ABSTRACT
This is not the first book about nature and it will not be the last.To write such a book is, in one sense, to write about everything.After all, one familiar definition of nature is ‘the entire physical world’ (Habgood 2002: 4). Nature is an all-pervasive aspect of our lives. In fact, it’s difficult to think of anything else that’s as promiscuously evident in all that we think, say and do.Where previous writers have waxed philosophical about nature it seems to me better to approach it through the concrete forms in which it’s routinely experienced and discussed.The following vignettes remind us just how central nature is to our everyday thought and practice – whoever we are and wherever we are.
