Science of Nature

Bowler, 1992

• Science is culturally produced rather than purely objective; modern environmental science reflects Western, Judeo-Christian, and social values.

• Scientific knowledge changes through paradigm shifts (Kuhn), not simply through cumulative progress; Darwin's evolution exemplifies a scientific revolution.

• Classification, mapping, and representation of nature are subjective human processes that shape knowledge.

• Science and religion have historically been intertwined rather than opposing forces.

• Scientific ideas often reflect wider social contexts (e.g. Darwinism linked to Victorian capitalism; emergence of Social Darwinism).

Zimmerer, 2006

• Humboldt's Andes expeditions (1799–1804) linked environmental phenomena to labour systems, commerce, imperial administration, and inequality.

• His work depended heavily on indigenous guides, Creole intellectuals, and colonial networks, challenging the myth of the lone scientist - he recognised these contributions

• Combined quantitative measurement with local and indigenous knowledge.

• Developed early concerns about environmental overexploitation and pioneered transdisciplinary environmental science.

• Humboldt as an openly gay man - his work excluded because of this - his open rejection of systemic European colonialism

• However, his work still contributed to larger oppression and dominant structures

Stoddart, 1986

• Geography developed as a distinct intellectual structure during the late 18th and 19th centuries, not simply after 1945.

• Scientific advances in measurement, observation, comparison, and classification transformed understandings of nature.

• Darwin’s work was extended scientific classification to human societies, reflecting contemporary colonial attitudes (e.g. comments on Fuegians, 1833).

• Industrialisation and educational reforms encouraged disciplinary specialisation and professional science.

Gregory, 2000

• 19th-century physical geography was shaped by uniformitarianism, evolution, exploration, and surveying.

• Darwin influenced geography through ideas of temporal change, environmental interrelationships, selection, and chance.

• Exploration and fieldwork were crucial to geographical knowledge production (e.g. Darwin's coral studies; Agassiz's glacial research).

• Geography became institutionalised through societies and university departments (e.g. RGS founded 1830).

• Marsh's Man and Nature (1864) helped launch conservation thinking by highlighting human impacts on nature.

Kennedy, 2006

• Chamberlin's "multiple working hypotheses" challenged attachment to a single ruling hypothesis.

• Hutton, Lyell, and Darwin promoted gradual change through uniformitarianism and evolution.

• Agassiz developed Ice Age theory through field observation but retained catastrophist ideas and promoted racial polygenism.

• Davis's "cycle of erosion" offered an evolutionary model of landscape development but is criticised as overly deterministic and simplistic

Lightman, Livingstone and Withers, 2011

• Nineteenth-century science involved struggles over who could claim scientific authority and where "truth" was produced.

• Joseph Banks linked science to aristocratic and imperial networks through institutions such as Kew Gardens and the Royal Society.

• Professionalisation led to tensions between "gentlemen of science" and utilitarian advocates of technical expertise.

• Laboratories emerged as key sites of scientific naturalism, separating professional scientists from the public - these are socially embedded in procedures

Agnew and Livingstone, 2011

• Scientific theories gain influence partly because they fit the intellectual context of their era, not simply because they are correct.

• Environmental determinism and evolutionary thinking shaped geographical explanations of society and landscape.

• The field is an important but contested site of knowledge production, combining science, power, politics, and personal experience.

• Learned societies, botanical gardens, and zoos helped organise, circulate, and legitimise scientific knowledge.

• Geography historically reflected masculine, imperial assumptions and often excluded women's experiences.

Livingstone, 1995

• Scientific knowledge is not placeless or universally produced; it is shaped by local social, political, and cultural contexts.

• Influenced by the "spatial turn" and Foucault's emphasis on power and space.

• Scientific ideas travel through networks of circulation, translation, and adaptation.

• Darwinism spread unevenly because different places interpreted it differently (e.g. slower adoption in Norway).

• Science is simultaneously local and global, emerging through interconnected networks.

Rogers, 1972

• Darwinism was interpreted differently across regions according to local political and intellectual traditions.

• In Britain and the USA, Darwinian ideas became associated with laissez-faire capitalism and competition.

• Social Darwinists emphasised "struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest," often justifying inequality.

• Darwin himself adopted some Malthusian assumptions about population pressure and racial hierarchy.

• Russian interpretations of Darwinism focused more on cooperation and mutual aid than competition.

Peet, 1985

• Environmental determinism was not a neutral scientific theory but a socially produced ideology.

• It emerged alongside imperial capitalism and helped justify colonial domination.

• Environmental explanations naturalised political and economic inequalities.

• Scientific claims about environment and society often served imperial interests.

• Demonstrates the close relationship between knowledge production and power.

• Ellen Churchill Semple encouraged environmental determinism in the USA

Seth, 2009

• Modern science and colonialism were mutually constitutive and developed together.

• Colonial territories provided sites for scientific disciplines including botany, ecology, cartography, and tropical medicine.

• Science helped legitimise imperial rule through the "civilising mission”

• Binaries between Western science and indigenous knowledge produced through systems of power to ‘other’

Golinski, 2011

• Enlightenment science was a transformative period in the development of modern scientific thought.

• Scientific knowledge emerged through broader social and intellectual changes associated with the Enlightenment.

• Challenges simplified accounts of Enlightenment science as purely rational or objective.

• Highlights the importance of historical context in understanding scientific development.

• Enlightenment science laid foundations for later nineteenth-century scientific institutions and practices.