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Single Idea 5113

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

Full Idea

Nothing natural - nothing due to nature - is disorderly, because in all things nature is responsible for order.

Gist of Idea

Nothing natural is disorderly, because nature is responsible for all order

Source

Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 252a11)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Physics', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1996], p.189

A Reaction

This sounds dangerously tautological. What is responsible for disorder? If a forest is smashed up by an earthquake, 'order' doesn't sound like a good description of the result. It is certainly no more orderly than if people smash the forest.

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]