The ground of our being.

People of iron?

iron oxide in soil	iron holds on to oxygen	the earth has an iron core

nature

Greek, PHYSIS --

Anaximander, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus are among the earliest writers to use this word referring to the composition of material existence.

p. 158.

"It is clear that the inquiry which uses the methodological approach known as logos and is later known by Pythagoras as philosophia, had, as its general subject matter, PHYSIS."

p. 158.

Meaning three different but associated conceptualizations

1. the growth process, or genesis [Empedocles]
2. the "physical" or material stuff out of which things were made, or arche [Plato and Aristotle]
3. the structure of things, meaning the internal organizational principle [Heraclitus and Democtitus]

"this stuff (1 and 2) was alive, hence divine, immortal and indestructible."

page 158.

F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, New York: NYU Press, 1967.

From all of these meanings we can take away the understanding that enduring qualities of the material world are embodied in the meaning of the word physis; the basis, foundation or basis of our beings and our shared being is physis.

	Physical physical versus biological nature index   Three world's gestalt
Gustave Courbet's Sea Shore, an image of another world.

mitwelt and eigenwelt

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