Nature (philosophy)

Thales believed that nature, as physis, was the natural process by which something came to be what it is.

Etymology of nature as “physis”

The word “nature”, in a philosophical sense, is equivalent to the Greek physis. In ancient Greek, physis It means both “grow” and “sprouting” and “action of growing.”. It indicates, in a double sense, dynamism as movement.

The double meaning of physis must be understood, on the one hand, as sprout, grow or push, highlighting the idea of ​​process, of universal movement and, on the other, as the original source from which things develop.

In turn, the greek term physis It has its origins in Indo-European roots bhu, bha and bheu. Bhu It is a Sanskrit word that means “to be born,” “to be produced,” and “to sprout.” Also, as a noun, it means place or state.

Thus, and due to its etymological origin, nature (from the Latin nascor either I was born) as physis It must be understood as being born and, in turn, generating. It is what makes it grow and what grows, an ambiguity that is captured in the word “sprout.”

Nature in philosophy

nature as physis It is located at the beginning of philosophy. The pre-Socratic philosophers, that is, those who lived before Socrates, were the first to ask about the physis.

It is considered that The investigations of the pre-Socratic philosophers into nature were projects that wanted to explain all of reality.. They thought of reality as the result of a process whose beginning would have been a single first substance.

This explanation of the physis placed nature as a all. These philosophers thought of the cosmos as a whole and wanted to understand everything that participated in it:

• cosmogenesis. The configuration of the universe.
• biogenesis. The origin and constitution of living beings.
• Anthropogenesis. The origin and constitution of human beings as a specific species.

Of these three points, cosmogenesis is the one that has the most relationship with nature as physis. The pre-Socratics' search for the configuration of the cosmos led them to think about reality as the result of a process that started from one or more primordial realities.

Thus, many pre-Socratic philosophers postulated different elements or substances as candidates for these primordial realities. Anaximander, for example, maintained that this principle was the apeironwhich was an indeterminate element. Thales, for his part, believed it was water. The Stoics, on the other hand, related the physis with fire

Heraclitus was a particular case among the Stoics, since he postulated, on the one hand, fire as the origin of physisbut at the same time, logos as that which regulated the entire universe.

Such, physis and arkhe

Thales of Miletus (624-548 BC) was the first philosopher who introduced and related the concepts of physis (nature as a whole) and arkhé (principle of things) in philosophy. While, for Thales, the physis indicated the natural process by which something became what it is, the arkhe It was the beginning, the origin from which all things sprang. For Thales, the arkhé of the physis It was water, an element that he postulated as the beginning and origin of all things, since it was what could give life to everything that is.

In classical Greek, the arché (ἀρχή) is the “beginning” or “origin” of everything that isboth in a temporal sense and as an ontological foundation (founding principle of beings). For Thales of Miletus, the constitutive principle of the world, in the sense of physiswas water, and that is why he maintained that all things were made of water.

Another notion that the Ionian philosophers developed was that of cosmosin the sense of “universal order.” Both the arkhe like him cosmos respond to the ideas of principle and orderwhich account for the starting point of nature and its final result.

The three senses of physis

In the idea of ​​nature as physis There are three elements present:

• The idea of ​​process or development.
• The starting point or beginning.
• The fulfillment of development.

These three senses are configured and related to give a philosophical meaning to the notion of nature as physis. This philosophical meaning, however, is not unique. The meaning varies depending on the context, the time and the author.

In some cases, the notion of nature is confusing. In pre-philosophical literature (as in the case of Odysseyby Homer), for example, there is an idea of physis as reality as opposed to external appearance. This happens in the work of Heraclitus, who states that “physis “he likes to hide.” This means that the true reality (or nature) of things is not what is apparent, but what is hidden. This same sense is what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger took up in the 20th century.

Another possible meaning for physis It is that of being the material from which something is made. In this sense, refers to the substance or substrate of which things are made. This sense is related to the idea of arkhesince it refers to the substance from which all things start.

A third possible meaning for physis is that of genesis, generation or birth. This is the sense that physis adopted in some passages of Parmenides' poem, as well as in some fragments of Empedocles. Thus understood, the physis It is the process by which new beings arise or come into existence.

In general, It is argued that in pre-Socratic works, the term physisin reference to nature, includes all the senses indicated. Whether we talk about origin, beginning, generation, end or substrate, nature and physis It is a polysemic concept whose richness expands the philosophical meaning given to it in each of its uses.

References

• Escohotado, A. (1975). From physis to polis. The Ambush.
• Martínez, TC (2000). The notion of Physis in the origins of Greek philosophy. Daimon International Journal of Philosophy, (21), 21-38.
• Livov, G. (2007). Nature and politics: to think about the concept of physis in the Aristotelian philosophy of the polis. Philosophical knowledge. Ancient and Modern, 1, 296-308.
• BARRIONUEVO-CHEBEL, DM (2016). ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.