Above the treetops: nature, history and the limits to philosophical naturalism

This paper suggests that the idea of “nature” remains a thematic leitmotif within interdisciplinary debates because it provides a potential bridge between the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. Yet the development of new kinds of interdisciplinary insights into nature-society relations risks a renewed form of philosophical naturalism within which the epistemological tensions between bio-physical and social domains become blurred. In the fields of architecture, planning and urban studies, for example, we find instances where the idea of nature has mutated into a form of “neo-organicism” in which the ideological and historical context for contrasting ideas of nature remain obscured. If we re-examine our understanding of nature, however, drawing on recent insights in ecology, evolutionary biology and other scientific developments we uncover new possibilities for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas that may avoid the crude determinisms of the past.