1. History of the Term

The term “nature” clearly is used in many different ways, in both everyday speech and technical language. This imprecision makes its meaning versatile but problematic in relation to such concepts as life, experience, and reality. The flexibility and imprecision mark its whole history (Philosophy of Nature), in which we find all the meanings that it has in common parlance. Common to them all is the idea that “nature” stands for the sphere of the given.