Nature - autonomous learning

186 the dis/unity of geographybe gleaned from a scan of recent literature). In the first place, we live in anera of immense public and governmental concern about human alterationsof the non-human world.This provides an ideal opportunity for physicalgeographers to meet a growing demand for accurate understandings ofanthropogenic environmental change. If such understanding cannot bearrived at, we arguably risk formulating incorrect environmental policiesor we might fail to identify biophysical problems early enough (seeGraf 1992). Second, human alterations and applied research aside, thereare many aspects of the physical environment that we still do not have agood understanding of in their own right, such is their complexity – likeocean–atmosphere couplings. Third, it’s arguable that environmentalresearch that is too analytical – which intellectually severs the connectionsbetween interrelated environmental phenomena – is ‘unrealistic’. In thiscontext, physical geography’s synthesising ambitions appear necessary fora proper understanding of how the non-human world works – which iswhy Slaymaker and Spencer (among others) lament the subdisciplinaryseparations of geomorphology, hydrology, biogeography and climatology.In sum, we can adduce many good reasons for believing that accurateknowledge of the biophysical world is a desirable (and achievable) thing.Governments and the wider public are willing audiences for researcherswho can offer their ‘expert’ insights into the ‘real nature’ of natural andhumanly altered environments. All this is reinforced when we look at thecase against epistemological anti-realism (or what’s sometimes called‘relativism’ or ‘conventionalism’). In relation to disciplines that classifythemselves as sciences, this case has been prosecuted most vigorously byhistorians and philosophers of science. Expressed in simple terms, relativistsargue that all knowledge about nature (including scientific knowledge) iscontingent and constructed, rather than a true reflection of the reality itapparently represents. What counts as a truth about what we call natureis thus seen as relative to the perspective of the viewer or investigator– including even scientists. I will discuss one variant of relativism in thenext section, but for now we can identify some apparently strong argumentsagainst it. Physical geographers have rarely felt obliged to make thesearguments (for reasons to be explained), but they clearly bolster the ideathat their research is realist. First, one can argue that relativists cannot becorrect because biophysical reality will ultimately contradict any false representationsof its true character. Second, even if one concedes that scientificknowledge is always at some level a reflection of scientists’ mindsets (see