Talk:Nature (philosophy)

message: This discussion copied to here from Talk:Philosophy of nature, which now redirects to here. ... Kenosis 01:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

message: Should this be merged with Natural Philosophy? Or, perhaps to keep the distinction, this new article should be re-named Nature (Philosophy)?--Andrew Lancaster 15:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not opposed to a re-delegation of content, or renaming of some kind.  Previously content was removed by ScienceApologist and this article was made into a redirect.  I think all this should be patiently clarified as to what these topics mean, or say, and should be delegated accordingly.  Right now Natural Philosophy is approximately on the right track, meaning that it speaks to what is commonly understood as natural philosophy by persons knowledgeable in this area.  The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan,1967 8-vol. set & supp (1996) has a fairly good article on "Nature, Philosophical Ideas of", for example.  So it's a valid topic in its own right as differentiated from "natural philosophy".  I wouldn't be opposed to redirecting a new page titled Nature (philosophy) to here, or vice-versa. ... Kenosis 16:05, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure how do it, but can you change this article to "Nature (Philosophy)"?--Andrew Lancaster 14:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi again, Andrew. Insofar as there can quite legitimately be separate topic forks on Nature, Philosophy of nature, Nature (philosophy) and Natural philosophy, this can readily be done for the present, making adaptations as the content develops.  I want to make an NPOV cautionary note here, being familiar with the basic debate within philosophy and the history of it.  Andrew, you have been taking a very stong POV slant on the topic which is an a priori bias.  It will not stand up ultimately, unless balanced in the context of the debate between Plato and Aristotle, between the late neo-Platonic and Aristotlean a posteriori thinkers such as Ibn Rushd and Aquinas, between the continental rationalists and empiricists, and so forth.  Please also recall that there are two additional cardinal rules on WP, which are WP:VER and WP:NOR.  Many of the edits you've offered, some of which can still be readily seen in the content of Philosophy of nature, are musings and synthetic ideas that are unsourced and plainly are attempts to superimpose an idea of the a-priori forms on concepts for which those who developed the concepts had abandoned the Platonic ideas, such as in your repeated references to "forms" in direct relationship to "modern science".  The solution to the a-priori/a-posteriori dilemma requires an understanding of obscure thinkers like Kant, deSaussure, Peirce and others to sort it out, and indeed this debate is still not settled today,  But please don't impose this POV on the content of "nature"-related articles, because what you've been putting forth here just ain't so, and it is extremely apparent that you'll need to dig in with more research of your own and get a more well-developed handle on that ongoing debate through the many centuries and respect both "sides" of it.  So I definitely would look forward to seeing your offerings to WP based on that anticipated growth of your own knowledge on the general subject area of history of philosophy. But, heck, I'm just one editor here-- just happen to be dwelling around these parts of WP presently. ... Kenosis 15:51, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which part of the content do you propose to move over to Nature (philosophy)? ... Kenosis 15:51, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have moved the entire content over to Nature (philosophy) and made this into a redirect for the present. ... Kenosis 01:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

text: What is explained in the article is that modern science emphasizes the importance of direct observation. I do not see the article you mention as disagreeing with this, but only adding something to the complexity? Am I missing something?Andrew Lancaster 10:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Before splitting the article please note the history of this article and other related ones: basically, this aricle is already split off from Nature and it still retains some reference to other meanings. The reason I think me and others have been cautious at this point is because the article has to be coherant. What I found was that as soon as we removed references to "the second meaning" complaints increased. By the way it is connected of course. Andrew Lancaster 10:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Physis is the Greek word for nature, but Heracleitus obviously used his term logos in a very special way. This does not mean he disagrees that there is a nature. I suggest you improve the article on logos. That the meaning of "nature" or physis has changed over time, and has indeed always involved debate, is of course explained in the article already, but it seems very fundamentally wrong to suggest that physis is not the Greek word for nature. There is a steady history from the first discussions to the modern ones. As to your last claim, please find the dissenters if you can. At last the main stream of Greek philosophers and authors used the term in one way, and that is all the article means to suggest?Andrew Lancaster 10:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: RE "Your history of nature jumps from Plato to modernity without intervention?": Agreed. There is a great deal of work to be done here to go from Bacon's peculiar Platonism through to modernity. ... Kenosis 17:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eastern alternatives to the concept of Nature can be linked to, instead of filling this article. Roger Bacon and other medievals took the classical position concerning nature. If they are relevent, it is in the way that their monotheism sharpened the surpernatural/natural debate, which is already much discussed in the article. Every wikipedia article I have seen on any philosophical subject has a tendency to grow incrementally until unreadable because everyone wants to put in extra subjects and show the breadth of their knowledge.Andrew Lancaster 09:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  new article, but lots of over-laps? 

