Nature - autonomous learning

strange natures 29Table 1.3 Geography and the study of natureParts of geographyMeanings of nature Physical geography Human geographyThe non-human world ✓ ✓ (Ideas about andalterations of thenon-human world)The essence of something ✓ ✓ (Ideas and practicesinfluencing bodily andmental ‘natures’)An inherent force ✓ ✓ (Ideas about nature asan inherent force)Environmental geographyTHE ROAD NOT TAKENWe’ve already covered quite a lot of ground in this chapter. But westill have a little way to go before we fully understand the structure and aimsof this book. It seems to me that two things distinguish geographers’contributions to our understanding of nature when compared to otheracademic disciplines. First, geographers investigate an unusually wide rangeof phenomena captured by the three meanings of the term ‘nature’. Unlikerelatively specialist subjects (say, chemistry), geography examineseverything from the moral claims made by an organisation like PETAthrough to why lateral moraines are deposited by glaciers. Second, eventhough only environmental geographers actively try to combine them,geographers offer both social-science and physical-science perspectives onnature, as well as a humanities one. In other words, geographers employmore than one ‘paradigm’ (or framework of analysis) when investigatingnature (Box 1.6). One of the key reasons for this is the above-mentionedbreadth of things geographers study under the heading of ‘nature’. Forinstance, it’s clearly not appropriate to investigate urban heat islands inthe same way as one might examine why the idea of ‘wilderness’ is soembedded in North Americans’ imaginary.This leads me to a third observation.When it comes to nature, there’s alot of mutual ignorance among geography’s three main research and teachingcommunities. In other words, because they focus on such different