"They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, molds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial." (Plato, "Nomoi" ["Laws"], cca. 360 BC)
"It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. " (Aristotle, "Nicomachean Ethics", Book II, 349 BC)
"Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement." (Aristotle, "Nicomachean Ethics", cca. 350 BC)
"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire." (Aristotle, 4th century BC)
"Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But things are defined by their working and power; and we ought not to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality, but only that they have the same name." (Aristotle, "Politics", 4th century BC)
"The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole." (Aristotle, "Politics", 4th century BC)
"Thus, of all the honorable arts, which are carried out either naturally or proceed in imitation of nature, geometry takes the skill of reasoning as its field. It is hard at the beginning and difficult of access, delightful in its order, full of beauty, unsurpassable in its effect. For with its clear processes of reasoning it illuminates the field of rational thinking, so that it may be understood that geometry belongs to the arts or that the arts are from geometry." (Agennius Urbicus, "Controversies about Fields", cca. 4 century BC)
"No species remains constant: that great renovator of matter Nature, endlessly fashions new forms from old: there’s nothing in the whole universe that perishes, believe me; rather it renews and varies its substance. What we describe as birth is no more than incipient change from a prior state, while dying is merely to quit it. Though the parts may be transported hither and thither, the sum of all matter is constant." (Publius Ovidius Naso [Ovid], "Metamorphoses", 8 AD)
"Things […] are some of them continuous […] which are properly and peculiarly called 'magnitudes'; others are discontinuous, in a side-by-side arrangement, and, as it were, in heaps, which are called 'multitudes', a flock, for instance, a people, a heap, a chorus, and the like. Wisdom, then, must be considered to be the knowledge of these two forms. Since, however, all multitude and magnitude are by their own nature of necessity infinite - for multitude starts from a definite root and never ceases increasing; and magnitude, when division beginning with a limited whole is carried on, cannot bring the dividing process to an end […] and since sciences are always sciences of limited things, and never of infinites, it is accordingly evident that a science dealing with magnitude […] or with multitude […] could never be formulated. […] A science, however, would arise to deal with something separated from each of them, with quantity, set off from multitude, and size, set off from magnitude." (Nicomachus of Gerasa, "Introductio Arithmetica", cca. 100 AD)
"But if anyone despises the arts because they produce their works by imitating nature, we must tell him, first, that natural things are imitations too. Then he must know that the arts do not simply imitate what they see, but they run back up to the forming principles from which nature derives" (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)
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