message: Argh!!  Exactly what "nature" means, and what the natural/supernatural distinction is supposed to be is a huge source of contention, and has been a problem on many other wikipedia pages.  You need citations, citations, citations, and beware of POV.  Even within the Naturalist camp you can get into lots of fine distinction trouble.  Is it all of the physical universe or just the "directly observable" parts?  Are you denying confirmational holism as part of the definition of natural? Bmorton3 15:16, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What is explained in the article is that modern science emphasizes the importance of direct observation. I do not see the article you mention as disagreeing with this, but only adding something to the complexity? Am I missing something?Andrew Lancaster 10:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Before splitting the article please note the history of this article and other related ones: basically, this aricle is already split off from Nature and it still retains some reference to other meanings. The reason I think me and others have been cautious at this point is because the article has to be coherant. What I found was that as soon as we removed references to "the second meaning" complaints increased. By the way it is connected of course. Andrew Lancaster 10:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Physis is the Greek word for nature, but Heracleitus obviously used his term logos in a very special way. This does not mean he disagrees that there is a nature. I suggest you improve the article on logos. That the meaning of "nature" or physis has changed over time, and has indeed always involved debate, is of course explained in the article already, but it seems very fundamentally wrong to suggest that physis is not the Greek word for nature. There is a steady history from the first discussions to the modern ones. As to your last claim, please find the dissenters if you can. At last the main stream of Greek philosophers and authors used the term in one way, and that is all the article means to suggest?Andrew Lancaster 10:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: RE "Your history of nature jumps from Plato to modernity without intervention?": Agreed. There is a great deal of work to be done here to go from Bacon's peculiar Platonism through to modernity. ... Kenosis 17:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eastern alternatives to the concept of Nature can be linked to, instead of filling this article. Roger Bacon and other medievals took the classical position concerning nature. If they are relevent, it is in the way that their monotheism sharpened the surpernatural/natural debate, which is already much discussed in the article. Every wikipedia article I have seen on any philosophical subject has a tendency to grow incrementally until unreadable because everyone wants to put in extra subjects and show the breadth of their knowledge.Andrew Lancaster 09:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lots of comments

message: I have tried to address some of the concerns that were raised in a couple of edits. I hope it makes more sense?--Andrew Lancaster 13:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A new look 

message: Probably I could have put this under two separate headings but here goes.
This looks like a good article, but it is totally lacking in cited sources.  That should clearly be put way up on the agenda for improving this article.
Secondly, when this article was changed to a new title, the history of the original article was not carried over to the new title.  Could someone involved with the change get that done.
Thanks and good luck. --SteveMcCluskey 23:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources and History 

message: This article originally split off from the Nature article because some of the concepts seemed to go too far into philosophy for some people working on that article. However, that article was a mess at the time, and in my opinion this was a big part of the reasons it was so difficult to integrate all the subjects. That article is now much better, although it has perhaps once again become too expansive - although now in other directions. The obvious question is whether the best parts of the now somewhat scrappy Nature (Philosophy) article might perhaps be able to be salvaged into the main Nature article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update on this article. Should it be re-merged to Nature? 

