Nature - autonomous learning

32 strange naturesThis brings me to you, the reader. How should this book be read? I askthis question because the expectations of readers thoroughly condition howthey digest a text.What are your expectations? If you’re a student you maybe looking for me to explain a few of the ‘truths’ about nature discoveredby geography’s three main research communities. Equally, if you’re aprofessional geographer you may be looking for a gentle introduction toresearch findings in parts of the discipline outside your area of expertise.The assumption both types of readers might make is this: Nature will tell youwhat those different bits of nature that different geographers study are ‘reallylike’ according to current wisdom.If you’ve made this assumption then I want to challenge it. If yourexpectations resemble those above then I want to question them also. Letme explain. In the second section of this chapter,‘Knowledges of nature’,I made mention of the numerous organisations, institutions and professionsthat produce knowledges about nature (in all the meanings of that term).In the first section,‘Tales of nature’, I illustrated the sheer pervasiveness ofwhat we call nature in our collective discourse and practice. I now want todraw an important inference from this, as follows: the power to say what natureis, how it works, and what to do (or not to do) with it is enormously consequential for peopleand the non-human world.Those who possess this power can materially influencethe lives of billions of people, not to mention the whole gamut of animateand inanimate phenomena that surround us. Fundamentally, it is the powerto have one’s knowledge-claims taken seriously by significant parts of (or even most of) anygiven society.This raises the question of why some knowledge-claims becomewidely accepted, while others barely get noticed.ACTIVITY 1.3Try to answer the question posed above. Think about a specific beliefconcerning nature that is now taken for granted. Ask yourself: what are thereasons this belief has become widely accepted?I can think of at least two reasons why certain knowledge claims – not justabout nature, but about any topic – are regarded as legitimate ones. First,in any society certain knowledge-producers are able to claim that their