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I was asked to discuss the distinction between the natural and the artificial.

Now, we've all seen this definition probably a dozen times by now.

Hopefully you have it all memorized.

Nature is an internal principle and cause of being moved and being at rest,

and that to which it belongs primarily in virtue of itself and not accidentally.

Each specific kind of natural body is associated with the characteristic movement or activity,

and such a body will immediately and necessarily engage in its natural motion,

if nothing external, prevents it from doing so.

Now this notion of nature comes up in the physics. The physics is the study of change, both change

itself and the things that do so. And this marks the main division. There are those things that

have natures, these internal principles of movement and rest,

simple bodies, mixtures, living organisms that might not be exhaustive. There may be other things,

but these are clear cases of things that have natures. And artifacts, presumably, those things that

do not have an internal principle of movement and rest, their principle of movement and rest is external. This is excluding things that come to be by chance and accidental

compounds. Now, both Aristotle and Aquinas are committed to some version of what is commonly

called the nature craft analogy.

This allows a limited extension of insights about the voluntary actions of a master artificer

performs to the natural movements involved in the generation of living organisms.

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