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book of nature
The Book of Nature is a religious and philosophical concept originating in the Latin Middle Ages which views nature as a book to be read for knowledge and understanding. There also was a book written by Konrad of Megenberg in the 14th century with the original German title of "Buch der Natur". Early theologians believed the Book of Nature was a source of God's revelation to mankind: when read alongside sacred scripture, the "book" of nature and the study of God's creations would lead to a knowledge of God himself. The concept corresponds to the early Greek philosophical belief that man, as part of a coherent universe, is capable of understanding the design of the natural world through reason. The concept is frequently deployed by philosophers, theologians, and scholars.
The first use of the phrase is unknown. However, Galileo used the phrase when he wrote of how "the book of nature (become ) readable and comprehensible."〔Evernden (1992), p. 52〕
==Origins==
From the earliest times in known civilizations, events in the natural world were expressed through a collection of stories concerning everyday life. In ancient times, a mortal world existed alongside an upper world of spirits and gods acting through nature to create a unified and intersecting moral and natural cosmos. Humans, living in a world that was acted upon by free acting and conspiring gods of nature, attempted to understand their world and the actions of the divine by observing and correctly interpreting natural phenomena, such as the motion and position of stars and planets. Efforts to interpret and understand divine intentions led mortals to believe that intervention and influence over godly acts was possible—either through religious persuasion, such as prayer or gifts, or through magic, which depended on sorcery and the manipulation of nature in order to bend the will of the gods. Knowing divine intentions and anticipating divine actions through the manipulation of the natural world was believed achievable and the most effective approach. Thus, mankind had a reason to know nature.〔Pedersen (1992), pp. 5-6〕
Around the sixth century BC, man’s relationship with the deities and nature began to change. Greek philosophers no longer viewed natural phenomena as the result of free acting, omnipotent gods. Rather, natural forces resided within nature, which was an integral part of a created world, and appeared under certain conditions that had little to do with the manipulative tendencies of personal deities. Furthermore, the Greeks believed that natural phenomena occurred by “necessity” through intersecting chains of “cause” and “effect.” Greek philosophers, however, lacked a technical vocabulary to express such abstract concepts as “necessity” or “cause” and consequently co-opted words available in the Greek language to refer metaphorically to the new philosophy of nature. Accordingly, the Greeks conceptualized the natural world in more specific terms that aligned with a new philosophy that viewed nature as immanent in which natural phenomena occurred by necessity.()
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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