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Single Idea 5092

[filed under theme 26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 1. Nature ]

Full Idea

Nature is the subject of our enquiry, and nature is a principle of change, so if we do not understand the process of change, we will not understand nature either.

Gist of Idea

Nature is a principle of change, so we must understand change first

Source

Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 200b12)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Physics', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1996], p.56

A Reaction

This is a very distinctively Greek attitude which doesn't seem to concern us much, but perhaps it should. Movement is just as fundamental as forces, particles and the rest that physicist talk about. Why do particles respond to forces?

The 34 ideas with the same theme [everything existing in known reality]:

589 'Nature' is just a word invented by people [Empedocles]
454 If there are many things they must have a finite number, but there must be endless things between them [Zeno of Elea]
310 The creator of the cosmos had no envy, and so wanted things to be as like himself as possible [Plato]
311 The cosmos must be unique, because it resembles the creator, who is unique [Plato]
1740 Nature does nothing in vain [Aristotle]
632 Why are some things destructible and others not? [Aristotle]
5085 'Nature' refers to two things - form and matter [Aristotle]
5092 Nature is a principle of change, so we must understand change first [Aristotle]
5113 Nothing natural is disorderly, because nature is responsible for all order [Aristotle]
3556 Stoic 'nature' is deterministic, physical and teleological [Stoic school, by Annas]
5716 Nature runs the universe by herself without the aid of gods [Lucretius]
2652 Some regard nature simply as an irrational force that imparts movement [Cicero]
18456 Unified real existence is neither great nor small, though greatness and smallness participate in it [Porphyry]
15987 Physics only needs geometry or abstract mathematics, which can explain and demonstrate everything [Descartes]
19676 Nature is devoid of thought [Descartes, by Meillassoux]
17190 We can easily think of nature as one individual [Spinoza]
15997 We are so far from understanding the workings of natural bodies that it is pointless to even try [Locke]
19429 The principle of determination in things obtains the greatest effect with the least effort [Leibniz]
22053 The Critique of Judgement aims for a principle that unities humanity and nature [Kant, by Bowie]
8256 Kant identifies nature with the scientific picture of it as the realm of law [Kant, by McDowell]
22052 Kant's nature is just a system of necessary laws [Bowie on Kant]
3779 Unnatural, when it means anything, means infrequent [Bentham]
19595 Nature is a whole, and its individual parts cannot be wholly understood [Novalis]
22065 Fichte reduces nature to a lifeless immobility [Schlegel,F on Fichte]
23229 Nature is wholly interconnected, and the tiniest change affects everything [Fichte]
4347 When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel]
22057 Schelling sought a union between the productivities of nature and of the mind [Schelling, by Bowie]
22031 Schelling made organisms central to nature, because mere mechanism could never produce them [Schelling, by Pinkard]
4179 The essence of nature is the will to life itself [Schopenhauer]
17649 If the world is one it has many aspects, and if there are many worlds they will collect into one [Goodman]
15822 The concept of physical necessity is basic to both causation, and to the concept of nature [Chisholm]
17305 I take what is fundamental to be the whole spatiotemporal manifold and its fields [Schaffer,J]
7478 Greek philosophers invented the concept of 'nature' as their special subject [Watson]
22198 Aristotelian physics has circular celestial motion and linear earthly motion [Gorham]