Nature - autonomous learning

40 strange naturesgenetic, species and habitat diversity. These biologists includeEdward O. Wilson who, Takacs shows, used his fame and eminenceto get a major publication on biodiversity commissioned duringthe 1980s (published as Biodiversity in 1988). Finally, Takacs showsthat the term ‘biodiversity’ has brought together a set of what areconsidered to be ‘natural things’ within one unified conceptualframe that, previously, were looked at in rather different ways byboth researchers and the wider public. In other words, while Takacsacknowledges that the natural world to which the term ‘biodiversity’refers exists, he also insists that the term actively organises howthat world is seen. In particular, he points to the normative dimensionsof the term, whereby diversity is seen as ‘good’ and lossof/lack of diversity as ‘bad’. He argues that these dimensions inherenot in biodiversity itself but, rather, reflect the values of biodiversity’schampions. In this way, Takacs argues that people’s valuesare surreptitiously passed off as values of nature. Arguably, ‘biodiversity’has become a hegemonic idea in many scientific and policycircles (see Box 1.4).Sources: Takacs (1996); Guyer and Richards (1996).interested in specific phenomena – like precipitation or evaporation – thatdo not require formal use of the terms ‘nature’ or ‘natural’ to characterisethem. So if I were to limit my analysis only to the work of those geographerswho use the term ‘nature’ explicitly and formally then Nature would,in truth, be quite a slim volume. So how do I deal with this problem?And how do I justify discussing research where the term ‘nature’ does notenter the discourse? My ‘solution’ (that’s what one can call it) is to dotwo things. First, I follow Kenneth Olwig’s (1996) lead. In an essay on theconcept of nature in geography, Olwig (1996: 87) shows that it is often ‘aghost that is rarely visible under its own name’.This seemingly enigmaticclaim draws our attention to nature’s numerous ‘collateral concepts’ (Earleet al. 1996: xvi). Collateral concepts are those whose meanings and referentsoverlap very closely with those of other concepts. Collateral concepts aremutually implicated and depend upon each other at some level for theirmeaning to be understood.