Nature - autonomous learning

PREFACERead thisNature is one of the most widely talked about and investigated thingsthere is.Today, one routinely hears apocalyptic declarations about the ‘endof nature’, plangent injunctions to ‘save’ nature or else brave-new-worldclaims that nature can be improved upon and its ‘imperfections’ eliminated.Such rhetoric implies that nature is currently ‘on the agenda’ as never before.But this implication is false. Nature has always been a major issue for societiesworldwide.What’s changed is the way we talk about and act towards thosethings conventionally called ‘natural’. It is a truism that ‘facts never speakfor themselves’. Nature is a living testament to this. Historically, ideas aboutnature have changed dramatically.Yesterday’s ‘truths’ about nature oftenseem absurd to us in the here and now. Nature continues to be understoodin a multitude of ways, many of them incompatible. Indeed, the struggleto get a ‘proper’ understanding of nature is one of the defining strugglesof any era.Geography is one of several disciplines that has played a role in influencingsocietal understandings of nature. Geographical teaching and researchhave shaped the nature-imaginaries of countless people since geographycame into existence as a university subject in the late nineteenth century.It is one of several disciplines – the others being the physical, medical andengineering sciences, for the most part – that are responsible for producing‘expert knowledges’ about natural phenomena. By the same token,academic disciplines are just one of several domains in which knowledgesof nature are produced. Other domains include the mass media (television,newspapers and magazines), the entertainment industry (think of JurassicPark or The Hulk, two morality tales about genetic engineering), the touristtrade (which packages ‘natural landscapes’ for adventure travellers, among