Nature - autonomous learning

220 the dis/unity of geographyWell over a century since the ‘geographical experiment’ was inauguratedwhat are the implications of this state of affairs? First, the discipline of geographyis no longer characterised by the quest to bring nature and societyunder one explanatory umbrella. These days, only a few environmentalgeographers and a handful of applied physical geographers study thematerial interactions between the human and non-human world in anydetail – and virtually no one in the discipline entertains ideas about people’smental and physiological nature being either fixed or determining theirbehaviour and worth. Second, the knowledges about nature produced bygeographers fall broadly into two types.Third, these nature-sceptical andnature-endorsing knowledges are derived by geographers drawing upondifferent repertoires of methods, theories and philosophies.In short, the topic of nature remains a problem for geographers justas it has done throughout the discipline’s history. Not only is there is nodisciplinary consensus on what nature is and how to study it, but this lackof consensus also holds human and physical geographers apart – so muchso that few in the discipline occupy the middle ground where the two sidesof geography meet. My own view is that this is no bad thing and is thusnot a ‘problem’ at all. Some geographers lament the estrangement of humanand physical geographers. They worry that geography lacks intellectualintegrity at a time when it should be unifying around the study of thehuman impact on the environment (see, for example, Liverman 1999).The counter-argument – one that I’d endorse – is that the presence ofnature-sceptical and nature-endorsing perspectives within one disciplinaryspace is intellectually healthy.When it comes to nature, geography is anindisciplined discipline – one lacking a ‘party line’.This and the previouschapter have, I hope, revealed the strengths (and weaknesses) of claimingthat nature is not natural and of claiming, by contrast, that what we callnature is knowable in its own right.The important thing is to avoid takingany claims about nature – whether phrased in a social constructionistor more naturalistic mode – at face value. As I’ve argued throughout thisbook, we need to examine what motivates geographers to insist that natureeither is, or is not, what it appears to be.EXERCISES• Make a list of all the reasons why you, as a student, would normallybelieve that the environmental knowledge produced by your physical