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nature

 
Dictionary: na·ture   (nā'chər) pronunciation
 
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n.
  1. The material world and its phenomena.
  2. The forces and processes that produce and control all the phenomena of the material world: the laws of nature.
  3. The world of living things and the outdoors: the beauties of nature.
  4. A primitive state of existence, untouched and uninfluenced by civilization or artificiality: couldn't tolerate city life anymore and went back to nature.
  5. Theology. Humankind's natural state as distinguished from the state of grace.
  6. A kind or sort: confidences of a personal nature.
  7. The essential characteristics and qualities of a person or thing: “She was only strong and sweet and in her nature when she was really deep in trouble” (Gertrude Stein).
  8. The fundamental character or disposition of a person; temperament: “Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill” (Percy Bysshe Shelley).
  9. The natural or real aspect of a person, place, or thing. See synonyms at disposition.
  10. The processes and functions of the body.

[Middle English, essential properties of a thing, from Old French, from Latin nātūra, from nātus, past participle of nāscī, to be born.]


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Thesaurus: nature
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noun

  1. The totality of all existing things: cosmos, creation, macrocosm, universe, world. See matter, part/whole.
  2. A class that is defined by the common attribute or attributes possessed by all its members: breed, cast, description, feather, ilk, kind2, lot, manner, mold, order, sort, species, stamp, stripe, type, variety. Informal persuasion. See group.
  3. The combination of emotional, intellectual, and moral qualities that distinguishes an individual: character, complexion, disposition, makeup, personality. See be.
  4. A basic trait or set of traits that define and establish the character of something: being, essence, essentiality, quintessence, substance, texture. See surface/depth.
  5. A person's customary manner of emotional response: complexion, disposition, humor, temper, temperament. See be.

 
Geography Dictionary: nature
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‘a leisure-time concept…something to be consumed…As labour seeks relief from a degrading relation to nature in the workplace, so capital seeks to…[transform that search] into a mystified relation to nature in the consumption sphere’ (D. Harvey 1985). See commodification.

 
Philosophy Dictionary: nature
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An indefinitely mutable term, changing as our scientific conception of the world changes, and often best seen as signifying a contrast with something considered not part of nature. The term applies both to individual species (it is the nature of gold to be dense or of dogs to be friendly), and also to the natural world as a whole. The sense in which it applies to species quickly links up with ethical and aesthetic ideals: a thing ought to realize its nature; what is natural is what it is good for a thing to become; it is natural for humans to be healthy or two-legged, and departure from this is a misfortune or deformity. The association of what is natural with what it is good to become is visible in Plato, and is the central idea of Aristotle's philosophy of nature. Unfortunately the pinnacle of nature in this sense is the mature adult male citizen, with the rest of what we would call the natural world, including women, slaves, children, and other species, not quite making it.

Nature in general can, however, function as a foil to any ideal as much as a source of ideals: in this sense fallen nature is contrasted with a supposed celestial realization of the forms. The Galilean world view might have been expected to drain nature of its ethical content, but the term seldom loses its normative force, and the belief in universal natural laws provided its own set of ideals. In the 18th century, for example, a painter or writer could be praised as natural, where the qualities expected would include normal (‘universal’) topics treated with simplicity, economy, regularity, and harmony. Later on, nature becomes an equally potent emblem of irregularity, wildness, and fertile diversity, but also associated with progress and transformation (see absolute idealism, Romanticism). Contrasts with nature may include (i) that which is deformed or grotesque, or fails to achieve its proper form or function, or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar; (ii) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies; (iii) the world of rationality and intelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order; (iv) that which is manufactured and artificial, or the product of human intervention; (v) related to that, the world of convention and artifice.

Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones: for example, the conception of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ often provides a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is women's nature to be one thing or another is taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. Here the term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotypes, and is a proper target of much feminist writing. See also Darwinism, environmental ethics, natural law, Naturphilosophie, sociobiology.

 
History 1450-1789: Nature
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Nature is often taken to be the reality of the physical and material world. It is placed in opposition to culture, the product of human intervention and production. Yet historians recognize that nature is actually a product of human culture—a complex concept that has changed according to the views of particular individuals and cultures in history. Nature can be thought of in terms of its components—for example, the cosmos or material substances—and it can be conceptualized as an entity in itself. In both respects the early modern era marked numerous controversies concerning the nature of nature and concerning the makeup and behavior of its constituent components.

Aristotelian Nature

Any investigation of the idea of nature in the early modern era must take into account the Aristotelian framework that was defended well into the seventeenth century. Aristotle explicated his views on nature (physis in Greek) in the second book of Physics, in the seventh book of Metaphysics, and in the first book of Parts of Animals. He considered the natural and the artificial to be distinctly separate entities. Animals, plants, and the four Aristotelian elements—earth, air, fire, and water—exist by nature. A natural thing has an essence that makes it a genuine kind of species. It possesses the principle of movement or change and rest within itself. This principle can entail local motion, that is, growth and shrinkage, or qualitative changes, that is, modifications. Nature is the distinct form of things that have within themselves the principle of motion. That form moves toward its final cause or goal, for the sake of which it exists. In contrast, art can imitate nature but can never be natural. Artificial things do not have a principle of motion. Any change to a fabricated object is accomplished by the actions of an external agent. A tree grows by nature, whereas a house must be built by a builder. Art is separate from nature and is always inferior to it.

The Aristotelian natural world, described most completely in Aristotle's On the Heavens, was made up of two spheres, the sublunar and the supralunar. In the sublunar sphere matter consisted of four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—each of which had a tendency to move to its natural place. Earthly bodies, for example, tended to move down toward the center of the Earth, whereas fiery bodies tended to move up. Motion contrary to such natural motion, as when a stone (made of the element earth) was thrown upward, was unnatural or violent. The region above the Moon was made up of the quintessential element that was entirely different from the four sublunar elements. This fifth element was unchanging and perfect. Its natural motion was circular. Aristotle argued that the elements that made up the cosmos were eternal, rather than created. Matter was continuous. The universe was not infinite but limited, the cosmos was circular, and the Earth was at rest in the center.

Early modern scholars and natural philosophers were thoroughly schooled in the principles of the Aristotelian natural world and in the complex traditions of commentary and discussion that surrounded it. The Aristotelian corpus provided the foundation of the university curriculum. Natural philosophy, which included both the physical and the life sciences, was particularly emphasized in the Italian universities, where it was considered prerequisite to the study of medicine.

Particular discoveries or interpretations that arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries undermined the entire Aristotelian edifice of nature. The heliocentric system of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) provided an alternative to Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology but also subverted the Aristotelian doctrine of the natural place of the element earth. Galileo Galilei's (1564–1642) comparison of the surface of the Moon to that of the Earth and his discovery of the moons of Jupiter suggested that the supralunar realm was identical to the sublunar. Observations of comets and sunspots suggested novelty in the heavens rather than the presence of an unchanging quintessential element.

Humanism, Platonism, and the New Philosophies of Nature

Renaissance humanism entailed an intellectual movement focused on moral philosophy, history, and rhetoric that included an intense interest in antiquity and the desire to restore Latin to the language of Cicero. By the late fifteenth century humanists had begun to influence the university curriculum. In their rediscovery and extensive study of ancient texts, they reedited the works of Aristotle and brought other ancient works into view. For example, Lucretius's atomism, explicated in the newly discovered On the Nature of Things, could be set against the Aristotelian doctrine of continuous matter. The many Neoplatonic texts that became available from the late fifteenth century provided a basis for the development of new philosophies of nature.

