My preferred definition of nature is very broad: It is the context of our human acting that is not of our making. This means much more than the natural sciences usually consider, which is how I want it to be, as I want to speak of an insight from faith. Nature is the context in which we are meant to be happy. You may think that believing so requires a lot of faith, as modern science—and ordinary human experience—gives us so many reasons to fear nature. Acting naturally, in the human sense, might mean opposing and subordinating nature. But if you understand our Sister Mother Earth, as St. Francis puts it, correctly, then working with her supports our pursuit of happiness.

We could have started with a narrower definition of nature. We could have considered nature to be what physics and all other sciences based on it study. This would have prioritized the fundamental structures of nature, or the laws of nature that explain why material things are what they are and how they change. This is nature as it would seem without us, when observed from the outside. But we are not outside. We are right in the middle of it; what we see from there is much more. Acknowledging this makes all the difference.

I became a fan of the philosophy of Edith Stein, and her work helped me overcome what I considered the biggest obstacle. You see, it’s easy to agree that nature is more than physics. Most people accept this right away. But it’s just as easy to see that physics tells us something true about nature. The hard part is integrating this with what we have always known.

Stein’s solution is not to choose between modern and traditional philosophies but to bring them together. Together with modern philosophers, she recognizes that what we see is already shaped by what we have learned to see. Our minds play an active role in seeing the world. To correct errors passed on from generation to generation, we must approach traditional knowledge with openness to correction. But she also recognizes that, for us to make any sense of it at all, there must already be an order in this world that guides our making sense of it. We don’t make it, but we discover it, even if this discovery is of our making.

This applies not only to physical structures that we learn to understand because they are really in the world, but also to values and perceptions of goodness that we learn to understand. We can discern two orders in nature: one is the order of physical necessity, and the other is the order of rational acting that correctly responds to values we learn from nature. These are the two great traditions in which we know the word “nature.” Nature as the internal principles of movement, and nature as a rational order that includes guidance for human acting. With Stein’s philosophy, we can bring them together.