But in any case the four-cause theory became a standard part of all advanced education in the Middle Ages.
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Modern science and natural law: trying to avoid metaphysics
Instead, Modern Science took a distinctive turn with Francis Bacon, who rejected four different causes, and saw Aristotle as someone who "did in the spirit of difference and contradiction of all ancient times: did not only to frame new words of science on pleasure, but to disrupt and extinguish all ancient wisdom ". He feels that the less well-known Greek philosophers such as Democritus "who did not think thoughts or reason in the frame of things", have been arrogantly rejected because Aristotelianism leads to a situation in his day where "the search for physical causes has been ignored, and passed in silence ".
So, Bacon suggests...
Physically conduct an investigation, and consider the same nature: but how? Just because of the material and efficient cause of them, and unlike its shape. As an example; if the cause of whiteness in snow or foam is asked, and it is so given that mixing the air and water subtypes is the cause, it is well administered; but, anyway, is this a white form? No; but it's efficient, ever but form vehiculumÃÆ'Â| . This part of metaphysics I do not find work and done...
In its Novum Organum Bacon it is argued that the only form or property that we should hypothesize is "simple" (as opposed to a compound) such as the ways in which heat, motion, etc. work. For example, in aphorism 51 he writes:
51. Human understanding, by its very nature, tends to be an abstraction, and presupposes what fluctuates for improvement. But it is better to dissect than the abstract; such is the method used by the school of Democritus, which makes greater progress in penetrating nature than others. It is best to consider the matter, its conformation, and the change of conformation, its own actions, and the law of this action or motion, since its form is mere fiction of the human mind, unless you will call the law of action by that name.
Following Bacon's suggestion, the scientific search for the formal cause of things is now replaced by the search for "natural law" or "laws of physics" in all scientific thought. To use Aristotle's famous terminology this is a description of the efficient cause, and not the formal cause or the ultimate cause. This means modern science limits its hypothesis of non-physical things by assuming that there is order in all things that do not change.
This general law, in other words, supersedes the notion of specific "laws", such as " human natural". In modern science, human nature is part of the same causal scheme, obeying the same general law, like everything else. The above-mentioned differences between coincidence and substantiality, and indeed knowledge and opinion, are also lost in this new approach aimed at avoiding metaphysics.
As Bacon knows, the term "natural law" is a term derived from medieval Aristotelianism. St. Thomas of Aquinas for example, defines the law so that nature is actually enacted to consciously achieve a goal, such as human law: "a rule of reason for the common good, made by him who has a concern for society and disseminated." By contrast, roughly contemporary with Bacon, Hugo Grotius describes the laws of nature as "rules that can be inferred from fixed principles by a definite process of reasoning". And then, Montesquieu goes even further from the metaphor of the original law, describing the law in vague terms as "the necessary relationship that comes from the nature of things".
One of the most important implementers of the Bacon proposal was Thomas Hobbes, whose remarks about nature are very well known. His most famous works, Leviathan, opens with the word "Nature" and then familiarizedly defines it as "the art in which God has created and governed the world". Despite this godly description, he follows Bacon's approach. Following his contemporary Descartes, Hobbes describes life itself as mechanical, caused in the same way as clockwork:
Because seeing life is only a limb movement, which was originally part of the principle; why do not we say, that all Automata (Machines that move themselves with springs and wheels as clocks) have a very beautiful life?
On this basis, already established in the natural sciences of his lifetime, Hobbes seeks to discuss human politics and life in terms of "natural law". But in the new modern approach of Bacon and Hobbes, and before them Machiavelli (who nevertheless never wrapped his critique of Aristotle's approach in medieval terms like "natural law"), such laws of nature differed greatly from human law: they ceased to imply more sense good or worse, but just how things really are, and, when referring to the laws of nature human , what kind of human behavior is most reliable.
"Late modern" nature
Having broken the term "natural law" from the first-century metaphor of man-made law, the term "natural law" is now used less than in early modern times.
To take a critical example of human nature, as discussed in ethics and politics, once early modern philosophers like Hobbes have described human nature as whatever you would expect from a mechanism called human beings, the point of talking about human nature becomes problematic in some contexts.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Rousseau took a critical step in the Second Discourse, arguing that human nature as we know it, rational, and with language, etc., is the result of historical accidents, and the disclosure of individuals. The consequences of this line of thought are enormous. It's all about nature. Consequently it is said that human nature, one of the most important kinds of nature in Aristotle's thought, does not exist as it is understood.
Metaphysical viability
Modern science approaches, such as the Aristotelian approach, do not seem to be universally accepted by all who accept the concept of nature as reality that we can pursue by reason.
Bacon and other opponents of Metaphysics claim that all attempts to transcend nature are bound in the same error, but Metaphysics itself sees the difference between different approaches.
Immanuel Kant for example, states the need for Metaphysics in terms quite similar to Aristotle.
... though we can not know these things as things in themselves, we must be in the least position to regard them as things within them; otherwise we should land in absurd conclusions that there can be appearances without anything that appears.
As in Aristotelianism, Kantianism claims that the human mind itself has characteristics that are out of nature, metaphysical, in some way. In particular, Kant argues that the human mind is ready to use with the programming of a priori , so to speak, which enables it to understand nature.
Study of nature without metaphysics
The author from Nietzche to Richard Rorty claims that science, the study of nature, can and should exist without metaphysics. But this claim is always controversial. Authors like Bacon and Hume never deny that the use of the word "nature" implies metaphysics, but tries to follow Machiavelli's approach to talking about what works, rather than claiming to understand what it seems impossible to understand.
See also
- A priori and a posteriori
- Aristotelianism
- Causality
- Empiricism
- Human nature
- Idealism
- Natural philosophy
- Nature
- Platonism
- Reality
- Truth
References
Bibliography
- Gerard Naddaf, Greek Natural Concept , New York State University of New York Press, 2005.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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