Nature - autonomous learning

230 after naturenever formally represented or representable at all because it is tacit,sensuous, habitual and precognitive. Second,Thrift argues that a focus onrepresentation wrongly implies that we humans are distanced from thematerial world – as subjects viewing objects – rather than beings whoinhabit this world. Finally, Thrift argues that it is wrong to ask whetherrepresentations of what we call ‘nature’ contain the hidden agendasof representers or some ‘truths’ about that which is represented. Forhim, representations are one of several tools we use to make sense of theworld. Representations of reality help us to make our way in this world, notbecause they are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but because they have effects on howwe act to the extent that we accept them.What’s more, in Thrift’s view, allrepresentations arise from and affect our practical engagements with thebiophysical world, be it ‘natural’ or humanly altered.In sum, Thrift holds to a worldview that does not separate knowing(epistemology) from that which is known (ontology). His is a nonrepresentationalapproach that focuses on a world in which we are dwellersnot observers, multi-sensual participants not detached spectators.We cometo know by doing, and we do because of what we already know in aniterative process where the material world affects us and we affect it. InThrift’s seamless conception of reality, a society–nature dualism is thus toocrude to be of use. For him, we are not ‘minds in a vat’ whose representationsof nature reflect our self-sufficient values, aspirations and biases.Rather, we are constitutent parts of a ‘more than human’ world withoutwhich we could not become the sorts of sophisticated thinking and actingbeings we become over our life-course.Thrift thus ultimately sees the worldnot as a pre-existing collection of human and non-human entities but asa set of mutually constitutive encounters or performances. His project isto reinject some ‘life’ into the lifeless landscapes revealed by analysts of layand expert representations.Thrift’s work has rapidly created a ‘school’ ofnon-representational thinking, one carried forward in the UK by his formergraduate students for the most part.This school is now beginning to applyThrift’s general ideas to specific empirical contexts.Actor-network theoryActor-network theory (ANT) has become closely associated with thesociologists and anthropologists of science Bruno Latour, Michel Callon andJohn Law. It has, of late, been as influential in British human geography as