Legitimacy and existence of philosophy of nature?

Does philosophy of nature belong to the past ? Or else can it be said that today it is an essential scientific and metaphysic requirement ? If one chooses realism, if one thinks that the human spirit is capable of distinguishing, among its intellectual constructions, those which faithfully represent natural processes from those which are only logically coherent, then in the light of science one must try to draw up a rational vision of the world. Such is the task proposed by the philosophy of nature. This collection,of articles aims at illustrating the history of this problem, suggesting what might be the exploration of natural possibilities and indicating how cosmology might help us to think about our place in the universe.