MODELING OF NATURE, SUMMARY

Nature exists and acts independently of man, although it is available for his observation and in some cases for his manipulation and use.

     What happens naturally is the act or activity that originates within the agent, more or less spontaneously, and is not the exclusive resultant of forces imposed on the object from without.

     Nature is thus populated by plants and animals of various kinds. Some natures are animate whereas others are inanimate, yet all are knowable through observable properties and behavioral characteristics.

     Nature is only progressively disclosed in experience, and perhaps is never exhaustively understood, makes it especially amenable to study through modeling techniques.

Modeling in this context means an analogy that promotes the gradual understanding of something not readily grasped in the sense experience. When we encounter something new, using modeling technique, we use the things we know or think we know to advance into the realm of the unknown.

Modeling is used for discovery and classification. It has two referents that can serve to explain its function. The first is something more known from which the Model is taking, and the other is something less known, to which the model is applied. The more known is the source or origin and the less known is the application.

The first model to be introduced is the causal model. It takes its origin from the world of artifacts and is readily applied to the world of nature. As an explanatory model, it identifies four factors that are usually called causes, though not all in the same sense, since each function in a distinctive way when providing a causal explanation.

The four factors involved in the causal model are usually identified as matter, form, agent and end. They are principle for understanding entities in the order of becoming and in the order of being as well. When analyzing a chair, one will not have any difficulty identifying the first two factors.

The matter is the material out of which the chair was made and which remains in it, for example wood or oak to be more precise.

The form is the shape or design imposed on the wood during the chair’s making. These two factors are within the chair and serve to explain its composition in the order of being and are called internal causes. The remaining two factors explains why and how the chair came to be and so are termed external factor. The agent or efficient cause is the carpenter or craftsman who contributed it from raw material and the end is the goal or objective he had in mind when doing so. Example: a presentable piece of furniture on which one can sit comfortably. They are more of principles in the order of becoming than in the order of being.

Natural substance are formed from chemical elements such as those listed in the periodic table. Aristotle spoke of the ultimate material component of natural entities as ‘hule prote’. A Greek expression meaning proto matter (PM) or first matter. He thought of it as a type of conservation principle that persists through all natural changes in the universe.

Nature as Agent

A general principle is latent in the example: operations and activities and re-activities as well, proceed from abilities and potentials that are lodged in the natures of agents and so can serve to explain the ways in which they act and react with neighboring objects. Natural forms are the inner source of these activities, but such forms are equipped with powers that can be activated and so enable substances to act on, and interact with things external to them in distinctive ways. It is the ability of one substance to act on another that explains why it is possible to identify agents and reagents in the order of nature.

The first and simplest meaning of end is that of end in the sense of terminus, the point at which a process stops. Example: growth and maturity.

Nature is more than an inner source of change and activity. It is also a source of permanence and stability. When such stability terminates a natural process, whether inorganic or organic, it is the end of the process and as such it’s final cause. The second meaning of end is a perfection or good attained through the process. The third is the final causality found in cognitive agents’ example: bird building nest, the spiders making their web and human building house.

Necessity in Nature

Mistakes sometimes occur in nature example: Zebra without stripes, malformed limbs and organs. The occurrence of such exceptions to nature’s course raises a question about the necessity of its operations and the degree of determinism one may expect to find in them

Herbivorous animals consume flourishing grasses, carnivorous animals prey on their victim throughout their life, big fish feeds on smaller ones.

The accidents of a natural body are then shown, arranged somewhat arbitrarily around the inner core, they are grouped into three categories: quantitative, qualitative and relative. The most important of the first group is quantity itself, shown next to proto matter, and the most important of the second is quality, shown next to the specifying form.

With regard to quantity, we must note that its basic function as an accident is to ground bodily extension by putting part outside of part and so enabling matter or substance to be divisible into parts.