Also known as “realm of nature”. Nature in the wider sense refers to the objective being of everything that is independent of human consciousness, which is the material world. Nature in the narrower sense refers to everything in the material world that is not created by man and all things outside society. Engels said that the basic question of philosophy is “the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of the spirit to nature”. The “nature” mentioned here is nature in the wider sense. It is a concept synonymous with matter and the opposite of consciousness, referring to the sum total of all that exists in the universe, including both nature in the narrower sense and human society; both nature outside man himself and nature of man himself. Engels said: “The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existence extending from stars to atoms, indeed right to ether particles, insofar as one grants the existence of the last named.” This is the material world in eternal motion, infinite in time and space. . .
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