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20 2 What Is nature? an ecosystem is, we have to study its history and inner composition. Thus it is the particular history of specific forms, assemblages, and processes what counts: how much human influence do they bear, of what kind, leading to which results. Those are the questions to be answered before the naturalness of a given being or ecosys- tem is weighed. 2.2 Towards a Semantics of Nature But how did we got here? How have we reached this nuanced understanding of nature, the intellectual process of which acquisition is also a social and material process? How has society watched itself in the mirror of nature? Needless to say, an exploration of nature as a concept and as a reality can be approached in many different ways. Human beings have been systematically reflecting upon nature for more than two thousand years, although the idea that a single entity may comprise the complex assemblage of beings and processes and raw matter that constitutes the non-human world is something rather unique to Western culture. Yet both Western and non-Western traditions of thought develop an intellectual or spiritual exploration of the non-human world, while also reflect- ing the impact that our changing relationship with the environment has had on human thought. This may explain why the intellectual apprehension of nature has oscillated between an emphasis on human ideas and the acknowledgment that an abstract notion of the natural world has to be supplemented by a more materialist stance that takes into account the latter's relative independence and its influence on human history. Religious and philosophical speculation, together with scientific discoveries, punctuate a history throughout which our perception of the natural world and of ourselves (as human beings) have slowly but constantly changed. This also includes the development of normative traditions concerning how human beings ought to deal with the non-human world. How to avoid, then, the contradic- tions and ambiguities that affect any attempt to produce a semantics of nature? Summarizing the history of this rich and complicated concept, along with the evolution of the socionatural relation itself, can be done in several ways. This chapter will trace the origins of the term in Ancient Greece and will then follow its semantic mutations, that run parallel to human-induced material transformations in nature. From the Greeks to Escholastics, from the Renaissance to Descartes and Bacon, up to Darwin and environmentalism, a brief overview of how nature has been conceived is offered. Prior to that, though, two main premises should be underlined. Firstly, it seems fair to assume, as Glacken (1967) suggests in his magnum opus about the idea of nature in Western thought, that human beings have always searched for purpose and design in the natural world. The idea of order is manifest even in the mytho- logical views of nature and began to be rationalized by the Greeks. Although it has been contested, it remains firmly in place as our intuitive response to the facts