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21 of nature: we find regularities rather than discontinuities, although the latter are known to exist. Furthermore, a teleological nature has often been conceived of as existing on humans' behalf, but even if such notion seems just an anthropocentric delusion, the idea of design—even a design without designer—does not appear to be so easily discarded. Secondly, the most important shift in our view of nature takes place with the publication and reception of Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859. Granted, Darwin is not without his own precursors, nor comes its theory out of a cultural void. Yet it is his groundbreaking work that paves the way for a completely new understanding of the natural world and, crucially, human beings themselves. Darwin provided an explanatory device—evolution—that relocates humanity within the natural world in a revolutionary fashion, showing our common geneal- ogy with other creatures and providing new tools for the study of life. In show- ing that nature is apparently deprived of any religious or moral foundation, let alone any inherent goal other than self-reproduction, Darwinism also had a major impact on culture and politics—one that may yet to be fully felt. Hence it makes sense to take it as the turning point in the history of the concept. Still, it remains a moot point whether Darwinism has had a significant impact on human practices vis-á-vis the natural environment, or those practices—reflecting a human impulse towards the colonization of nature—have remained more or less constant through- out history, thus being more influenced by changes in the technology available to deepen the socionatural imbrication. 2.3 Nature Before Darwin It is in Homer (c. 7000 BCE) where the word 'nature' (ϕύσις) appears among the Greeks for the first time. Therein is applied to plants in order to describe their spe- cific 'character', an archaic usage of the word that already refers to innate char- acteristics of beings and things. Yet the term was immediately used to name the multiplicity of such entities, believed by many pagan cultures to be alive. From the outset, the notion of nature designated the visible material world as well as the creative forces underlying it. A distinction that has been present and even gradu- ally deepened in the history of thought: that between the inside and the outside of things and beings. The first rational approach to nature was developed by Pre-Socratic philoso- phers, who suggested that there is an order underlying this formidable assemblage of entities. It is an order that can actually be discovered through observation and deduction. In fact, this new way of looking at the world involves the very invention of nature, as there is a shift from partial considerations about the quality of some objects to the notion of a natural dominion that comprises the totality of phenom- ena (Lloyd 1992: 22). And if there is an order in nature, is there not also a design and even a moral purpose? No matter how naïve this assumption may seem to us, it was a plausible idea for a very long time. It was advanced by philosophers like 2.2 Towards a Semantics of Nature