Abstract

The paper examines the character and historical source of the mystifications of the notions of Nature and Natural Kinds in the misguided attempt to turn Nature into a secular substitute for the role played by God in the previous theological framework of thought in order to turn it into a secular one in the period of the rise of science and scientific understanding. The role and function nature was given in this would-be replacement framework turned it into a quasi-deity governing the world from outside and generated the mechanical world-view in which humans were mere cogs. Against this is set Aristotle's conception of Nature and the Natural as simply 'what happens by and large and for the most part'--a description and not an explanation