Nature - autonomous learning

6CONCLUSIONGeography’s natures‘[Nature] is something upon which very many frames of reference converge.But there is no frame of reference which is as it were “naturally given”, andwhich does not have to be contended for in debate’.(Foster 1997: 10)In Chapter 1, I asserted that the discipline of geography has no ‘nature’ –no essential, coherent character – in part because of the diverse ways inwhich geographers comprehend nature. I hope the subsequent chaptershave fleshed out this assertion convincingly. I have shown that geographersadhere to no one understanding of what nature is, no one understandingof how it works, and no one understanding of what we should do to it. Ihave shown that nature often appears in geographical discourse throughcollateral concepts where it figures as a real but ghostly presence. I haveshown that different geographers study different aspects of what we happento call ‘nature’ in different ways – from the human mind and body to thenon-human world. Many human geographers, I argued, have increasinglyexplained so-called ‘natural’ phenomena in social terms, while physicalgeographers remain preoccupied with the ‘realities’ of natural and alteredenvironments – leaving environmental geographers to negotiate constructivistand realist approaches to nature as best they can. Meanwhile, a