Nature - autonomous learning

the dis/unity of geography 215conjunction would produce a different pool-and-riffle sequence elsewhere.What this means, then, is that the researcher must use experience, logic,creativity and imagination to identify the various causes of the phenomenain question – what’s sometimes called abduction (see Box 4.6). Since causesrarely operate in isolation for transcendental realists, then there is no oneto-onerelation between cause and effect (see Figure 4.8). Instead, thephysical geographer is confronted with both equifinality (where differentprocesses can lead to the same outcomes) and multifinality (where the sameprocesses can produce different outcomes).This means that an empiricistapproach is an inadequate epistemological basis for deriving knowledge ofbiophysical reality.Second, physical geographers have been sensitive to the way they activelybound or enclose their objects of analysis.The ‘problem’ of closure can bestated as follows: when a physical geographer studies an aspect of thebiophysical world they inevitably places boundaries around it epistemologicallyand methodologically. For instance, an arid geomorphologistFigure 4.7 A transcendental-realist conception of the relationship between the real,the actual and the empirical in fluvial geomorphology. Reproduced from Lane(2001)