We are living in an age when nature seems to be on the brink of extinction yet, at the same time, nature is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and unstable as a category for representation and debate. This work brings together leading theorists of culture and science to discuss the concept of nature - its past, present and future. Contributors discuss the impact on our daily life of recent developments in biotechnologies, electronic media and ecological politics. Increasingly, scientific theories and models have been taken up as cultural metaphors that have material effects in transforming ways of seeing and structures of feeling . This text addresses the issue of whether political and cultural debates about the body and the environment can take place without reference to nature or the natural . It also considers how we might think a future developing from emergent scientific theories and discourses. What cultural forms may be produced when new knowledges challenge and undermine traditional ways of conceiving the natural ?.