The concept of nature. Historical and epistemological aspects

Nature is a key word in the history of European thought-in science, philosophy and theology. Already presocratic philosophy, which we take to be the beginnings of scientific thinking, wrote largely about nature-piepsilonrhoiota phiupsilonsigmaepsilonomegasigma-, de natura -, and its expounders wrote about thunder and lightning, solar eclipses, earthquakes and magnetic phenomena, but also about coming to be and passing away and about the essence of things. Philosophy began as philosophy of nature, and the subject matter of this philosophy of nature included both the things of nature and the nature of things. This means in turn that scientific, epistemological, and metaphysical aspects are closely associated in the concept of nature; and this applies not only to the beginnings of science, epistemology, and metaphysics, but also to their later histories. In the following I shall discuss different concepts of nature which, in the history of science and philosophy of nature, have let to different world pictures: the Aristotle-world, the Hermes-world, the Newton-world, and the Einstein-world. In these worlds, and in a Heisenberg- and a Darwin-world as well, nature, which in the beginning was imagined as the imperishable being that stands behind all realities, begins to dissolve into scientific constructs.