Nature - autonomous learning

222 the dis/unity of geographyI argued in the chapter that physical geographers have resistedconstructivist criticisms of the knowledge they produce. Symptomatic ofthis is the way the ideas of Thomas Kuhn have been used. Kuhn coinedthe term ‘paradigm’ (see Box 1.6) and argued that sciences progressthrough ‘revolutions in thought’ not a steady accumulation of knowledge.Geography as a whole fixated (during the 1980s) on the issue of whetherKuhn’s idea of scientific revolutions best describes intellectual change inthe discipline. But Kuhn’s more interesting contribution was to challengethe realist credentials of science. The notion of paradigm incommensurabilitysuggested that different researchers in effect saw a different worldbecause their paradigms so conditioned how reality is apprehended. Inphysical geography, Haines-Young and Petch (1986: ch. 4) and Sherman(1996) are among the very view to take seriously this dimension of Kuhn’sthinking. Bassett (1999) deals with the more general issue of whetherthere is academic ‘progress’ in geography over time.On the whole, physical geographers see themselves as producers ofcognitive knowledge about the biophysical world. A few, however, haveconsidered if and how values can enter their work: see note 13. In the finalchapter of his book, Inkpen (2004) reflects upon the social networksphysical geographers move in and the way these affect the what and howof their research.The intellectual diversity and disunity of geography has long betweena debating point within the discipline. Human and physical geographers’differing understandings of nature are just one reason for the dividebetween them – but how important a reason? For an answer to this questionsee Urban and Rhoads (2003),Viles (2004) and Castree (2001b).