Yet the intentionality implicit in physis is at the very core of the Darwinian concept of adaptation: forming well-functioning machines that can carry an organism through the filter of natural selection.
Aristotle referred to them as physikoi, or physicists, from the Greek physis, meaning "nature" in its widest sense, contrasting them with the earlier theologoi, or theologians, for they were the first who tried to explain phenomena on natural rather than supernatural grounds.