Nature - autonomous learning

notes 2558 I will say more about science and the study of nature in Chapter 4 – specificallywith regard to physical geography.9 I shall discuss Braun’s research in more detail in Chapter 3.2 THE ‘NATURE’ OF GEOGRAPHY1 This kind of post-Davis physical geography was redolent of the research of oneof Davis’s contemporaries: G.K. Gilbert. Gilbert is often held up as a pioneerof evidence-based, ‘scientific’ physical geography focusing on smaller spatialand temporal scales of analysis.2 I enter this qualifier because many doubt whether geographers of this periodever signed up to a common method as opposed to a looser understandingof the ‘proper’ way to interrogate the real world.3 I will say much more about scientific method in Chapter 4.4 Cultural ecology was also a formative influence on Third World politicalecology, especially in North America – see Robbins (2004a).5 When I use the word ‘social’ in social construction it is in a generic way torefer to economic, cultural and political processes that impinge upon thosethings we call ‘nature’. As will be seen in Chapter 3, the precise meaningof ‘social’ in social construction varies from geographer to geographerdepending on their theoretical perspective and the empirical focus of theirresearch.6 Oxford University Press have a series of easy-to-read ‘Very Short Introductions’that cover the three ‘posts’ by Chris Butler, Catherine Belsey and Robert Youngrespectively.7 Note that human geography’s ‘cultural left’ and ‘social left’ are not synonymouswith the subfield of social and cultural geography. Rather, theycross-cut virtually all of the subdisciplines comprising human geography.8 I use the word ‘realist’ here not just in the specialist sense of ‘transcendentalrealism’ discussed earlier in the chapter but in the wider sense of a belief inthe existence of a non-human world that is different from and irreducible tosocietal representations and manipulations.3 DE-NATURALISATION: BRINGING NATURE BACK IN1 I should confess that my previous writings on the topic of nature wouldprobably be categorised as ‘de-naturalising’ in character. Indeed, later in thischapter I cite one of my published essays as part of a discussion of the material(or physical) construction of the non-human world.2 Though Jared Diamond is one of the few notable present-day geographers thatproves the rule.3 Perhaps the most outspoken geographical defender of scientific truth overfalsity is the biogeographer Phillip Stott. His personal website punctures whathe sees as the falsehoods perpetrated by environmentalists. See .