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| Second Nature | |
|---|---|
| Name | Second Nature |
| Region | Global |
| Related | Habit formation; Tacit knowledge; Virtue ethics |
Second Nature Second Nature denotes the state in which practiced actions, dispositions, or dispositions become automatic and integrated into a person's character, appearing as if innate. The phrase is used across philosophy, psychology, education, literature, and ethics to describe acquired, durable capacities that function with minimal deliberation. Scholars and writers from Aristotle to John Dewey, practitioners in B.F. Skinner-inspired behaviorism, and commentators in contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology have examined how repeated activity becomes embodied as Second Nature.
The term traces linguistic and conceptual roots through classical and medieval texts, with early treatments by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics and by Thomas Aquinas in scholastic analyses, later appearing in Renaissance and Enlightenment debates involving Francis Bacon and David Hume. Philosophers such as G.W.F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche explored the dialectic between habit and freedom, while Immanuel Kant distinguished predispositions from rational maxims in moral psychology. Modern analytic treatments engage figures like Gilbert Ryle and John Searle when defining dispositional versus occurrent states; pragmatists such as William James and John Dewey recast the phrase in instrumentalist terms.
Philosophical accounts of Second Nature map onto virtue theory in Aristotle and the medieval virtue ethics of Thomas Aquinas, where habituation produces moral character. In the early modern period, discussions by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke emphasized associative learning and custom, while David Hume foregrounded sentiment and habit in human understanding. German idealists like Hegel treated customary forms as mediated institutions, and Karl Marx and Max Weber considered routinized practices in social reproduction and the bureaucratic order. Contemporary philosophers including Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum have revisited habituation in debates over virtue, narrative identity, and social institutions such as families and professions.
Empirical study of Second Nature appears in behaviorist experiments by Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, cognitive models by Herbert A. Simon and Daniel Kahneman, and neuroscientific research on procedural memory and motor learning involving laboratories at institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University College London. Concepts such as procedural memory (related to work by Brenda Milner), habit loops described in research influenced by Wendy Wood, and dual-process theories popularized by Keith Stanovich and Daniel Kahneman link automaticity to neural substrates including the basal ganglia and cerebellum investigated in studies by Ann Graybiel. Developmental psychology research at Harvard University and Stanford University examines how repeated caregiving practices and schooling produce durable behavioral tendencies.
Second Nature informs pedagogical theories from Plato's musings on education to John Dewey's progressive schooling and Jerome Bruner's cognitive curriculum design. Apprenticeship models in crafts and professions (documented in Michel Foucault's genealogies and E.P. Thompson's labor histories) show practical routinization across institutions like guilds and modern universities. Contemporary instructional design, influenced by Benjamin Bloom's mastery learning and Anders Ericsson's deliberate practice framework, emphasizes repetition, feedback loops used in military training at academies such as West Point, and simulation training in aviation and medicine to cultivate procedural competence that becomes Second Nature.
Writers and critics from William Shakespeare and John Milton to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and T.S. Eliot have used the idea of ingrained habit to characterize temperament, social roles, and artistic technique. In the novelistic tradition, authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Marcel Proust explore manners and memory as habitual structures; modernist and postmodernist treatments from Virginia Woolf to James Joyce interrogate the interplay of habit and consciousness. Cultural theorists including Pierre Bourdieu (with his concept of habitus), Roland Barthes, and Stuart Hall analyze how dispositions shape taste, practice, and identity across institutions such as churches, workplaces, and markets.
Critics question whether Second Nature unduly naturalizes social norms or constrains agency, a concern raised by feminist theorists such as Judith Butler and critical theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Debates continue between reductionist neuroscientific explanations advanced in work at institutions like National Institutes of Health and interpretive social theories by scholars such as Anthony Giddens and Alasdair MacIntyre about the locus of moral responsibility. Practical ethics debates in contexts like bioethics committees and professional regulation (e.g., American Medical Association) weigh the benefits of routinized competence against risks of automatism, bias, and loss of reflective judgment.
Category:Concepts in philosophy Category:Psychology concepts