φυσις = custom?

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
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timothy_p_mcmahon
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Joined: June 3rd, 2011, 10:47 pm

φυσις = custom?

Post by timothy_p_mcmahon »

I've recently encountered a lot of (undocumented) assertions that φυσις was used in NT-era Greek to mean 'custom' rather than 'nature'.

I had always thought that φυσις denotes what is inherent or natural in contrast to νομος as humanly devised custom.

Does φυσις carry the sense of 'custom'?
Stephen Carlson
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Re: φυσις = custom?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

The key verse you have to wrestle with is 1 Cor 11:14 οὐδὲ ἡ φύσις αὐτὴ διδάσκει ὑμᾶς ὅτι ἀνὴρ μὲν ἐὰν κομᾷ, ἀτιμία αὐτῷ ἐστιν. Keeping one's hair short is a custom, not "natural" at least in the modern sense of the word.

In fact, probably the biggest difficulty in dealing with this term is not to read in the post-Enlightenment dichotomy between natural and artificial, yet still make sense to all those of us firmly rooted in that post-Enlightenment viewpoint.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
cwconrad
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Re: φυσις = custom?

Post by cwconrad »

I'll just state the obvious here: conceptions about what is "natural" are very much a matter of cultural convention. As for the post-Enlightenment antithesis of "nature" and "convention", that's not so far-removed -- if it doesn't even, at least in part, derive from -- the 5th-century BCE antithesis of νόμος and φύσις.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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