Browse All Topics The National Academies Press. Nature Wikipedia. Nature, in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, or material world or universe. Nature can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. Psychedelic Information Theory Shamanism in the Age of Reason by James L. Kent First Edition, PIT Press Supermassive, LLC, 2010 For color images, updates, and links. Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. Reality includes everything that is and has been, whether. Questions Answers on Health and Human Rights 4 It is my aspiration that health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right. The study of nature is a large part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or essential qualities, innate disposition, and in ancient times, literally meant birth. Natura is a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion it began with certain core applications of the word by pre Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage continued during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries. Within the various uses of the word today, nature often refers to geology and wildlife. Nature can refer to the general realm of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objectsthe way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth. It is often taken to mean the natural environment or wildernesswild animals, rocks, forest, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. For example, manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, human nature or the whole of nature. This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the artificial being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind. Depending on the particular context, the term natural might also be distinguished from the unnatural or the supernatural. Earth is the only planet known to support life, and its natural features are the subject of many fields of scientific research. Within the solar system, it is third closest to the sun it is the largest terrestrial planet and the fifth largest overall. Its most prominent climatic features are its two large polar regions, two relatively narrow temperate zones, and a wide equatorial tropical to subtropical region. Precipitation varies widely with location, from several metres of water per year to less than a millimetre. Earths surface is covered by salt water oceans. The remainder consists of continents and islands, with most of the inhabited land in the Northern Hemisphere. Earth has evolved through geological and biological processes that have left traces of the original conditions. The outer surface is divided into several gradually migrating tectonic plates. The interior remains active, with a thick layer of plastic mantle and an iron filled core that generates a magnetic field. This iron core is composed of a solid inner phase, and a fluid outer phase. Convective motion in the core generates electric currents through dynamo action, and these, in turn, generate the geomagnetic field. Information And The Nature Of Reality Pdf' title='Information And The Nature Of Reality Pdf' />The atmospheric conditions have been significantly altered from the original conditions by the presence of life forms,7 which create an ecological balance that stabilizes the surface conditions. Total Recorder Professional Edition Crack. Despite the wide regional variations in climate by latitude and other geographic factors, the long term average global climate is quite stable during interglacial periods,8 and variations of a degree or two of average global temperature have historically had major effects on the ecological balance, and on the actual geography of the Earth. GeologyeditGeology is the science and study of the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth. The field of geology encompasses the study of the composition, structure, physical properties, dynamics, and history of Earth materials, and the processes by which they are formed, moved, and changed. Visio 2007 For Window 7 32 Bit'>Visio 2007 For Window 7 32 Bit. The field is a major academic discipline, and is also important for mineral and hydrocarbon extraction, knowledge about and mitigation of natural hazards, some Geotechnical engineering fields, and understanding past climates and environments. Geological evolutioneditThe geology of an area evolves through time as rock units are deposited and inserted and deformational processes change their shapes and locations. Rock units are first emplaced either by deposition onto the surface or intrude into the overlying rock. Information And The Nature Of Reality Pdf' title='Information And The Nature Of Reality Pdf' />Deposition can occur when sediments settle onto the surface of the Earth and later lithify into sedimentary rock, or when as volcanic material such as volcanic ash or lava flows, blanket the surface. Igneous intrusions such as batholiths, laccoliths, dikes, and sills, push upwards into the overlying rock, and crystallize as they intrude. After the initial sequence of rocks has been deposited, the rock units can be deformed andor metamorphosed. Deformation typically occurs as a result of horizontal shortening, horizontal extension, or side to side strike slip motion. These structural regimes broadly relate to convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries, and transform boundaries, respectively, between tectonic plates. Historical perspectiveedit. An animation showing the movement of the continents from the separation of Pangaea until the present day. Earth is estimated to have formed 4. Sun and other planets. The moon formed roughly 2. Initially molten, the outer layer of the Earth cooled, resulting in the solid crust. Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, most or all of which came from ice delivered by comets, produced the oceans and other water sources. The highly energetic chemistry is believed to have produced a self replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago. Plankton inhabit oceans, seas and lakes, and have existed in various forms for at least 2 billion years. Continents formed, then broke up and reformed as the surface of Earth reshaped over hundreds of millions of years, occasionally combining to make a supercontinent. Roughly 7. 50 million years ago, the earliest known supercontinent Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia which broke apart about 5. Pangaea, which broke apart about 1. During the Neoproterozoic era covered much of the Earth in glaciers and ice sheets. This hypothesis has been termed the Snowball Earth, and it is of particular interest as it precedes the Cambrian explosion in which multicellular life forms began to proliferate about 5. Since the Cambrian explosion there have been five distinctly identifiable mass extinctions. The last mass extinction occurred some 6. Over the past 6. 6 million years, mammalian life diversified. Several million years ago, a species of small African ape gained the ability to stand upright. The subsequent advent of human life, and the development of agriculture and further civilization allowed humans to affect the Earth more rapidly than any previous life form, affecting both the nature and quantity of other organisms as well as global climate.