"Natural" redirects. For other uses, see Natural (disambiguation)

Nature, in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, or material world oruniverse. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part ofscience. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena.

The wordnatureis derived from the Latinword natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition",and in ancient times, literally meant "birth".[1]Naturais a Latin translation of the Greek wordphysis(φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord.[2][3]The concept of nature as a whole,the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage continued during the advent of modern scientific methodin the last several centuries.

Within the various uses of the word today,"nature" often refers to geology and wildlife. Nature can refer to the general realm 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. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness–wild animals, rocks, forest, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. For example, manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature" or "the whole of nature". This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the artificial being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousnessor a human mind. Depending on the particular context, the term "natural" might also be distinguished from the unnaturalor the supernatural.