This introductory chapter discusses the general development of sociological thinking as regards its conceptualizations of nature and its potential to deliver knowledge in inter- and transdisciplinary research. The chapter starts with an overview on sociology's attempts at theorizing society as part but also as opposing the natural world. Recent debates in complexity theory and ecology have fostered debates among sociologists to open the discipline to more inter- and transdisciplinary approaches. The fields discussed in the chapter include arguments for sociology to include concepts such as environmental flows, sustainability, new policies towards adaptation to changing ecological realities as well as social experimentation.