Nature is constructed by the mind’s synthetic activity from raw sense perceptions

Evidence

Kant asked and answered the fundamental question of his philosophy, “How is nature possible?” He could do so only because nature for him was nothing but the representation of nature. It was so not merely in the sense that “the world is my representation” and that we can therefore speak of nature too as only a content of consciousness, but also in the sense that what we call nature is the special way in which the mind assembles, orders, and shapes sense perceptions. … In their immediate givenness, Kant held, the elements of the world do not have the interdependence which alone makes them intelligible as the unity of nature’s laws. It is this interdependence which transforms the world fragments—in themselves incoherent and unstructured—into nature. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 167

Categorization

• DEFINE: Simmel’s Kantian framing: nature is not given raw but assembled by the mind’s ordering activity.
• XREF: connects to: Knowledge requires mental reflection on existence rather than passive sensory impressions — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 693; Historical synthesis by a single mind reveals deep connections across eras — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 31; Plato argues that real knowledge derives from concepts rather than sensory perception — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 674 (+11 more)

Related

• Nature is what human perception and behavior make it, not a hallucination. (similarity 0.83)
• This view, broadly scientific but flavored with a Platonic sense of a world of order behind the chaos of sense impressions, was challenged by the Romantic poets (such as Blake and Wordsworth) and… (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Plato argues that real knowledge derives from concepts rather than sensory perception #corroborates (0.90) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 674
• Knowledge requires mental reflection on existence rather than passive sensory impressions #corroborates (0.85) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 693
• Historical synthesis by a single mind reveals deep connections across eras #exemplifies (0.60) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 31