Nature - autonomous learning

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWriting this book has, in equal measure, been difficult, surprising andrewarding. Of all the key concepts examined in the series to which this bookbelongs, nature is arguably the most difficult to understand. Promiscuousin its meanings and referents, I quickly realised that to discuss the ‘nature’that geographers have studied necessarily entails discussing ‘the nature ofgeography’ as a discipline (rather than just a few of its constituent parts).To perform this daunting double-task in a clear, succinct way I needed tofind a parsimonious means of presenting ideas, insights and argumentsfrom across geography’s many research communities. In an advancedintroduction of this kind, it was important to ensure fair coverage of nature’smultifarious manifestions in geographical discourse while avoiding asuperficial gloss of the issues that such a breadth of coverage threatens toproduce. It took a very long time – and many headaches – before I settledon the six-chapter structure found here. Given the enormity and complexityof my topic, I’m hopeful that this structure organises a potentially unrulymass of information into some sort of coherent analysis.I need to thank Sarah Holloway and Gill Valentine for asking me towrite this book. When they first approached me in mid-2003 I felt therewas little new to be said about nature. After all, the concept had beenfamously analysed by Raymond Williams and, more recently, by KateSoper. What’s more, the week after I signed the contract for this book, Iencountered John Habgood’s The Concept of Nature. Unbeknownst to me,Habgood’s insightful little text had been published late in 2002. It was thelatest in a long line of books about nature, whose distinguished authorsincluded R.G. Collingwood, C.S. Lewis and Alfred North Whitehead.Thisconfirmed my initial suspicion that I was wasting my time repeating what