Natural Explanations for Crime • Natural explanations of crime make use of objects and events in the material world to account for what happens. • Among the Greeks, Hippocrates (460 BC) provided a physiological explanation of thinking by arguing that the brain is the organ of the mind. Democritus (420 BC) proposed the idea of an indestructible unit of matter called the atom as central to his explanation of the world around him. With Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the ideas of unity and continuity came to the fore, but the essential factors in all explanations remained physical and material. • In Roman law, the Hebrew doctrine of divine sanction for law and order merged with Greek naturalism to provide a justification based on the “nature of things.” • Thus, the rule of kings by divine right became a natural law looking to the nature of things for its principal justification. • Modern social science continues this natural emphasis; social scientists seek their explanations within the physical and material world.