Nature - autonomous learning

xxprefaceexpect it to do. First, it does not define the word ‘nature’ and then cataloguehow geographers have studied the various bits of nature referred to in thedefinition.This would make for a very long (and very dull!) book. In effect,it would treat the world as a dictionary where the only interesting issue ishow to attach the right words to the right things. Second, Nature does notexplain the various ways that geographers have studied nature with a viewto determining the best or most accurate mode of investigation. Studentreaders, in particular, will find this disconcerting. Many will suppose thatphysical geography offers the best route to understanding nature becauseit is (or aspires to be) a ‘science’.What I show in the chapters to follow isthat researchers in all parts of geography lay claim to understandings ofnature that, in their view, tell us something important about it.This poses a dilemma. Can all these researchers be right, even when theirapproaches to nature are poles apart? If not, how can we decide betweenthem and eliminate false or erroneous ones? These questions direct us toa hoary philosophical debate between so-called ‘realists’ and ‘relativists’.The latter maintain that absolute truth is impossible since one alwaysunderstands reality within a particular perceptual or cognitive template.Because templates vary between individuals and groups, relativists maintainthat truth is contingent, not given, in nature. In this perspective even scienceis one world view among others, no better or worse than, say, religion.Realists retort that relativists, absurdly, deny that there is a material worldbeyond ourselves that we can know accurately.They argue that some waysof understanding the world are more objective than others. In short, theymaintain that relativists lead us to the abyss of ‘anything goes’, where we’reforced to accept all perspectives on reality as equally valid.The realism–relativism debate has, at times, been more like a bare-knuckle fight. In themid-1990s, for instance, the so-called ‘science wars’ broke out in the UnitedStates. Here a group of practising scientists fought back against what theysaw as the irresponsible arguments of several sociologists and culturalcritics.The latter had argued that scientists construct their knowledge ofnature, rather than that knowledge being an accurate reflection of nature’struths.The scientists, understandably dismayed, insisted that science stilloffers the most secure route to objective understandings of the world (seeGross and Levitt 1994; Holton 1993; Ross 1996).The stand-off betweenthe two groups indicates just how much is at stake in the realism–relativismdebate. Those groups in society who can claim that their knowledge ofnature is ‘objective’ or otherwise legitimate can have a lot of power and