In the Theologia Platonica (1482; Platonic theology) Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) posited the universe as a hierarchy of being in which a rational soul (that included the human soul within it) was at the center of the universe between the perceptible corporeal world and the noncorporeal intelligible one. Ficino believed that the cosmos and its forces exhibited numerous correspondences among all the different levels. Other natural philosophers, influenced by Ficinian Platonism, developed innovative visions of the natural order. Bernardino Telesio (1509–1588) postulated that the principles of heat and cold constituted the causes of all earthly processes, while the Sun, a unique natural fire, provided the underlying motive force. Telesio's system of nature was characterized by "the living character of everything and the consequent connections between man and the cosmos" (Ingegno, p. 252). Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) endorsed the Copernican system of Earth moving around the Sun but went beyond Copernicus in his description of an infinite universe of innumerable solar systems in which the elemental processes were everywhere the same. Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597) wrote an immense encyclopedia of natural philosophy, Nova de Universis Philosophia (1591; New philosophy of universes), in which he suggested that the illumination of the world proceeds from the first divine light. This illumination, which is both corporeal and noncorporeal, fills all space and motivates all heavenly and earthly processes. It is a hierarchical universe in which soul is intermediary between the corporeal and noncorporeal realms.

The new philosophies of nature often placed the individual human soul in contact with the divine and with the spirits of the noncorporeal cosmos. Many such philosophies included a doctrine of correspondences in which things within both physical and noncorporeal realms reflected and influenced one another. The belief in the ability to exert influence from a distance through correspondence underlay magical outlooks wherein the magus or magician could manipulate divine powers for material ends. Renaissance nature philosophers were often anti-Aristotelian, and they were vulnerable to charges of using demonic magic and of heresy. Patrizi's vast encyclopedia was put on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Roman Inquisition. Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600.

Natural, Supernatural, Preternatural, Artificial, and Unnatural

Lorraine Daston has noted that early modern views of nature can be investigated only if the modern dichotomy between nature and culture is put aside. The early modern period instead utilized a variety of categories defined vis-à-vis the natural. The super-natural was a category largely created by Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) in the thirteenth century. He viewed miracles—supernatural events—as God's intervention in the natural order and therefore above that order. A second category, "preter-natural," described events that were highly unusual, "beyond nature," but not supernatural. Examples include monstrous births, bizarre weather, the occult powers of plants and minerals, and other deviations from ordinary natural events. A third category, the artificial, comprised objects fabricated by humans that could imitate nature but could never become part of the natural world. Finally, the unnatural was a moral category used to describe acts, such as patricide and bestiality, that transgressed the natural order ordained by God.

During the early modern era the boundaries that defined these categories were increasingly called into question. Miracles as events brought about by supernatural intervention became contested territory in the context of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic reform movements. A religious movement labeled "enthusiasm" developed in northern Germany, England, and the Netherlands in which members of Quaker and other Pietist religious groups claimed direct experience of the Divine as a result of enthusiastic inspiration. Yet the enthusiasts were condemned as a threat to political order and religious orthodoxy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries enthusiasm and miracles in the present (as opposed to the distant past) became increasingly unacceptable within established political and religious orders.

The category of the preternatural presents a complicated history. From the sixteenth century through the mid-seventeenth century natural philosophers, such as Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576), Pietro Pompanazzi (1462–1525), and Francis Bacon (1561–1626), focused on preternatural events, such as celestial aberrations, monstrous births, and other odd occurrences. Such events became a significant focus of the early scientific societies as even the briefest perusal of the Transactions of the Royal Society attests. By the 1720s, however, these wonders of nature came to be largely ignored. Preternatural phenomena had been subsumed under the natural.

Substantial evidence points to a further development—the disappearance of the boundary between the natural and the artificial. Objects of nature and objects of art came to be interchangeable. In the 1490s Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), in his treatise on machines and mechanics, Madrid Codex I, made analogies between natural and constructed objects as a way of trying to understand the workings of each. Little more than a century later Bacon and René Descartes (1596–1650) each insisted upon the identity of the essential attributes of the artificial and the natural. Such identity and interchangeability was evident in the great collections naturalists accumulated in the seventeenth century. These collections displayed a mixed conglomeration of natural specimens, preternatural wonders, and objects made by humans. Human artifice had gained in status, taking its place beside and becoming interchangeable with the myriad objects of the natural world.

Experience and Experiment

Attitudes toward nature were influenced by the growing importance of material objects within society and by the exchange of those objects within commercial relationships that extended across Europe and beyond. Early modern Europeans exhibited a growing interest in conspicuous consumption as well as a fascination with novelty, including objects and marvels from lands recently discovered and colonized. The makers of objects—artisans and men and women skilled in crafts—enjoyed increased cultural status that developed as a result of the growing positive valuation of practice and hands-on experience. Artisans began to value their practices as generative of a kind of knowledge derived from direct and intimate experience with materials and with nature. Artisan-trained individuals and others of various backgrounds wrote books in which they validated their own experience by means of the authority of nature. For example, the potter Bernard Palissy (1510–1589) described his many experiments to find a formula for a new glaze and repeatedly endorsed the value of practice over theory. The physician Paracelsus (1493–1541) not only railed against the book learning of contemporary medicine in the universities but also endorsed direct experience with nature as essential to knowledge concerning the natural world, including knowledge of health and disease. Reading the "book of nature" for Paracelsus entailed experiencing it directly and thereby being able to read God's "signatures," external signs that revealed the internal nature of things.

Bacon's empirical approach envisaged a vast cooperative project of collecting the facts of nature. Bacon hoped to create detailed descriptions of natural phenomena and of processes of the "mechanical arts," such as metallurgy and glassmaking. From such histories, Bacon advocated the creation of axioms that would allow humans to read the "book of nature." For Bacon this book was authored by God. Humans could know God's works through its operations, to be had through the senses. Words are not "reliable signs of things." Rather, things provide "the only reliable criteria for shaping words properly" (Bono, pp. 218–220). The "secrets" of nature can be discovered initially through the collection of sense data and through controlled experiments. Simple data collection is insufficient, however. Careful creation of axioms and an attempt to understand the relationship of diverse things to each other would allow the book of nature to be understood.

Increasingly the observations of particulars and the positive valuation of individual experience gained credibility as a way of knowing the natural world. Individual experience and observation could be used in a variety of ways—the investigation of plants and animals, the gathering and study of objects both natural and fabricated in collections, or the dissection of human bodies. Individuals from a variety of backgrounds undertook to discover the "secrets" of nature, sometimes characterizing their pursuit as a kind of hunt. Perhaps, as one scholar has suggested, a traditional view of nature—as an inviolable, feminine entity to be protected from curiosity and aggressive exploration—declined.

Especially from the late sixteenth century investigators began to construct special kinds of individual experiences known as experiments. Experimentation developed as a great variety of practices designed to test and validate knowledge claims about the natural world. The experimenters were compelled to defend their methods against the Aristotelians. The Aristotelian term common experience referred to experience agreed upon by everyone. In contrast to the evident and universal premises of Aristotelian experience, experimenters claimed knowledge as a result of specialized, contrived experience using often complex apparatus or instrumentation. Much investigation in the history of science has been devoted to analyzing specific experiments to understand what was done, how the experiment was taken to verify particular claims about the natural world, and the ways in which the experiment was "legitimated." Often in the early modern era the reports of reliable "witnesses" lent credibility to the claims of the experimenter.

An important development was the application of mathematics to physical phenomena. This took many forms, from Galileo's analysis of balls rolling down inclined planes to Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) experiments in geometric optics. The new "physico-mathematics" of the seventeenth century rejected Aristotelian assumptions that made mathematics a self-referential discipline irrelevant to the material world and physics nonmathematical. It also either implicitly or explicitly assumed that nature itself was in some way mathematical. Descartes removed mind and spirit from the physical world and defined physical matter as extension. If the world comprised geometric extension, it could be understood by analyzing the mathematical relationships within it.

