Geoscience Reference
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permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environ-
ment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.
To traverse the world men must have maps of the world.
(Lippman, 1922: 16)
For Lippman, early twentieth-century life was so labyrinthine that, contrary
to Kant's hope, people positively
required
'direction from another' in order
to comprehend and shape the wider world. He saw it as inevitable that
the 'maps' citizens navigate by would be created by a minority of thought-
shapers. He wasn't optimistic that ordinary citizens would, by virtue of these
maps, possess sufficient 'reason' to use it independently.
Nearly a century on and we might have cause to challenge Lippman's
pessimism about the fact of epistemic dependence. After all, in the West
far more people stay in formal education for longer than ever before,
and the general semiosphere we inhabit appears to be composed of more
voices than previously, courtesy of alternative media (like blogs). Surely
we're in a better position than our forebears? To use Kant's terms, we
might say there are tools aplenty for us to use our reason, if only we
have the courage to do so. However, what I've argued in this topic is
that it's easy to think we're more literate about the world than we actu-
ally are because we're inundated with so many claims about it. Focussing
on nature and its collateral terms, I've sought to illuminate some of
the ways we're invited to make sense of the world that demand closer
scrutiny.
Part II
was intended to exemplify the sort of 'positive scepticism' that's
a bulwark against undue forms of epistemic dependency; however, in itself
such scepticism will never be enough. We cannot get 'the courage to use
our reason' from this alone. As
Part III
made plain, we also need the various
epistemic communities discussed in this topic to self-regulate - and be exter-
nally regulated - with that protean thing called 'the public interest' in mind
(if not all the time, then at least
more
of it). Otherwise, the way nature is
made sense of for us (and much else besides) becomes a vehicle of weakly,
even anti-, democratic rule. This is especially true in circumstances where
most people, spending large periods at work, engaged in domestic matters
and so on, have neither the time nor inclination to engage meaningfully
with their semiosphere. Who'd have thought that claims made about beluga
whales, natterjack toads, Siberian tigers, hermit crabs, orangutans and other
'natural' phenomena could be so important? The authors upon whose work
I've drawn here, clearly, but the message needs to be broadcast more widely.
Despite its considerable length, this topic constitutes only a limited engage-
ment with the many issues and questions it has sought to conjoin. After
all, I have cast my net very wide. But I hope it has given readers new to
the idea of 'denaturalising nature' the tools to make sense of the world in
order to better facilitate the courageous use of their reason. It may even have
