<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section possibly contains original research . Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations . Statements consisting only of original research should be removed . (May 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> Although Plato did not have an explicit theory of natural law (he rarely used the phrase' natural law' except in Gorgias 484 and Timaeus 83e), his concept of nature, according to John Wild, contains some of the elements found in many natural law theories . According to Plato, we live in an orderly universe . The basis of this orderly universe or nature are the forms, most fundamentally the Form of the Good, which Plato describes as "the brightest region of Being". The Form of the Good is the cause of all things, and when it is seen it leads a person to act wisely . In the Symposium, the Good is closely identified with the Beautiful . In the Symposium, Plato describes how the experience of the Beautiful by Socrates enabled him to resist the temptations of wealth and sex . In the Republic, the ideal community is, "...a city which would be established in accordance with nature ." </P> <P> Greek philosophy emphasized the distinction between "nature" (physis, φúσις) on the one hand and "law", "custom", or "convention" (nomos, νóμος) on the other . What the law commanded would be expected to vary from place to place, but what was "by nature" should be the same everywhere . A "law of nature" would therefore have the flavor more of a paradox than something that obviously existed . Against the conventionalism that the distinction between nature and custom could engender, Socrates and his philosophic heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon, δικαιον φυσικον, Latin ius naturale). Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law . </P> <P> Aristotle's association with natural law may be due to the interpretation given to his works by Thomas Aquinas . But whether Aquinas correctly read Aristotle is in dispute . According to some, Aquinas conflates natural law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics (Book IV of the Eudemian Ethics). According to this interpretation, Aquinas's influence was such as to affect a number of early translations of these passages in an unfortunate manner, though more recent translations render those more literally . Aristotle notes that natural justice is a species of political justice, specifically the scheme of distributive and corrective justice that would be established under the best political community; were this to take the form of law, this could be called a natural law, though Aristotle does not discuss this and suggests in the Politics that the best regime may not rule by law at all . </P>

Who established the natural laws of the universe