The biophysical environment is not tangential to the social; it is only tangential to conventional sociological thought. Environmental sociology arose in the 1970s based on this presupposition, but over time theory and empirical research have generally adopted a social constructionist or natural realist approach. Despite rejection of the Durkheimian dictum of explaining social facts through the invocation of other social facts, and thus refusal to presuppose human exemptionalism from ecological constraints, scholarship continues to reflect this nature/culture divide. When environmental sociologists focus on one side or the other of the nature/culture divide, the intertwining and conjoint constitution of the social and the biophysical–material is obscured. The intent of the present essay is to articulate a co‐constructionist ontological position sensitive to the temporal emergence of hybridity between the social and the natural and amenable to recognition of salient dynamics not readily envisioned from either side of the nature/culture divide. In doing so, the argument builds upon prior metatheoretical scholarship in environmental sociology and science and technology studies and highlights ontological conundrums that must be confronted in order to further the move toward a viable co‐constructionist posture.