Nature - autonomous learning

the dis/unity of geography 191It’s important to stress that Demeritt does not see his constructionistapproach to scientific knowledge as anti-science. Rather, his aim is to getphysical geographers and other earth scientists involved in a more honestdiscussion about the status of the knowledge they produce. Whetherphysical geographers will formally engage with the claims of SSK remainsto be seen. But Demeritt’s research has opened the door for this possibility.What’s more, as we’ll see towards the end of the section ‘Understandingbiophysical reality’ on pp. 202–18, a small number of physical geographersare already thinking along similar lines as Demeritt, albeit without referenceto SSK.PRODUCING REALISTIC ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGEIn the absence of much fundamental self-questioning about the actual orpotential accuracy of the environmental knowledge they produce, mostphysical geographers have focused on questions of method in order to fleshout what is scientific about their research. As fluvial geomorphologistKeith Richards argues,‘science as an activity or entity seems to be definedless by what it is, than by how it is done’ (Richards 2003a: 25).Virtuallyall physical geographers accept that the non-human world is ontologicallyreal and, for the most part, ontologically different in character fromthe human world. Likewise, virtually all physical geographers accept thepossibility that the non-human world is knowable in relatively unbiasedways.This is why such discussions of science as there have been in physicalgeography are usually discussions of method. As Schumm (1991: 2)observes,‘in the minds of most scientists, it is the method employed incarrying out their research that distinguishes science from other humanendeavours’.Scientific method in physical geographyI use the term ‘method’ in the widest sense to mean a set of steps followedin the investigation of the biophysical world – that is,‘method as a way ofdoing anything according to a regular plan’ (Haines-Young and Petch 1986:10). In other words, my concern here is not with specific quantitative andqualitative methods of data-gathering or analysis (like soil-corers or carbondating).WhatRobert Merton (1942) famously called the ‘universality ofscience’ derives, in his view, from the fact that any suitably trained individual