Nature - autonomous learning

strange natures 35– despite the BSE crisis and other doubts about the trustworthiness of whatprofessional researchers say. So how have geographers represented natureand to what particular ends? Put differently, in Nature I want to examinethe ideas of nature in which geographers have a considerable investment.NATURE IS DEAD! LONG LIVE NATURE!Once we distinguish ideas of nature from the things they refer to we canmake an apparently startling claim: namely, that there is no such thingas nature! Nature is simply a name that is ‘attached’ to all sorts of differentreal-world phenomena.Those phenomena are not nature as such but, rather,what we collectively choose to call ‘nature’ (Urban and Rhoads 2003: 220). In thissense, nature does not exist at the ontological level (that is, at the level ofmaterial reality). If you think again about the seven stories with whichwe began this chapter, it’s clear that a range of qualitatively different thingsare being encapsulated by the same label. Arguably, the only reason thesevarious things seem to be similar is because they share a common name,not because they really have anything (or much) in common.The thingswe call nature undoubtedly exist. But it is entirely a matter of conventionthat we group them together under the one term. Even if the term isn’texplicitly invoked to describe them, it is clear that it’s nonetheless therein the background.So when geographers talk about nature in their research and teaching(either explicitly or implicitly) we need to understand that they are nottalking about nature but that which they call nature. If effect, nature ismade real only because geographers – and many other actors in society –choose to talk about all sorts of things as if the word used to describe themwas those things.What conclusions can we draw from this? One is that thereis no such thing as ‘the right word’ to describe any real entity.Words areattached to things purely by convention.They cut into the connective tissueof the world and isolate out ‘chunks’ of it for our attention. Anotherconclusion we can draw is that names matter in the sense that the meaningsof those names colour how we understand, and behave towards, the thingsthey refer to. A recent high-profile ‘scandal’ offers a dramatic example ofthis in the realm of public affairs. In 2003 a well-known, male, Britishtelevision presenter was implicitly accused of being a rapist by an equallywell-known Swedish television presenter. Gossip, rumour and off-therecordbriefings led to his name entering the public domain.Though he