Nature - autonomous learning

prefacexxiinfluence. Equally, those who maintain that objectivity is a fiction concealingthe partiality of all perspectives can justifiably challenge truth-claims aboutthe world wherever they hail from.It is beyond my abilities to resolve the realism–relativism debate. Somecommentators have sought to move beyond it altogether and we’ll exploretheir arguments in the penultimate chapter of this book. My tack here isto treat all geographers’ knowledge-claims about nature as precisely that:knowledge-claims that are each vying for the attention of students, other professionalgeographers and various constituencies beyond the university. Iremain agnostic about the truthfulness or falsity of these claims. Indeed,I could well have subtitled this book ‘The Adventures of a Concept’ or ‘TheVicissitudes of an Idea’.These ideas are produced by different researchers andresearch communities across geography as a whole.They are defined asmuch by what they exclude as by what they include. Even those ideas thatare not formally about nature help us to understand what it is by specifyingwhat is taken to be non-natural.The ideas of nature discussed in this bookundoubtedly refer to a ‘real world’ of plants, animals, insects, bodies,ecosystems and much else besides. But since it is no easy matter to decideon which of these ideas is ‘better’ than the others I give each of them anequal hearing in the chapters that follow. Despite appearances, this doesn’tmake me a relativist. What I aim to do is show readers how differentconceptions of nature are derived in different ways, and mandate differentactions on and towards those things we categorise as natural.This includesthe ‘post-natural’ conceptions I examine in Chapter 6 which, by denyingthere is such a thing called nature, are part of the ongoing tussle to definewhat it is and what to do with it (or to it). I leave it to readers to judge themerits of the ideas about nature I examine in this book. My aim is to explainthem as clearly as I can and to show the practical and moral consequencesthat follow from accepting or rejecting these ideas. If there’s any overarchingmessage then it is this: because knowledges of nature are not reducible tothe ‘real’ nature they depict, it is essential to ask what authorises theseknowledges and what sorts of realities they aim to engender.THE AUDIENCEAt this point, some student readers may be disinclined to read any further.They may be disappointed that this book is about ideas of nature rather thannature itself.They may have picked up this book hoping for a ‘no-nonsense