what is nature?

Answer 1

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The term generally does not include manufactured objects and human interaction unless qualified in ways such as, e.g., "human nature" or "the whole of nature". Nature is also generally distinguished from the spiritual or supernatural. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the galactic.

The word "nature" derives from the Latin word natura, or "the course of things, natural character." Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the innate way in which plants and animals grow of their own accord, and to the Greek word for plants generally. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is a more recent development that gained increasingly wide use with the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.

Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" may refer to the general realm of various types of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects – the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness – wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the latter being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human or human-like consciousness or mind.-

Answer 2

The way the term 'nature' or 'natural' is used, one might infer that they are meaningless - that everything is nature. Some turkey producers consider it natural to inject their meat with saline solution, because salt water is a part of nature, for example. There are other interesting arguments about these terms as well. So let's take a closer look:

There is a nature that people refer to when they want to 'get back to nature'. This nature, I think, is seen as an 'unspoilt' wilderness. One with vegetation, animals, natural terrain features, weather, and the interplay thereof. If any of these were missing, it would seem 'unnatural'. Nature might therefore be seen as what would be were it not for human interference.

Yet there is also a 'human nature' as well. After all, it wasn't human activity that caused humans to be. And just as building dams is natural for beavers, so are certain activities natural to humans. So nature can't just be a state of non-humans or non-human-interference. Yet if we accept all human activities as natural, then we are left with a non-definition, in that first we excluded all human activity and then we included it all.

So clearly some human activity is 'unnatural' and some is 'natural'. I think that in use, the line between the two is sometimes a little fuzzy. But I think we can also pin it down a little further:

A personal who is 'acting naturally' is behaving without influence or pretence. They are uncontrolled and truthful. An instant reaction is usually percieved as a more natural one, while one produced after long rumination may not be. This leads to an interesting possibility... that THOUGHT is what is construed as unnatural.

And all humour aside about how little most people think anyway, I think this is a pretty good definition. Nature is what occurs and exists in the observable world without forethought. Anything that is planned is unnatural, but anything that is instinctive is natural. Thus human dams are unnatural, even though beaver dams are quite natural.

That's what I'm going to go with until I get a better definition. Peace.

Answer 3

"Nature" is just the universe itself. Everything that happens. I think of the word nature as being short for "the nature of the universe."

Answer 4

Nature is what doesn't require human contribution other than from the receiving end.

Answer 5

According to my dictionary its, "the material world as a whole".

But a "naturalist", is "one who studies plants and animals".

Answer 6

Us

Answer 7

look out the window.