Definition of "nature" []

• The material world and its phenomena. (noun)
• The forces and processes that produce and control all the phenomena of the material world: the laws of nature. (noun)
• The world of living things and the outdoors: the beauties of nature. (noun)
• A primitive state of existence, untouched and uninfluenced by civilization or artificiality: couldn't tolerate city life anymore and went back to nature. (noun)
• Theology Humankind's natural state as distinguished from the state of grace. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In order to fend off any reminiscences of pagan polytheism, Philoponus points out that unlike the individually differentiated gods of the pagans the three divinities of the Trinity are all of the same, single divine nature in the universal sense of ˜nature™."
• "And since, even when idealized, nature still remains ˜nature™, it follows according to Jacobi that in practice Fichte's idealism is but a form of materialism."
• "{193} "Corresponding to our progressive perception of nature and our immovable conviction of the truth of the evolution theory, our religion can be only a _religion of nature_.""