Nature - autonomous learning

strange natures 33knowledge is (or aspires to be) especially ‘truthful’. In most countries today,academics in general, and those calling themselves ‘scientists’ in particular,make this claim (even if they don’t always do it loudly).The declaration thatone’s business is the production of truthful, accurate or otherwise objectiveknowledge is a powerful one that not all knowledge-producers can make.For example, while a tabloid newspaper may be very widely read, its readersare under no illusions that the knowledge disseminated by the paper isparticularly accurate. Second, the ability to claim the mantle of truthfulnessis often allied with the ability to instil trust in one’s audience.Trust is, inessence, a social relationship. It entails one party believing that another –on which it relies for something – will say or do certain things accordingto certain standards. Trust is a very real but intangible thing. Thoseknowledge-producers that are trusted have an obvious edge over those thatare not. For instance, in radio broadcasting, the BBC’s World Service newsbulletins are among the most trusted globally.This is because, more thanmany radio stations, the BBC has developed a reputation for fair and accuratereporting.The precise reasons for that are complicated.The point, simply,is that once a reputation like this has been established it can be used to greateffect.I talk about truth and trust because it would be all too predictable forsome readers of this book to assume that geographers are in the truthbusinessand therefore to be trusted implicitly. Against this, I prefer to seegeographers – and all academics – as using the public’s belief that they epitomisethe two Ts to get the knowledge they produce taken seriously.There is no better illustrationof this than the process of teaching. One of the reasons why students learnthe things their university teachers ask them to learn is because they havebeen taught to believe that their instructors are reliable experts. Instructorscan use this belief to get students to imbibe – without dissent – certainbodies of information rather than others. In this sense, all teachers are‘gate-keepers’ of knowledge.They use the authority that their claims totruthfulness and trustworthiness give them to license certain knowledgeclaimsand censor others.In short, I believe that we should treat all the nature-knowledges that allthree types of geographers produce as representations of nature and nothing else.In other words, I insist that we should not assume that academic disciplinesoffer us a privileged insight into nature’s ‘real workings’, or the way societiesinteract with the environment, or the way other people’s claims aboutnature are phrased and used. In geography’s case, I think it’s wrong to