The matter layed together by Nature fits together in ways governed by some necessity. Necessity is invoked here not in the sense of a general logical necessity or any particular natural law.
There is no discussion of a population of active entities which have a tendency to reproduce themselves in a particular, with a number of unpredictable variations that permit reproductive success in a particular situation. The habit is developed by the entity Nature as a whole. This passage suggests that Nature as such develops habits and can produce individual instances of a species as one could exercise one’s acquired habitual skills on different occasions. Alternatively, there is an unchanging necessity governing the combination of matter, or particular necessities at work in combinations of particular kinds of matter. This activity allows her to develop a habit (“use”) for the construction of some particular kind of work.
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In a series of iterations, she puts bits of matter together. Here, Nature is posited as some entity that can lay pieces of matter together, though she is not herself an entity subject to change by some other power. Of strength, or vertue, error, or cleare truth, Not knowing what they say, so Nature layesĮnds such a work, fills it, or leaves it empty To see and fore-see, is stark blind her selfe That she, that makes so many eyes and soules In her great works responsive to their worths There is a very fine poetic exposition of these pre-Darwinian thoughts about the ontology of change in Chapman’s “Bussy D’Ambois.” One character comes forward with a monologue about how forms are generated naturally: Hume got read out at the end of the episode and that reading provided a good example of the Lucretian, Empedeoclean, and I would add Hobbesian attempts to think about directionless evolution.
There were attempts to think about the development of natural forms before Darwin and his ideas about reproduction with variation, and differential selection for traits. I was thinking about what shift in thinking is apparent in Darwin.
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