Nature - autonomous learning

the dis/unity of geography 181Box 4.1 SCIENCE AND PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHYThere is no one definition of science. Those offered by historians andphilosophers of science tend to be either positive or normative.Positive views of science define it with reference to how people whocall themselves ‘scientists’ actually undertake research. Normativeviews, by contrast, lay out a template for how researchers shouldinvestigate the world if they’re to qualify as being scientists.Simplifying, we can say that any full definition of what science is (orhow it should be practised) should make reference to three things:namely, a set of axiomatic beliefs (‘the scientific worldview’), aninvestigative procedure (‘the scientific method’) and a product thatemerges from these two things (scientific knowledge). In physicalgeography some basic beliefs that are taken to be axiomatic are asfollows (clearly, these will vary from researcher to researcher):(i) the non-human world is real and its characteristics are irreducibleto any given set of human perceptions about, or practices upon, it(this belief is sometimes called materialism); (ii) the non-humanworld has an inherent order which, however complex, is amenableto discovery; and (iii) though we may value the non-human worldin moral and aesthetic ways, science is concerned primarily withcognitive matters (e.g. matters of fact, explanation and prediction).More generally, many physical geographers would be comfortablewith the third and fourth ‘scientific norms’ identified by RobertMerton back in 1942: namely, that science is disinterested (free fromprejudice) and that it is organised scepticism (it only acceptsstatements about the world if they can be proven to be true). On thebasis of these broad, shared assumptions, physical geographershave an equally broad commitment to a mode of interrogating realitythat, in their view, can produce knowledge that accurately capturesits truths. Though there is no single scientific method employed byphysical geographers, Schumm (1991) is probably right that thereare some general investigative steps that most practitioners adhereto. These will be discussed in the section ‘Producing realisticenvironmental knowledge’ on pp. 191–202 of this chapter. Finally,