Nature - autonomous learning

strange natures 31geneous (see Chapter 4). Environmental geography is differentagain, because it often mixes and matches paradigmatic researchpractices from both sides of the discipline.Sources: Kuhn (1962); Johnston et al. (2000); Johnston (2003: 12–25)aspects of nature in such different ways, human geographers often have littledetailed appreciation of what environmental and physical geographers do(and vice versa). I should say immediately that geography is not alone in this.Most other disciplines are comprised of several academic communities whoknow little about what their peers do. One of the aims of this book is to dispelsome of the ignorance – especially among degree students – regarding therange of things studied by geographers under the rubric of ‘nature’ andregarding the different ways those things are understood.How, then, have I sought to fulfil this aim? The obvious answer is thatI’ve endeavoured, in the chapters that follow, to discuss all three partsof geography (environmental, human and physical).Though I’m a humangeographer by training, Nature would have been a meagre book if it hadconsidered only human geography alone. Equally, I do not limit my discussionto geographers’ research on the environment (i.e. to only the firstmeaning of nature). Less obviously, a very literal approach to my topicwould involve me detailing each and every way that geographers haveinvestigated different aspects of nature. For instance, I would have toexamine each sub-branch of physical geography, not to mention severalbranches of human geography. Since this would be infeasible (and makethis book hopelessly long and indigestible), I’ve gone for a more parsimoniousapproach. My tack has been to identify the fundamental differences andcommonalities in the ways geographers of all stripes investigate and understandnature. In other words, I do not spend a chapter explaining how,respectively, human geographers, physical geographers and environmentalgeographers approach the topic of nature (though I do, admittedly, discusstheir contributions separately throughout the book). Instead, I identifybroad similarities and differences within and between these three researchand teaching communities. It is these convergences and divergences thatorganise the chapters that follow the next one.