Nature, in the broadest wisdom, is the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe. Nature is the phenomena of the physical world, and life in general. artificial objects and human interaction are not considered part of nature except qualified in ways such as "human nature" or "the whole of nature". Nature is generally notable from the supernatural.

The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "the course of things, natural character. Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the intrinsic character that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has gradually gained currency ever since. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.

Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" may refer to the general realm of various types of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes connected with dead objects – the way that meticulous types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness – wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general those things that have not been to a large extent altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the latter being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human or human-like perception or mind.