NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

An important historical branch designation rather than a current one, natural philosophy was the study of nature and the physical universe by philosophical (that is, largely empirical reason-based) methods. Natural philosophy is considered a precursor of all that is today encompassed by “science,” especially physics and the natural sciences. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the first philosopher to define natural philosophy, and the term was in use through much of the nineteenth century until it was displaced and replaced by “science.” In the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophical traditions, natural philosophy (Naturphilosophie) specifically denoted a philosophical approach that set the goal of demonstrating the unity of nature and spirit.