The changing sense of φύσις over time …

• In Homeric Greek, φύσις (phusis) is a verbal noun and carries the vegetative sense of φύω “to grow, to appear.”
• For Heraclitus, φύσις retained its processual connotation (“growing, becoming”) but spread to also encompass the poles of the process, the starting and ending points.
• For Thales and his Ionian followers, φύσις expanded to mean Nature or the Universe.
• For the Sophists, φύσις meant “nature” and contrasted with νόμος (nomos), meaning “law, human convention.”
• After Aristotle, φύσις (as τὰ φυσικά) meant “the physical” (as the concrete and contingent) and contrasted with “the metaphysical” (the basic and prior to all).