My (Burr Cook) ancestors, the Gates family, a large number of which are buried at Hopewell, were early settlers in the area, coming from Keene NH. Route 20, passing through the middle of the township, was at that time a log road and the first toll turnpike in the state long before the thruway was thought of.
State of Nature. State of nature refers to a condition in which there is no established political authority. It is essentially a state of complete freedom. Political theorists have used it to better understand human nature and, typically, to justify the rationality of a particular type of government.
The balance of nature is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium ( homeostasis ) , which is to say that a small change in some particular parameter ( the size of a particular population , for example ) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original  point of ...