Descartes and the Laws of Nature

Descartes developed a view of nature and its workings called "the mechanical philosophy." For Descartes the world consisted of particles of matter that move whenever necessity forces them to move. Matter was extension in three dimensions. Natural philosophy consisted of describing the mechanisms of moving particles as they produced all the variable phenomena of nature. The universe was a plenum. Motion was possible because the entire mass of matter moved together. The universe consisted of a huge number of immense particle whirlpools called vortices. Particulate matter in motion explained all phenomena in nature. The mechanical philosophy developed by Descartes was highly influential. Although Descartes's successors modified the particulars of his system, it dominated European thought by the end of the seventeenth century.

Descartes first formulated physical laws that could be expressed mathematically and that were valid for all physical phenomena. Appearing in chapter seven of The World (1629–1633), they concerned inertia, collusion, and a law stating that particles of matter tended to move in a straight line. Later philosophers, such as Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), criticized some of Descartes's specific conclusions but continued to describe the physical world in terms of laws that governed matter in motion. Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) included the three laws of motion that laid the foundation for classical physics. Newton's laws described the motion of bodies and the mathematical relationships between the forces that governed those motions.

In the eighteenth century, the "Age of Enlightenment" as the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) first called it, the notion prevailed that a scientific revolution had occurred in the prior century and that it was ongoing. The two key words of the Enlightenment were "reason" and "nature." The laws of reason had become synonymous with the laws of nature. Experimentation had become the way of reasoning about nature. Enlightenment philosophers and the public alike made Newton into a hero. They attempted to find further natural laws that would predict natural events completely and accurately. They sought greater determinism in nature. Although they did not fully succeed, most Enlightenment natural philosophers believed that experiment would continue to augment the progress that had occurred in understanding the natural world.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. 2 vols. Rev. Oxford translation. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, 1984.

Ficino, Marsilio. Platonic Theology. 3 vols. Edited by James Hankins and William Bowen. Translated by Michael J. B. Allen and John Warden. Cambridge, Mass., 2001–2003. Translation of Theologia Platonica.

Galilei, Galileo. Sidereus Nuncius; or, The Sidereal Messenger. Translated by Albert van Helden. Chicago, 1989. The best English translation.

——. Two New Sciences Including Centers of Gravity and Force of Percussion. 2nd ed. Translated by Stillman Drake. Toronto, 1989. The best English translation.

Newton, Isaac. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Translated by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999. Includes an extensive and useful guide by Cohen.

Secondary Sources

Bono, James J. The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine. Vol. 1, Ficino to Descartes. Madison, Wis., 1995.

Daston, Lorraine. "The Nature of Nature in Early Modern Europe." Configurations 6 (1998): 149–172.

Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. New York, 1998.

Dear, Peter. Discipline & Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago, 1995.

Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Princeton, 1994.

Grendler, Paul F. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, 2002.

Hankins, Thomas L. Science and the Enlightenment. Cambridge, U.K., 1985.

Hattab, Helen. "Laws of Nature." In Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton, edited by Wilbur Applebaum, pp. 354–357. New York, 2000.

Ingegno, Alfonso. "The New Philosophy of Nature." In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner, pp. 236–263. Cambridge, U.K., 1988.

Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco, 1980.

Osler, Margaret J., ed. Rethinking the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, U.K., 2000.

Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air- Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, 1985.

Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago, 2003.

Smith, Pamela H., and Paula Findlen, eds. Merchants & Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe. New York, 2002.

—PAMELA O. LONG

 
Wine Lover's Companion: nature; naturel
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[nah-TEWR; nah-tew-REHL] 1. French words meaning "nature" and "natural," referring to wine to which nothing (usually meaning sugar or alcohol) has been added. 2. On champagne or sparkling wine labels, these terms typically refer to wines that don't have liqueur d'expédition (dosage) added, which would contribute to sweetness. Such wines are sometimes called Brut Nature. 3. On some sparkling wine labels, naturel may mean that the wine is not totally dry but simply the driest style of that producer. 4. In the Champagne region, the terms Vin Nature or Vin Nature de la Champagne were once used when referring to still wines from this area. Since 1974, however, the côteaux champenois ac name appears on the labels of these wines.

 
Word Tutor: nature
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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: The physical universe.

pronunciation I am at two with nature. — Woody Allen, American comedian, actor & film director.

 
Quotes About: Nature
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Quotes:

"Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense." - Joseph Addison

"I am at two with nature." - Woody Allen

"Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion." - Lorraine Anderson

"Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway." - Maya Angelou

"The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection." - Guillaume Apollinaire

"All men by nature desire to know." - Aristotle

See more famous quotes about Nature

 
Dream Symbol: Nature
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Nature symbolizes life-giving forces-freedom, restoration, renewal. It suggests that one's basic instincts are experienced and expressed. Peace, calmness, simplicity, and tranquility can be denoted by this symbol.

 
Wikipedia: Nature
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Bachalpsee in the Swiss Alps; generally mountainous areas are less affected by human activity
Lightning strikes during the eruption of the Galunggung volcano in 1982
Much attention has been given to preserving the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia, while allowing ample access for visitors.
This article is about the physical universe. For other uses, see Nature (disambiguation).
"Natural" redirects here. For other uses, see Natural (disambiguation).

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.

The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and literally means "birth".[1] Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis (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 was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.[4][5]

Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" may refer to the general realm of various types 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, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness–wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, 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 consciousness or a human mind. Depending on the particular context, the term "natural" might also be distinguished from the terms unnatural, the supernatural, and the artifactual.

Contents

Earth

Main articles: Earth, Earth science, Structure of the Earth, Plate tectonics, and Geology
View of Earth, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew. This image is the only photograph of its kind to date, showing a fully sunlit hemisphere of the Earth.

Earth (or, "the earth") is the only planet presently known to support life, and as such, its natural features are the subject of many fields of scientific research. Within the solar system, it is third nearest to the sun; it is the largest terrestrial planet and the fifth largest overall. Its most prominent climatic features are its two large polar regions, two relatively narrow temperate zones, and a wide equatorial tropical to subtropical region.[6] Precipitation varies widely with location, from several metres of water per year to less than a millimetre. About 70 percent of the surface is covered by salt-water oceans. The remainder consists of continents and islands, with most of the inhabited land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Earth has evolved through geological and biological processes that have left traces of the original conditions. The outer surface is divided into several gradually migrating tectonic plates, which have changed relatively quickly several times. The interior remains active, with a thick layer of molten mantle and an iron-filled core that generates a magnetic field.

The atmospheric conditions have been significantly altered from the original conditions by the presence of life-forms,[7] which create an ecological balance that stabilizes the surface conditions. Despite the wide regional variations in climate by latitude and other geographic factors, the long-term average global climate is quite stable during interglacial periods,[8] and variations of a degree or two of average global temperature have historically had major effects on the ecological balance, and on the actual geography of the Earth.[9][10]

Historical perspective

Main articles: History of Earth and Evolution
Phylum Pediastrumboryanum. Plankton have existed on Earth for at least 2 billion years.[11]

Earth is estimated to have formed 4.55 billion years ago from the solar nebula, along with the Sun and other planets.[12] The moon formed roughly 20 million years later. Initially molten, the outer layer of the planet cooled, resulting in the solid crust. Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, most or all of which came from ice delivered by comets, produced the oceans and other water sources.[13] The highly energetic chemistry is believed to have produced a self-replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago.[14]

Continents formed, then broke up and reformed as the surface of Earth reshaped over hundreds of millions of years, occasionally combining to make a supercontinent. Roughly 750 million years ago, the earliest known supercontinent Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia which broke apart about 540 million years ago, then finally Pangaea, which broke apart about 180 million years ago.[15]

Land-based plants and fungi have been part of nature on Earth for about the past 400 million years. These have needed to adapt and move many times as the continents and climates changed.[16][17]

There is significant evidence, still being discussed among scientists, that a severe glacial action during the Neoproterozoic era covered much of the planet in a sheet of ice. This hypothesis has been termed the "Snowball Earth", and it is of particular interest as it precedes the Cambrian explosion in which multicellular life forms began to proliferate about 530–540 million years ago.[18]

Since the Cambrian explosion there have been five distinctly identifiable mass extinctions.[19] The last mass extinction occurred some 65 million years ago, when a meteorite collision probably triggered the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but spared small animals such as mammals, which then resembled shrews. Over the past 65 million years, mammalian life diversified.[20]

Several million years ago, a species of small African ape gained the ability to stand upright.[21] The subsequent advent of human life, and the development of agriculture and further civilization allowed humans to affect the Earth more rapidly than any previous life form, affecting both the nature and quantity of other organisms as well as global climate. By comparison, the Oxygen Catastrophe, produced by the proliferation of algae during the Siderian period, required about 300 million years to culminate.)

