Childrens' book philosophy 16: Winnie the Pooh and Aristotle on Nature

"I'm planting a haycorn, Pooh, so that it can grow up into an oak-tree, and have lots of haycorns just outside the front door instead of having to walk miles and miles, do you see, Pooh?"
      "Supposing it doesn't?" said Pooh.
      "It will, because Christopher Robin says it will, so that's why I'm planting it."
      "Well," said Pooh, "if I plant a honeycomb outside my house, then it will grow up into a beehive."
      Piglet wasn't quite sure about this.
      "Or a piece of a honeycomb," said Pooh, "so as not to waste too much. Only then I might only get a piece of a beehive, and it might be the wrong piece, where the bees were buzzing and not hunnying. Bother."

From A.A. Milne, "The House at Pooh Corner"

COMPARE TO:

Some identify the nature or substance of a natural object with that immediate constituent of it which taken by itself is without arrangement, e.g. the wood is the 'nature' of the bed, and the bronze the 'nature' of the statue. As an indication of this Antiphon points out that if you planted a bed and the rotting wood acquired the power of sending up a shoot, it would not be a bed that would come up, but wood-which shows that the arrangement in accordance with the rules of the art is merely an incidental attribute, whereas the real nature is the other, which, further, persists continuously through the process of making.

From Aristotle, Physics 2.1 (Hardie/Gaye trans.)