The Idea of Nature

Collingwood, in the introduction of The Idea of Nature, begins by explaining the interrelated nature of philosophy and science. He laments the fact that philosophy and the natural sciences have grown apart during the last couple hundred years, stating “it cannot be well that natural science should be assigned exclusively to one class of persons called scientists and philosophy to another class called philosophers” (2). His goal, then, is to build a kind of bridge between the two disciplines such that misunderstandings can be avoided.

Collingwood argues that there are three distinct viewpoints on the idea of nature: the Greek view, the Renaissance view, and the modern view. Natural science for the Greeks “was based on the principle that the world of nature is saturated or permeated by mind” (3). This conception of ‘mind’ is what provided order and regularity (as well as intelligence) to an otherwise chaotic world. He argues that the Greeks conceived of nature as an organism. The Greeks saw in the constant movement and change the entire world as alive.

The second view is the Renaissance view of nature, or what he more accurately refers to as a ‘post-Renaissance’ view. This view of nature is very much the antithesis of the Greek view in that it saw nature as a machine rather than an organism. This mechanistic view of nature meant that nature (as well as the natural objects comprising it) is simply a thing with some specific function designed for some purpose. The one commonality between the two viewpoints is that both “saw in the orderliness of the natural world an expression of intelligence: but for the Greeks this intelligence was nature’s own intelligence, for the Renaissance thinkers it was the intelligences of something other than nature” (5). This ‘other’ intelligence was almost always God or the divine.

The third view is the modern view of nature. Collingwood states that this view began in the late eighteenth century. Both the Greek and renaissance view operated under the assumption that there had to be something unchanging that grounded our knowledge of nature. The two aspects of nature that were unchanging were matter and natural law. The modern view, however, rejects the need for an unchanging foundation. Natural science was able to use the “historical conception of scientifically knowable change” renaming it evolution (13).

Collingwood puts forth four consequences of this new view of nature. The first is that change is no longer cyclical but progressive. Evolution is always moving forward, it can’t ever go back or reach the same point twice (13). The second is that nature is no longer mechanical. According to evolution, nature is always growing and developing. It is never finished. A machine is a “finished product or a closed system” whereas nature is not (14). The third is that teleology is reintroduced. Since nature is continually growing and developing, it must be growing or developing towards something. This aim or goal is the preservation of its own becoming. The fourth is that substance is resolved into function. Substance as structure loses its primacy and allows for nature to be described simply in terms of function.