The present era is classified as part of a mass extinction event, the Holocene extinction event, the fastest ever to have occurred.[22][23] Some, such as E. O. Wilson of Harvard University, predict that human destruction of the biosphere could cause the extinction of one-half of all species in the next 100 years.[24] The extent of the current extinction event is still being researched, debated and calculated by biologists.[25]

Atmosphere, climate and weather

A supercell thunderstorm.
Main articles: Earth's atmosphere, climate, and weather

The atmosphere of the Earth serves as a key factor in sustaining the planetary ecosystem. The thin layer of gases that envelops the Earth is held in place by the planet's gravity. Dry air consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon and other inert gases, carbon dioxide, etc.; but air also contains a variable amount of water vapor. The atmospheric pressure declines steadily with altitude, and has a scale height of about 8 kilometres at the Earth's surface: the height at which the atmospheric pressure has declined by a factor of e (a mathematical constant equal to 2.71...).[26][27] The ozone layer of the Earth's atmosphere plays an important role in depleting the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation that reaches the surface. As DNA is readily damaged by UV light, this serves to protect life at the surface. The atmosphere also retains heat during the night, thereby reducing the daily temperature extremes.

Terrestrial weather occurs almost exclusively in the lower part of the atmosphere, and serves as a convective system for redistributing heat. Ocean currents are another important factor in determining climate, particularly the major underwater thermohaline circulation which distributes heat energy from the equatorial oceans to the polar regions. These currents help to moderate the differences in temperature between winter and summer in the temperate zones. Also, without the redistributions of heat energy by the ocean currents and atmosphere, the tropics would be much hotter, and the polar regions much colder.

Weather can have both beneficial and harmful effects. Extremes in weather, such as tornadoes or hurricanes and cyclones, can expend large amounts of energy along their paths, and produce devastation. Surface vegetation has evolved a dependence on the seasonal variation of the weather, and sudden changes lasting only a few years can have a dramatic effect, both on the vegetation and on the animals dependent on its growth for their food.

A tornado in central Oklahoma.

The planetary climate is a measure of the long-term trends in the weather. Various factors are known to influence the climate, including ocean currents, surface albedo, greenhouse gases, variations in the solar luminosity, and changes to the planet's orbit. Based on historical records, the Earth is known to have undergone drastic climate changes in the past, including ice ages.

The climate of a region depends on a number of factors, especially latitude. A latitudinal band of the surface with similar climatic attributes forms a climate region. There are a number of such regions, ranging from the tropical climate at the equator to the polar climate in the northern and southern extremes. Weather is also influenced by the seasons, which result from the Earth's axis being tilted relative to its orbital plane. Thus, at any given time during the summer or winter, one part of the planet is more directly exposed to the rays of the sun. This exposure alternates as the Earth revolves in its orbit. At any given time, regardless of season, the northern and southern hemispheres experience opposite seasons.

Weather is a chaotic system that is readily modified by small changes to the environment, so accurate weather forecasting is currently limited to only a few days. Overall, two things are currently happening worldwide: (1) temperature is increasing on the average; and (2) regional climates have been undergoing noticeable changes.[28]

Oceans, lakes and rivers

Main articles: Ocean, Lake, and River

Oceans

A view of the Atlantic ocean from Leblon, Rio de Janeiro.
Earth's oceans
(World Ocean)

An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface (an area of some 361 million square kilometers) is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas. More than half of this area is over 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) deep. Average oceanic salinity is around 35 parts per thousand (ppt) (3.5%), and nearly all seawater has a salinity in the range of 30 to 38 ppt. Though generally recognized as several 'separate' oceans, these waters comprise one global, interconnected body of salt water often referred to as the World Ocean or global ocean.[29][30] This concept of a global ocean as a continuous body of water with relatively free interchange among its parts is of fundamental importance to oceanography.[31]

The major oceanic divisions are defined in part by the continents, various archipelagos, and other criteria: these divisions are (in descending order of size) the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean (which is sometimes subsumed as the southern portions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans), and the Arctic Ocean (which is sometimes considered a sea of the Atlantic). The Pacific and Atlantic may be further subdivided by the equator into northerly and southerly portions. Smaller regions of the oceans are called seas, gulfs, bays and other names. There are also salt lakes, which are smaller bodies of landlocked saltwater that are not interconnected with the World Ocean. Two notable examples of salt lakes are the Aral Sea and the Great Salt Lake.

Lakes

The Lácar Lake is a lake of glacial origin in the province of Neuquén, Argentina.

A lake (from Latin lacus) is a terrain feature (or physical feature), a body of liquid on the surface of a world that is localized to the bottom of basin (another type of landform or terrain feature; that is, it is not global) and moves slowly if it moves at all. On Earth, a body of water is considered a lake when it is inland, not part of the ocean, is larger and deeper than a pond, and is fed by a river.[32][33] The only world other than Earth known to harbor lakes is Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which has lakes of ethane, most likely mixed with methane. It is not known if Titan's lakes are fed by rivers, though Titan's surface is carved by numerous river beds. Natural lakes on Earth are generally found in mountainous areas, rift zones, and areas with ongoing or recent glaciation. Other lakes are found in endorheic basins or along the courses of mature rivers. In some parts of the world, there are many lakes because of chaotic drainage patterns left over from the last Ice Age. All lakes are temporary over geologic time scales, as they will slowly fill in with sediments or spill out of the basin containing them.

Rivers

Macal River in Belize at San Ignacio, in November, 2001.

A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing toward an ocean, a lake, a sea or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill; there is no general rule that defines what can be called a river. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; one example is Burn in Scotland and North-east England. Sometimes a river is said to be larger than a creek,[34] but this is not always the case, due to vagueness in the language.[35] A river is part of the hydrological cycle. Water within a river is generally collected from precipitation through surface runoff, groundwater recharge, springs, and the release of stored water in natural ice and snowpacks (i.e., from glaciers).

Ecosystems

Loch Lomond in Scotland forms a relatively isolated ecosystem. The fish community of this lake has remained unchanged over a very long period of time.[36]
Main articles: Ecology and Ecosystem

All forms of life interact with the environment in which they exist, and also with other life forms. In the 20th century this premise gave rise to the concept of ecosystems, which can be defined as any situation where there is interaction between organisms and their environment.

Ecosystems are composed of a variety of abiotic and biotic components that function in an interrelated way.[37] The structure and composition is determined by various environmental factors that are interrelated. Variations of these factors will initiate dynamic modifications to the ecosystem. Some of the more important components are: soil, atmosphere, radiation from the sun, water, and living organisms.

