Nature - autonomous learning

106 the ‘nature’ of geographyphenomena we happen to label as ‘natural’ ones. Like sticks and stonesknowledge can, indeed, break bones.EXERCISES• Compare the contents of the Dictionary of Human Geography (Johnston etal. 2000) and the Dictionary of Physical Geography (Thomas and Goudie2000).To what extent is ‘nature’ a topic of interest in the former and inwhat ways? Likewise, you might flick through the content of a leadinggeography journal – like the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.Compare an issue from, say, the 1940s with a more recent one. If youlook at the essay titles and abstracts, can you identify differences in thekinds of ‘natural’ things studied and in the way they’re studied?• List some of the key reasons why the ideas academics hold aboutthe world (be they ideas about nature or any other topic) change overtime. It might be useful to have a list of ‘external’ reasons (concernedwith what goes on outside academia), a list of ‘internal reasons’(concerned with what goes on in academia in general) and a list of‘disciplinary reasons’ (concerned with developments internal toa single subject). To get you started, one external reason might bechanging public attitudes, one internal reason might be an innovativetheory of potentially wide intellectual importance (like Darwinismor chaos theory), and one disciplinary reason might the perennial effortsof young academics to debunk the wisdom of their elders as they questafter fame within their subject area.• As this chapter has shown, geography has been selectively influenced bywider intellectual and real-world events when it comes to changingunderstandings of nature in the discipline. Can you explain whygeography has often failed to respond to wider developments that haveobvious relevance to the understanding of nature – such as theoutpouring of ecocentric sentiment in the early 1970s? What mightexplain why geography has only been selectively influenced by its widersocietal context? Is it important for geographers to adjust their presentdayresearch in light of the moral and practical concerns attaching tonew developments like biotechnology?