Nature as a thing made

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Cicero in his De Finibus puts this Stoic wisdom in the mouth of Cato:

“Nothing is more finished, more nicely ordered, than nature; but what is nature, what have the products of handicraft to show that is so well constructed, so firmly jointed and welded into one? Where do you find a conclusion inconsistent with its premise, or a discrepancy between an earlier and a later statement: Where is lacking such a close interconnection of the parts that, if you alter a single letter, you shake the whole structure? Though indeed there is nothing that it would be possible to alter.”

  • book III, 74

Thinking of how he compares nature favorably to man-made created things, handicrafts and arguments, one is immediately made aware of their contrast. But in considering Man as natural, one must understand as well, and perhaps more deeply, that the “flawed” arguments and handicrafts man makes, because they are the result of natural processes, also are without inconsistence with their premises, are also an interconnection of parts that lies beyond what it is that they are attempting to say.

Dunamis

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Consider this though. Man (insofar) has been the only being on the planet capable of breaking free of their equilibrium with nature. So, are we -really- part of the natural order?. When our self awareness or our place in the enviroment is realized, we break through any sense of ‘nature’.

In fact, if we can allow for the term ‘virus’ to apply to something which resides ‘outside’ of nature, we see that we share most the characterisitics. IE: Consume all resources before moving onto the next source. (<— vintage Matrix 1 eh?)

So yeah i guess this isn’t exactly an answer to your statement persay, but proposition that we are not ‘natural’ beings (anymore).

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…we haven’t “broken free of” any natural equilibrium. We simply haven’t reached our own natural equilibrium yet. Some estimate that the world population will reach an equilibrium at 20 some billion people. There will always be natural limitations on how much human beings can expand in this world or on other worlds.

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dunamis, i’m sure you are aware “nature” ment a rather speciffic thing for latins. it did not include man. it did not include the gods. it did not include neither logic nor any artefact.

nature was, more or less, a symbol for what you called “sense data” in an older thread.

his statement is really sheer surprise at the perceived coherence of sense data. he fails to see how this might be a problem of internal representation (an issue kant stabs at later on).

now, we ourselves are immediate to us ourselves, we do not [much] look at ourselves from outside. thus the problem you propose doesn’t make sense (to me)

i’m curious what philosophical rift will we discover between us this time.

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Zeno.,

dunamis, i’m sure you are aware “nature” ment a rather speciffic thing for latins. it did not include man. it did not include the gods. it did not include neither logic nor any artefact.

Firstly, I am abstracting from Cato’s observation of Nature, which stands on its own as a description, and applying it to the larger sense of what Nature is. One would have to explain to me exactly how “man” is not natural - without referring to the garden of Eden of course. :slight_smile:

Secondly, you certainly do make a sweeping generalization about “latins” and nature. This is a Stoic argument, which sees the goal of man as wisely following what is natural, anchored by the over-riding desire to preserve oneself. The cause and its effect pervades everywhere universally. The universe is determined in Stoicism: "Though indeed there is nothing that it would be possible to alter.”. Man simply must identify the natural course and follow it, even though this act also is determined.

By ‘fate’, I mean what the Greeks call heimarmenê – an ordering and sequence of causes, since it is the connexion of cause to cause which out of itself produces anything. … Consequently nothing has happened which was not going to be, and likewise nothing is going to be of which nature does not contain causes working to bring that very thing about. This makes it intelligible that fate should be, not the ‘fate’ of superstition, but that of physics, an everlasting cause of things – why past things happened, why present things are now happening, and why future things will be.

Cicero, On divination 1.125–6

As to whether the gods or man are part of nature consider this, although this seems already included in the “nothing is going to be” above:

“Again, they hold that the universe (mundum) is governed by divine will; it is a city or state of which both men and gods are members, and each one of us is a part of this universe; from which it is a natural consequence that we should prefer the common advantage to our own.”

Cicero, De Finibus Bk III, 64

The explicit separation you suggest between the world, man and gods seems not to be there at all in Stoicism.

thus the problem you propose doesn’t make sense (to me)

I wasn’t aware I was proposing a problem.

Dunamis

6

well, you were saying

“Thinking of how he compares nature favorably to man-made created things, handicrafts and arguments, one is immediately made aware of their contrast. But in considering Man as natural, one must understand as well, and perhaps more deeply, that the “flawed” arguments and handicrafts man makes, because they are the result of natural processes, also are without inconsistence with their premises, are also an interconnection of parts that lies beyond what it is that they are attempting to say.”

which read to me as an “however, if we take cicero’s view about nature, and blurr the line between what he ment by nature and what he ment by man, we apparently have built ourselves a dilemma, which seems to point that everything we do is well done, and left-fieldly solves all problems of identity and free wil”

we could i suppose get into an argument about what “nature” did and did not mean to the latin mind. but i will first cry foul.

you quote cicero. he happens to be one of the pillars of a certain way of life, and of thinking. much like jefferson happens to be one of the pillars of a certain way of life, and of thinking. now if we were discussing jefferson, due to the sheer familiarity of most people around here with the subject (well at least relatively), and i would have said “the americans this or that”, it would have been obvious i mean no sweeping generalisation of everyone living on either american continent at any point in time, but rather they of the same mind, and close time that count as the “classical” examples. there exists no “founding fathers” phrase to refer to my group of latins. i call them latins and hope you understand what i mean. instead you point out “sweeping generalization”. thanks. being cultivated is great. being smart is just as great. using both to the best of your ability to miss a point is childish.

you don’t say a word about my actual contention. nature as sense data. to the latins, astrophysics was not the study of nature. electromagnetics, magnetic resonance, theory of waves was not the study of nature. microparticles were certainly not the study of nature, and quantic phenomena even less. therefore things like chaos theory would have been perfectly wasted on the inquisitive latin mind.

nature was the “visible spectrum” of a rather broad range of manifestations. ie that which we can immediately perceive. man, and god, and a few others are not in there.

now do me the favor of reading my post as if you wanted to understand what i say, as opposed to wanting to not understand what i say.

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Zeno,

and i would have said “the americans this or that”,

Unfortunately your generalization about the “latin” conception of nature doesn’t seem correct. You can generalize all you want, but at least produce an accurate, applicable observation. The reason this is sweeping though is that the foundation of all these ideas is not “latin”, but “greek”, a point which Cicero is at great pains to make.

using both to the best of your ability to miss a point is childish.

I still don’t get your point, or from where you derive it. Clearly the quotes show that your “latins see the world this way or that way” is not correct.

nature was the “visible spectrum” of a rather broad range of manifestations. ie that which we can immediately perceive. man, and god, and a few others are not in there.

Please tell me where you get this universal understanding. Again, clearly the “world” and “nature” of the two quotes are in reference to the same things. The “ordered”, “interconnection of parts", of the “whole structure” in the first quote refers to not some god and man excluding thing, but the “nothing is going to be of which nature does not contain causes working to bring that very thing about”, and the “why past things happened, why present things are now happening, and why future things will be”.

now do me the favor of reading my post as if you wanted to understand what i say, as opposed to wanting to not understand what i say.

Now that I have read your post please explain, in reference to Stoic philosophy, where you get your understanding, and in what way the Stoics saw god and man as distinct from nature. I get your point, it is simply wrong in this case, and actually works to confuse the central point of Stoic philosophy, that reason helps man to better understand the necessary laws that govern him, the gods and nature.

Dunamis