Each living organism has a continual relationship with every other element that makes up its environment. Within the ecosystem, species are connected and dependent upon one another in the food chain, and exchange energy and matter between themselves as well as with their environment.[38]

An aerial view of a human ecosystem. Pictured is the city of Chicago

Every species has limits of tolerance to factors that affect its survival, reproductive success and ability to continue to thrive and interact sustainably with the rest of its environment, which in turn may have effects on these factors for many other species or even on the whole of life.[39] The concept of an ecosystem is thus an important subject of study, as such study provides information needed to make decisions about how human life may interact in a way that allows the various ecosystems to be sustained for future use rather than used up or otherwise rendered ineffective. For the purpose of such study, a unit of smaller size is called a microecosystem. For example, an ecosystem can be a stone and all the life under it. A macroecosystem might involve a whole ecoregion, with its drainage basin.[40]

The following ecosystems are examples of the kinds currently under intensive study:

Another classification can be made by reference to its communities, such as in the case of a human ecosystem. Regional groupings of distinctive plant and animals best adapted to the region's physical natural environment, latitude, altitude, and terrain are known as biomes. The broadest classification, today under wide study and analysis, and also subject to widespread arguments about its nature and validity, is that of the entire sum of life seen as analogous to a self-sustaining organism; a theory studied as earth system science (less formally known as Gaia theory).[41][42]

Wilderness

The Daintree Rainforest, a wilderness area in Queensland, Australia
Main articles: Wilderness and Natural environment

Wilderness is generally defined as a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. The WILD Foundation goes into more detail, defining wilderness as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet - those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial infrastructure." Wilderness areas and protected parks are considered important for the survival of certain species, ecological studies, conservation, solitude, and recreation. Wilderness is deeply valued for cultural, spiritual, moral, and aesthetic reasons. Some nature writers believe wilderness areas are vital for the human spirit and creativity.[43] Ecologists consider wilderness areas to be an integral part of the planet's self-sustaining natural ecosystem (the biosphere).

Wilderness areas can be found in preserves, estates, farms, conservation preserves, ranches, National Forests, National Parks and even in urban areas along rivers, gulches or otherwise undeveloped areas. These areas are considered important for the survival of certain species, biodiversity, ecological studies, conservation, solitude, and recreation. Wilderness is deeply valued for cultural, spiritual, moral, and aesthetic reasons. Some nature writers believe wilderness areas are vital for the human spirit and creativity.[44] They may also preserve historic genetic traits and that they provide habitat for wild flora and fauna that may be difficult to recreate in zoos, arboretums or laboratories.

Life

Main articles: Life, Life science, and Biosphere
Female mallard and ducklings - reproduction is essential for continuing life

Although there is no universal agreement on the definition of life, scientists generally accept that the biological manifestation of life is characterized by organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli and reproduction.[45] Life may also be said to be simply the characteristic state of organisms.

Properties common to terrestrial organisms (plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea and bacteria) are that they are cellular, carbon-and-water-based with complex organization, having a metabolism, a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. An entity with these properties is generally considered life. However, not every definition of life considers all of these properties to be essential. Human-made analogs of life may also be considered to be life.

The biosphere is the part of Earth's outer shell – including air, land, surface rocks and water – within which life occurs, and which biotic processes in turn alter or transform. From the broadest geophysiological point of view, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere (rocks), hydrosphere (water), and atmosphere (air). Currently the entire Earth contains over 75 billion tons (150 trillion pounds or about 6.8 x 1013 kilograms) of biomass (life), which lives within various environments within the biosphere.[46]

Over nine-tenths of the total biomass on Earth is plant life, on which animal life depends very heavily for its existence.[47] More than 2 million species of plant and animal life have been identified to date,[48] and estimates of the actual number of existing species range from several million to well over 50 million.[49][50][51] The number of individual species of life is constantly in some degree of flux, with new species appearing and others ceasing to exist on a continual basis.[52][53] The total number of species is presently in rapid decline.[54][55][56]

Evolution

Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. The tropical rainforests of South America contain the largest diversity of species on Earth, with new species of plants and animals evolving from existing species on a frequent basis.[57][58]
Main article: Evolution

Life, as it is currently understood, is only known to exist on the planet Earth. The origin of life is still a poorly understood process, but it is thought to have occurred about 3.9 to 3.5 billion years ago during the hadean or archean eons on a primordial earth that had a substantially different environment than is found at present.[59] These life forms possessed the basic traits of self-replication and inheritable traits. Once life had appeared, the process of evolution by natural selection resulted in the formation of ever-more diverse life forms.

Species that were unable to adapt to the changing environment and competition from other life forms became extinct. However, the fossil record retains evidence of many of these older species. Current fossil and DNA evidence shows that all existing species can trace a continual ancestry back to the first primitive life forms.[59]

The advent of photosynthesis in very basic forms of plant life worldwide allowed the sun's energy to be harvested to create conditions allowing for more complex life. The resultant oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere and gave rise to the ozone layer. The incorporation of smaller cells within larger ones resulted in the development of yet more complex cells called eukaryotes.[60] Cells within colonies became increasingly specialized, resulting in true multicellular organisms. With the ozone layer absorbing harmful ultraviolet radiation, life colonized the surface of Earth.

Microbes

A microscopic mite Lorryia formosa.
Main article: Microbe

The first form of life to develop on the Earth were microbes, and they remained the only form of life on the planet until about a billion years ago when multi-cellular organisms began to appear.[61] Microorganisms are single-celled organisms that are generally microscopic, and smaller than the human eye can see. They include Bacteria, Fungi, Archaea and Protista.

These life forms are found in almost every location on the Earth where there is liquid water, including the interior of rocks within the planet.[62] Their reproduction is both rapid and profuse. The combination of a high mutation rate and a horizontal gene transfer[63] ability makes them highly adaptable, and able to survive in new environments, including outer space.[64] They form an essential part of the planetary ecosystem. However some microorganisms are pathogenic and can post health risk to other organisms.

Plants and animals

Main articles: Plant and Animal
See also: Botany, Fauna, and Biology
A confluence of "natural" and a "made" environment

The distinction between plant and animal life is not sharply drawn, with some categories of life that stand between or across the two. Originally Aristotle divided all living things between plants, which generally do not move, and animals. In Linnaeus' system, these became the kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Plantae) and Animalia. Since then, it has become clear that the Plantae as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these are still often considered plants in many contexts. Bacterial life is sometimes included in flora,[65][66] and some classifications use the term bacterial flora separately from plant flora.

Among the many ways of classifying plants are by regional floras, which, depending on the purpose of study, can also include fossil flora, remnants of plant life from a previous era. People in many regions and countries take great pride in their individual arrays of characteristic flora, which can vary widely across the globe due to differences in climate and terrain.

Regional floras commonly are divided into categories such as native flora and agricultural and garden flora, the lastly mentioned of which are intentionally grown and cultivated. Some types of "native flora" actually have been introduced centuries ago by people migrating from one region or continent to another, and become an integral part of the native, or natural flora of the place to which they were introduced. This is an example of how human interaction with nature can blur the boundary of what is considered nature.

Another category of plant has historically been carved out for weeds. Though the term has fallen into disfavor among botanists as a formal way to categorize "useless" plants, the informal use of the word "weeds" to describe those plants that are deemed worthy of elimination is illustrative of the general tendency of people and societies to seek to alter or shape the course of nature. Similarly, animals are often categorized in ways such as domestic, farm animals, wild animals, pests, etc. according to their relationship to human life.

Wildebeest in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Note the tendency to congregate, one of nature's displays of what is sometimes called the herding instinct or herd behavior.

Animals as a category have several characteristics that generally set them apart from other living things, though not traced by scientists to having legs or wings instead of roots and leaves. Animals are eukaryotic and usually multicellular (although see Myxozoa), which separates them from bacteria, archaea and most protists. They are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls.

With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges (Phylum Porifera), animals have bodies differen­tiated into separate tissues. These include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and a nervous system, which sends and processes signals. There is also typically an internal digestive chamber. The eukaryotic cells possessed by all animals are surrounded by a characteristic extracellular matrix composed of collagen and elastic glycoproteins. This may be calcified to form structures like shells, bones, and spicules, a framework upon which cells can move about and be reorganized during development and maturation, and which supports the complex anatomy required for mobility.

Human interrelationship

Despite their natural beauty, the secluded valleys along the Na Pali Coast in Hawaii are heavily modified by introduced invasive species such as She-oak.

