These days nature appears to us via time and space. If you want to do science, which allows us to make sense of nature, there are two fool-proof ways. The first is to take observations over time and then make a graph. People will then look at the graph and think “that’s real, that’s science!”
In this mode of knowledge making science becomes a weird type of history. Thus, where time is concerned our sense of nature and our sense of history are synonymous. But of course, Albert Einstein taught us that time and space are but two manifestations of the same thing, and thus the other way you can convince people you’re doing science is by doing spatial analysis, by making a map.
A map like the one above is to space as the time-sequence graph is to time—it is more or less immediately understandable to everybody within the widespread common sense of the spatial dimension of nature that pervades our modern world. Thus, where space is concerned within the modern worldview our sense of nature and our sense of geography are synonymous.
Putting the two together we get the most common sensibly powerful display of spacetime-nature-via-science in the form of a time sequence map. This is peak science.
Both of these ways of displaying nature feel intuitive because they align with our unconscious modern assumptions about nature. In the modern sense nature seems to appear via a specific type of space and via a specific type of time. The specific type of space is an abstract one we call latitude and longitude—basically the x-y axis applied to the earth as though we’re standing on the moon looking down. It is a Galilean view of earth or one where we take the point of view of a satellite. This subjectivity would of course make zero sense to the majority of humans to have ever walked the earth.
The specific type of time is a progressive one, where time moves forward rather than cyclically. This too, would make no sense to most folks. The Greeks thought time moved cyclically. Progressive time makes a bit of sense in the Christian mode, but of course in Christendom time eventually ends in Judgment Day when all this natural shit finally ends the chosen ones move to the heavenly realm.
But if you want to say authoritative things today about nature (aka, do science) you have to take both space and time seriously. In this way science within the modern worldview of nature is essentially just a hybrid of geography and history. Science is just geo-history. And geo-history has an internal grammar—you have to be speaking in the spatial or temporal tense, otherwise people can’t fucking understand you. But if you speak right, people will no doubt say, “oh, that’s nature right there!”