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Primitive Posits.

This sort of distinction helps a little in making clear the “inclusion problem” cited above: whether the individual looking around sees Nature as the other that does not include themself since they are an individual human and humans are exceptional in this scheme: residing at the top of the scale naturae. Though said human, let’s call her “Sue,” resides in Nature, her nature is as a power figure: on the Board of Directors for the corporation, Nature. Though she is nominally a part of the larger scheme, it is only as one of the ruling executives, trumped solely by God (if she is a theist) or by nothing else save the physical laws governing the interaction of states of matter (if she is an agnostic or atheist).

If this analysis is correct, then why is this so (dioti)? I have argued in a recent book that the European and Chinese traditions used the concept of Nature as the source of limitation on human excesses up until the seventeenth century in Europe and until the nineteenth century for the Chinese.⁸ Under this earlier account Nature was recognized as more powerful than humans—especially regarding violent killing events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, tsunami, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. In this way, an abstract Nature is seen as a force apart from living organisms (plants, animals, humans) and non-living entities (earth, air, water). This force was viewed by some as Divine.⁹