Although humans currently comprise only a miniscule proportion of the total living biomass on Earth, the human effect on nature is disproportionately large. Because of the extent of human influence, the boundaries between what we regard as nature and "made environments" is not clear cut except at the extremes. Even at the extremes, the amount of natural environment that is free of discernible human influence is presently diminishing at an increasingly rapid pace, or, according to some, has already disappeared.

The development of technology by the human race has allowed the greater exploitation of natural resources and has helped to alleviate some of the risk from natural hazards. In spite of this progress, however, the fate of human civilization remains closely linked to changes in the environment. There exists a highly complex feedback-loop between the use of advanced technology and changes to the environment that are only slowly becoming understood.[67] Manmade threats to the Earth's natural environment include pollution, deforestation, and disasters such as oil spills. Humans have contributed to the extinction of many plants and animals.

Humans employ nature for both leisure and economic activities. The acquisition of natural resources for industrial use remains the primary component of the world's economic system. Some activities, such as hunting and fishing, are used for both sustenance and leisure, often by different people. Agriculture was first adopted around the 9th millennium BCE. Ranging from food production to energy, nature influences economic wealth.

Although early humans gathered uncultivated plant materials for food and employed the medicinal properties of vegetation for healing,[68] most modern human use of plants is through agriculture. The clearance of large tracts of land for crop growth has led to a significant reduction in the amount available of forestation and wetlands, resulting in the loss of habitat for many plant and animal species as well as increased erosion.[69]

Beauty

Salmon fry hatching. The root of the Latin "natura" {"nature") is "natus," from "nasci" ("to be born").[1]

Beauty in nature has long been a common theme in life and in art, and books emphasizing beauty in nature fill large sections of libraries and bookstores. That nature has been depicted and celebrated by so much art, photography, poetry and other literature shows the strength with which many people associate nature and beauty. Why this association exists, and what the association consists of, is studied by the branch of philosophy called aesthetics. Beyond certain basic characteristics that many philosophers agree about to explain what is seen as beautiful, the opinions are virtually endless.[70]

Looked at through the lens of the visual arts, nature and wildness have been important subjects in various epochs of world history. An early tradition of landscape art began in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The tradition of representing nature as it is became one of the aims of Chinese painting and was a significant influence in Asian art. Artists learned to depict mountains and rivers "from the perspective of nature as a whole and on the basis of their understanding of the laws of nature ... as if seen through the eyes of a bird." In the 13th century, the Song Dynasty artist Shi Erji listed "scenes lacking any places made inaccessible by nature," as one of the 12 things to avoid in painting.[71]

In the Western world the idea of wilderness having intrinsic value emerged in the 1800s, especially in the works of the Romantic movement. British artists John Constable and JMW Turner turned their attention to capturing the beauty of the natural world in their paintings. Before that, paintings had been primarily of religious scenes or of human beings. William Wordsworth’s poetry described the wonder of the natural world, which had formerly been viewed as a threatening place. Increasingly the valuing of nature became an aspect of Western culture.[72] This artistic movement also coincided with the Transcendentalist movement in the Western world.

Many scientists, who study nature in more specific and organized ways, also share the conviction that nature is beautiful; the French mathematician, Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) said:

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty which strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and of appearance; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp.[73]

A common classical idea of beautiful art involves the word mimesis, the imitation of nature. Also in the realm of ideas about beauty in nature is that the perfect is implied through symmetry, equal division, and other perfect mathematical forms and notions.

Matter and energy

The first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density
Main articles: Matter and Energy
See also: Chemistry and Physics

Some fields of science see nature as matter in motion, obeying certain laws of nature which science seeks to understand. For this reason the most fundamental science is generally understood to be "physics" – the name for which is still recognizable as meaning that it is the study of nature.

Matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed. It constitutes the observable universe. The visible components of the universe are now believed to compose only 4 percent of the total mass. The remainder is believed to consist of 23 percent cold dark matter and 73 percent dark energy.[74] The exact nature of these components is still unknown and is currently under intensive investigation by physicists.

The behavior of matter and energy throughout the observable universe appears to follow well-defined physical laws. These laws have been employed to produce cosmological models that successfully explain the structure and the evolution of the universe we can observe. The mathematical expressions of the laws of physics employ a set of twenty physical constants[75] that appear to be static across the observable universe.[76] The values of these constants have been carefully measured, but the reason for their specific values remains a mystery.

Beyond Earth

NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 56,000 light years in diameter and approximately 60 million light years distant.
The deepest visible-light image of the universe, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies in a patch of sky just one-tenth the diameter of the full moon. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF team.
Main articles: Outer space, Universe, and Extraterrestrial life

Outer space, also simply called space, refers to the relatively empty regions of the universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. Outer space is used to distinguish it from airspace (and terrestrial locations). There is no discrete boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and space, as the atmosphere gradually attenuates with increasing altitude. Outer space within the solar system is called interplanetary space, which passes over into interstellar space at what is known as the heliopause.

Outer space is certainly spacious, but it is far from empty. Outer space is sparsely filled with several dozen types of organic molecules discovered to date by microwave spectroscopy, blackbody radiation left over from the big bang and the origin of the universe, and cosmic rays, which include ionized atomic nuclei and various subatomic particles. There is also some gas, plasma and dust, and small meteors. Additionally, there are signs of human life in outer space today, such as material left over from previous manned and unmanned launches which are a potential hazard to spacecraft. Some of this debris re-enters the atmosphere periodically.

Although the planet Earth is currently the only known body within the solar system to support life, current evidence suggests that in the distant past the planet Mars possessed bodies of liquid water on the surface.[77] For a brief period in Mars' history, it may have also been capable of forming life. At present though, most of the water remaining on Mars is frozen. If life exists at all on Mars, it is most likely to be located underground where liquid water can still exist.[78]

Conditions on the other terrestrial planets, Mercury and Venus, appear to be too harsh to support life as we know it. But it has been conjectured that Europa, the fourth-largest moon of Jupiter, may possess a sub-surface ocean of liquid water and could potentially host life.[79]

Recently, the team of Stéphane Udry have discovered a new planet named Gliese 581 c, which is an extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. Gliese 581 c appears to lie in the habitable zone of space surrounding the star, and therefore could possibly host life as we know it.

See also

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Notes and references

Landscape photograph of Tolima Colombia.
Coastal Douglas fir woodland in northwest Oregon.
Summer field in Belgium (Hamois). The blue flower is Centaurea cyanus and the red one a Papaver rhoeas.
Atmospheric gases scatter blue wavelengths of visible light more than other wavelengths, giving the Earth’s visible edge a blue halo. Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory.
A deserted island in Palau.
Two Giant Sequoias, Sequoia National Park. Note the large fire scar at the base of the right-hand tree; fires do not kill the trees but do remove competing thin-barked species, and aid Giant Sequoia regeneration.
  1. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. "nature". Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nature. Retrieved on 2006-09-23. 
  2. ^ A useful though somewhat erratically presented account of the pre-Socratic use of the concept of φύσις may be found in Naddaf, Gerard The Greek Concept of Nature, SUNY Press, 2006. The word φύσις, while first used in connection with a plant in Homer, occurs very early in Greek philosophy, and in several senses. Generally, these senses match rather well the current senses in which the English word nature is used, as confirmed by Guthrie, W.K.C. Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (volume 2 of his History of Greek Philosophy), Cambridge UP, 1965.
  3. ^ The first known use of physis was by Homer in reference to the intrinsic qualities of a plant: ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας πόρε φάρμακον ἀργεϊφόντης ἐκ γαίης ἐρύσας, καί μοι φύσιν αὐτοῦ ἔδειξε. (So saying, Argeiphontes [=Hermes] gave me the herb, drawing it from the ground, and showed me its nature.) Odyssey 10.302-3 (ed. A.T. Murray). (The word is dealt with thoroughly in Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon.) For later but still very early Greek uses of the term, see earlier note.
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  25. ^ See, e.g. [1], [2], [3]
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  30. ^ "Distribution of land and water on the planet". UN Atlas of the Oceans
  31. ^ Spilhaus, Athelstan F. 1942 (Jul.). "Maps of the whole world ocean." Geographical Review (American Geographical Society). Vol. 32 (3): pp. 431-5.
  32. ^ Brittanica online. "Lake (physical feature)". http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/328083/lake. Retrieved on 2008-06-25. "[a Lake is] any relatively large body of slowly moving or standing water that occupies an inland basin of appreciable size. Definitions that precisely distinguish lakes, ponds, swamps, and even rivers and other bodies of nonoceanic water are not well established. It may be said, however, that rivers and streams are relatively fast moving; marshes and swamps contain relatively large quantities of grasses, trees, or shrubs; and ponds are relatively small in comparison to lakes. Geologically defined, lakes are temporary bodies of water." 
  33. ^ "[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lake a body of fresh or salt water of considerable size, surrounded by land. Dictionary.com definition]". http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lake a body of fresh or salt water of considerable size, surrounded by land.. Retrieved on 2008-06-25. 
  34. ^ River, Wordnet
  35. ^ USGS - U.S. Geological Survey - faqs, #17 What is the difference between mountain, hill, and peak; lake and pond; or river and creek?
  36. ^ Adams, C.E. (1994). "The fish community of Loch Lomond, Scotland : its history and rapidly changing status". Hydrobiologia 290 (1-3): 91–102. doi:10.1007/BF00008956. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3302548. 
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  38. ^ Pidwirny, Michael (2006). "Introduction to the Biosphere: Organization of Life". Fundamentals of Physical Geography (2nd Edition). http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9d.html. Retrieved on September 28 2006. 
  39. ^ Pidwirny, Michael (2006). "Introduction to the Biosphere: Abiotic Factors and the Distribution of Species". Fundamentals of Physical Geography (2nd Edition). http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9e.html. Retrieved on September 28 2006.  esp. section on "Abiotic Factors and Tolerance Limits."
  40. ^ Bailey, Robert G. (April 2004). "Identifying Ecoregion Boundaries" (PDF). Environmental Management 34 (Supplement 1): S14. doi:10.1007/s00267-003-0163-6. http://www.fs.fed.us/institute/news_info/Identifying_ecoregion_boundaries.pdf. 
  41. ^ Lawton, John (2001). "Earth System Science". Science 292 (5524): 1965. doi:10.1126/science.292.5524.1965. PMID 11408624. 
  42. ^ Harding, Stephan (2006). "Earth System Science and Gaian Science". Schumacher College. http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/articles/college-articles/stephan/earthsystemscience.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-07. 
  43. ^ No Man's Garden by Daniel B. Botkin p155-157
  44. ^ No Man's Garden by Daniel B. Botkin p155-157
  45. ^ "Definition of Life". California Academy of Sciences. 2006. http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/xtremelife/what_is_life.php. Retrieved on 2007-01-07. 
  46. ^ The figure "about one-half of one percent" takes into account the following (See, e.g., Leckie, Stephen (1999). "How Meat-centred Eating Patterns Affect Food Security and the Environment". For hunger-proof cities : sustainable urban food systems. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. ISBN 0-88936-882-1. , which takes global average weight as 60 kg.), the total human biomass is the average weight multiplied by the current human population of approximately 6.5 billion (see, e.g., "World Population Information". U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html. Retrieved on September 28 2006. ): Assuming 60–70 kg to be the average human mass (approximately 130–150 lb on the average), an approximation of total global human mass of between 390 billion (390×109) and 455 billion kg (between 845 billion and 975 billion lb, or about 423 million–488 million short tons). The total biomass of all kinds on earth is estimated to be in excess of 6.8 x 1013 kg (75 billion short tons). By these calculations, the portion of total biomass accounted for by humans would be very roughly 0.6%.
  47. ^ Sengbusch, Peter V.. "The Flow of Energy in Ecosystems - Productivity, Food Chain, and Trophic Level". Botany online. University of Hamburg Department of Biology. http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e54/54c.htm. Retrieved on September 23 2006. 
  48. ^ Pidwirny, Michael (2006). "Introduction to the Biosphere: Species Diversity and Biodiversity". Fundamentals of Physical Geography (2nd Edition). http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9h.html. Retrieved on September 23 2006. 
  49. ^ "How Many Species are There?". Extinction Web Page Class Notes. http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/thomas.wolosz/howmanysp.htm. Retrieved on September 23 2006. 
  50. ^ "Animal." World Book Encyclopedia. 16 vols. Chicago: World Book, 2003. This source gives an estimate of from 2–50 million.
  51. ^ "Just How Many Species Are There, Anyway?". Science Daily. May 2003. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030526103731.htm. Retrieved on September 26 2006. 
  52. ^ Withers, Mark A.; et al. (1998). "Changing Patterns in the Number of Species in North American Floras". Land Use History of North America. http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/chap4.html. Retrieved on September 26 2006.  Website based on the contents of the book: Sisk, T.D., ed., ed (1998). Perspectives on the land use history of North America: a context for understanding our changing environment (Revised September 1999 ed.). U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division. USGS/BRD/BSR-1998-0003. 
  53. ^ "Tropical Scientists Find Fewer Species Than Expected". Science Daily. April 2002. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020425072847.htm. Retrieved on September 27 2006. 
  54. ^ Bunker, Daniel E.; et al. (November 2005). "Species Loss and Aboveground Carbon Storage in a Tropical Forest". Science 310 (5750): 1029–31. doi:10.1126/science.1117682. PMID 16239439. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5750/1029. 
  55. ^ Wilcox, Bruce A. (March 2006). "Amphibian Decline: More Support for Biocomplexity as a Research Paradigm". EcoHealth 3 (1): 1. doi:10.1007/s10393-005-0013-5. http://www.springerlink.com/content/810227460032m460/. 
  56. ^ Clarke, Robin, Robert Lamb, Dilys Roe Ward eds., ed (2002). "Decline and loss of species". Global environment outlook 3 : past, present and future perspectives. London; Sterling, VA: Nairobi, Kenya : UNEP. ISBN 92-807-2087-2. 
  57. ^ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=28907
  58. ^ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051205163236.htm
  59. ^ a b Line M (01 Jan 2002). "The enigma of the origin of life and its timing". Microbiology 148 (Pt 1): 21–7. PMID 11782495. http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/148/1/21?view=long&pmid=11782495. 
  60. ^ Berkner, L. V.; L. C. Marshall (May 1965). "On the Origin and Rise of Oxygen Concentration in the Earth's Atmosphere". Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 22 (3): 225–261. doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1965)022<0225:OTOARO>2.0.CO;2. http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0469(1965)022%3C0225:OTOARO%3E2.0.CO%3B2. 
  61. ^ Schopf J (1994). "Disparate rates, differing fates: tempo and mode of evolution changed from the Precambrian to the Phanerozoic." (PDF). Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 91 (15): S14. doi:10.1073/pnas.91.15.6735. PMID 8041691. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=44277&blobtype=pdf. 
  62. ^ Szewzyk U, Szewzyk R, Stenström T (1994). "Thermophilic, anaerobic bacteria isolated from a deep borehole in granite in Sweden.". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 91 (5): 1810–3. doi:10.1073/pnas.91.5.1810. PMID 11607462. 
  63. ^ Wolska K (2003). "Horizontal DNA transfer between bacteria in the environment.". Acta Microbiol Pol 52 (3): 233–43. PMID 14743976. 
  64. ^ Horneck G (1981). "Survival of microorganisms in space: a review.". Adv Space Res 1 (14): 39–48. doi:10.1016/0273-1177(81)90241-6. PMID 11541716. 
  65. ^ "flora". Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. http://webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=flora. Retrieved on September 27 2006. 
  66. ^ "Glossary". Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources. Reston, VA: Department of the Interior, Geological Survey. 1998. SuDocs No. I 19.202:ST 1/V.1-2. 
  67. ^ "Feedback Loops In Global Climate Change Point To A Very Hot 21st Century". Science Daily. May 22, 2006. http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/ESD-feedback-loops.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-07. 
  68. ^ "Plant Conservation Alliance - Medicinal Plant Working Groups Green Medicine". US National Park Services. http://www.nps.gov/plants/medicinal/plants.htm. Retrieved on September 23 2006. 
  69. ^ Oosthoek, Jan (1999). "Environmental History: Between Science & Philosophy". Environmental History Resources. http://www.eh-resources.org/philosophy.html. Retrieved on 2006-12-01. 
  70. ^ For an example of a range of opinions, see: "On the Beauty of Nature". The Wilderness Society. http://www.wilderness.org/Library/Documents/Beauty_Quotes.cfm. Retrieved on September 29 2006.  and Ralph Waldo Emerson's analysis of the subject: Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1849). "Beauty". Nature; Addresses and Lectures. 
  71. ^ Chinese brush painting Asia-art.net Accessed: May 20, 2006.
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  74. ^ "Some Theories Win, Some Lose". WMAP Mission: First Year Results. NASA. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/mr_limits.html. Retrieved on 29 2006. 
  75. ^ Taylor, Barry N. (1971). "Introduction to the constants for nonexperts". National Institute of Standards and Technology. http://www.physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/introduction.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-07. 
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  78. ^ Malik, Tariq (2005-03-08). "Hunt for Mars life should go underground". The Brown University News Bureau. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7129347/. Retrieved on September 4 2006. 
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Translations: Nature
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Home > Library > Literature & Language > Translations

Dansk (Danish)
n. - natur, art, slags, beskaffenhed

idioms:

  • against nature    i modstrid med naturen
  • back to nature    tilbage til naturen
  • by nature    af naturen
  • call of nature    naturlig trang
  • in a state of nature    splitternøgen
  • in the nature of things    ifølge tingenes natur
  • in the state of nature    naturtilstand
  • nature reserve    naturreservat
  • nature trail    natursti
  • the nature of the beast    følger med, er implicit, ligger i naturen

Nederlands (Dutch)
natuur, soort, aard, natuurlijke functie, iemand met een bepaalde aard, omgevingsfactoren (die de mens vormen) in natuurlijke staat

Français (French)
n. - nature, caractère, essence, naturel, sorte, nature de

idioms:

  • against nature    contre nature
  • back to nature    retour à la nature
  • by nature    par nature
  • call of nature    appel de la nature
  • in a state of nature    dans l'état de la nature
  • in the nature of things    dans la nature des choses
  • nature reserve    réserve naturelle
  • nature trail    sentier/piste naturelle
  • the nature of the beast    la nature de la bête

Deutsch (German)
n. - Natur, Art, Wesen

idioms:

  • against nature    wider die Natur
  • back to nature    zurück zur Natur
  • by nature    von Natur aus
  • call of nature    Notdurft
  • in a state of nature    im Naturzustand, in der Wildform, nackt
  • in the nature of things    in der Natur der Dinge, naturgemäß
  • nature reserve    Naturschutzgebiet
  • nature trail    Naturlehrpfad
  • the nature of the beast    das Wesen einer Person/Sache

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - φύση, ιδιοσυστασία, χαρακτήρας, είδος

idioms:

  • against nature    ενάντια στη φύση, αφύσικος
  • back to nature    επιστροφή στη φύση
  • by nature    εκ φύσεως, από (τη) φύση
  • call of nature    σωματική/φυσική ανάγκη
  • in a state of nature    σε φυσική κατάσταση, γυμνός, με αδαμιαία περιβολή, απολίτιστος
  • in the nature of things    (μέσα) στη φυσική τάξη των πραγμάτων, φυσιολογικός
  • in the state of nature    γυμνός, με αδαμιαία περιβολή, άγριος, απολίτιστος
  • nature reserve    οικολογικά προστατευόμενη περιοχή
  • nature trail    φυσικό πέρασμα, μονοπάτι
  • the nature of the beast    η φύσις του κτήνους/θηρίου

Italiano (Italian)
tipo, natura, essenza

idioms:

  • against nature    contro natura
  • back to nature    ritorno alla natura
  • by nature    per natura
  • call of nature    bisogni
  • in a/the state of nature    nello stato naturale
  • in the nature of things    nella natura delle cose
  • nature reserve    riserva naturale
  • nature trail    percorso guidato
  • the nature of the beast    la natura animale

Português (Portuguese)
n. - natureza (f), universo (m), essência (f), índole (f), espécie (f), constituição

idioms:

  • against nature    antinatural
  • back to nature    volta à natureza
  • by nature    por natureza
  • call of nature    vontade de urinar ou defecar
  • in a/the state of nature    nu
  • in the nature of things    tendo o caráter ou as qualidades de
  • nature reserve    reserva natural
  • nature trail    trilha através de recursos naturais
  • the nature of the beast    instinto animal

Русский (Russian)
природа, натура, суть

idioms:

  • against nature    неестественный
  • back to nature    назад к природе
  • by nature    по природе
  • call of nature    зов природы, сходить в уборную
  • in a/the state of nature    в первобытном состоянии, в чем мать родила
  • in the nature of things    в природе вещей
  • nature reserve    заповедник
  • nature trail    экологическая тропа
  • the nature of the beast    вот так сотворили

Español (Spanish)
n. - clase, tipo, especie, índole, naturaleza, carácter, temperamento, esencia

idioms:

  • against nature    contranatural, contra natura
  • back to nature    volver a la naturaleza
  • by nature    por naturaleza, inherente
  • call of nature    necesidad fisiológica, necesidades
  • in a state of nature    en el estado natural, desnudez
  • in the nature of things    normalmente
  • nature reserve    reserva natural
  • nature trail    paseo por la naturaleza, ruta ecológica
  • the nature of the beast    propio de los animales

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - natur, naturen

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
自然, 本性, 大自然

idioms:

  • against nature    违反自然地, 奇迹般地
  • back to nature    回归自然
  • by nature    天生地, 天然地
  • call of nature    便意
  • in a state of nature    处于原始状态, 裸体, 有罪
  • in the nature of things    理所当然地
  • in the state of nature    自然状态下
  • nature reserve    自然保护区
  • nature trail    自然步道, 通往自然景观的小径
  • the nature of the beast    ...的本质

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 自然, 本性, 大自然

idioms:

  • against nature    違反自然地, 奇跡般地
  • back to nature    回歸自然
  • by nature    天生地, 天然地
  • call of nature    便意
  • in a state of nature    處於原始狀態, 裸體, 有罪
  • in the nature of things    理所當然地
  • in the state of nature    自然狀態下
  • nature reserve    自然保護區
  • nature trail    自然步道, 通往自然景觀的小徑
  • the nature of the beast    ...的本質

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 자연, 실물, 체력, 종류, 크기

idioms:

  • by nature    본래
  • call of nature    생리적 요구
  • in a state of nature    야생 그대로의, 발가벗고, 죄인의 상태로
  • in the nature of things    도리상, 당연히
  • in the state of nature    문명화되지 않은 상태
  • the nature of the beast    못된

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 自然, 自然力, 性質, 生理的要求, 種類, 自然の力, 体力

idioms:

  • by nature    生来
  • in the nature of things    道理上
  • nature reserve    鳥獣保護区
  • nature trail    自然遊歩道
  • the nature of the beast    動物の本性

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الطبيعه, جوهر الشيء او صفاته في حاله السلوك الطبيعي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮טבע, אופי, סגולות, סוג, תורשה כקובעת את אופן הפעולה, התפקודים והצרכים החיוניים של יצור חי, איזור, מצב, קהילה לא-מתורבתים‬

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