message: I'll keep it short. This article and another one, Philosophy of Nature, come out of the same evolution, having split off from the Nature article. I have been working on Philosophy of Nature recently, and now I propose it as the new article to replace/merge with Nature (Philosophy). I think it contains everything which was self-contained and worth keeping?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:45, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet another merger proposal 

message: It's a little problematic that this article jumps from Classical thought to Modern thought while entirely by-passing the Middle Ages. The concept of 'nature' is one of the central concerns of the scholastics, and the debates surrounding it are deeply ingrained in medieval culture. ANB (talk) 14:46, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a discussion of nature in the Middle Ages at Mother Nature. Green Cardamom (talk) 16:39, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not see one there?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:30, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Middle Ages

message: How about a section on more recent revivals of the concept of nature? Two figures that deserve to be included (that I can think of off the top of my head) are Hans Jonas and Brian David Ellis. JKeck (talk) 23:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I just think no one has gotten around to it? Why not make some concrete attempt to add in something about this? I think that the current section on "The Study of Nature without Metaphysics" could be expanded. What you describe as a revival of the concept of nature might be better described as a reaction against naive anti-metaphysics such as what you seem to refer to as positivism below? (The "positivists" would deny that they do not believe in nature.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Contemporary Scene? 

message: What's really odd about this article's quotations of Aristotle is that they all come from Metaphysics and not what is ostensibly his work on Nature, Physics. (For example, he discusses nature and the four causes in Physics II.) Such a division in terminology colors the article with the old positivist prejudice: "physics" = new, good; "metaphysics" = old, bad. The real situation is more complicated than that simplistic bifurcation. JKeck (talk) 05:24, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is a complicated subject. Do you have any specific practical suggestions? On the one hand, we must avoid making the article unreadable, or overly about details. On the other hand, please keep in mind that when you talk about Nature as a whole or in the abstract, this is metaphysics, because you are attempting to look at nature from outside so to speak. So there is nothing odd about this article citing that work of Aristotle. It is the most relevant one in some ways. The division between physics and metaphysics is of course Aristotle's and a traditional one, not something made up. You are right to imply that not everyone accepts this way of dividing things up (and the article as written currently reflects that) but you are wrong to say that this is a positivist prejudice. You do question the worth of metaphysics yourself by questioning its separation from physics. If metaphysics (talking about nature overall) is not separable from physics then you are effectively saying you think the whole concept of a deliberate separate study of metaphysics is questionable. Such questioning goes back long before the positivists, and was for example quite clear in Machiavelli and even more clear in Bacon. They were not however naive enough to claim that they could do physics without any implied metaphysics at all. Claiming that nature works effectively in regular way, as if by laws, is a kind of simple metaphysics. But the point is that they are deliberately keeping the assumptions simple and unobjectionable. Currently, the article does not in any way imply that questioning metaphysics is a positivist idea, and I think it should stay that way? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:24, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Physics vs. "Metaphysics" 

message: There is no talk on the eastern philosophy section, despite its many attention tags. Reading through the whole article I find the first section the heaviest to read (though informative), middle sections most accessible, but this last section tricky and made harder with all the tags. It could be an idea to rearrange and economise its tags a bit. I see it could be quite tricky to harmonise with the rest of the article. Perhaps it could be summarised here and moved to its own article. Lisnabreeny (talk) 03:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Eastern philosophy section

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thread_title: File:Thomas Hobbes (portrait).jpg Nominated for Deletion

message: This article is not written in an understandable modern style. Particularly I am concerned by the Classical nature & Aristotle section. At the very least it should be good English - some sentences v poorly structured, maybe through editing.
Ej 92.15.85.247 (talk) 19:01, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Philosophical subjects are often not easy, including classical ones which involve trying to explains ways of thinking that are now very hard to follow. But of course if there are sentences which are bad English we should fix them (as long as this does not change the meaning).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:06, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarity