History of geography

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The history of geography includes many histories of geography which have differed over time and between different cultural and political groups. In more recent developments, geography has become a distinct academic discipline. 'Geography' derives from the Greek γεωγραφίαgeographia,[1] literally "Earth-writing", that is, description or writing about the Earth. The first person to use the word geography was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). However, there is evidence for recognizable practices of geography, such as cartography, prior to the use of the term.

Egypt

The known world of Ancient Egypt saw the Nile as the center, and the world as based upon "the" river. Various oases were known to the east and west, and were considered locations of various gods (e.g.

Keftiu, possibly Crete, and Mycenae (thought to be part of a chain of islands, that joined Cyprus, Crete, Sicily and later perhaps Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearics to Africa).[2]

Babylon

The oldest known world maps date back to ancient Babylon from the 9th century BC.[3] The best known Babylonian world map, however, is the Imago Mundi of 600 BC.[4] The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by a circular landmass showing Assyria, Urartu[5] and several cities, in turn surrounded by a "bitter river" (Oceanus), with seven islands arranged around it so as to form a seven-pointed star. The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the encircling ocean. The descriptions of five of them have survived.[6]

In contrast to the Imago Mundi, an earlier Babylonian world map dating back to the 9th century BC depicted Babylon as being further north from the center of the world, though it is not certain what that center was supposed to represent.[3]

Greco-Roman world

The ancient Greeks viewed Homer as the founder of geography.[7] His works the Iliad and the Odyssey are works of literature, but both contain a great deal of geographical information. Homer describes a circular world ringed by a single massive ocean. The works show that the Greeks by the 8th century BC had considerable knowledge of the geography of the eastern Mediterranean. The poems contain a large number of place names and descriptions, but for many of these it is uncertain what real location, if any, is actually being referred to.

Thales of Miletus is one of the first known philosophers known to have wondered about the shape of the world. He proposed that the world was based on water, and that all things grew out of it. He also laid down many of the astronomical and mathematical rules that would allow geography to be studied scientifically. His successor Anaximander is the first person known to have attempted to create a scale map of the known world and to have introduced the gnomon
to Ancient Greece.

Reconstruction of the map of Hecataeus of Miletus.

Hecataeus of Miletus initiated a different form of geography, avoiding the mathematical calculations of Thales and Anaximander he learnt about the world by gathering previous works and speaking to the sailors who came through the busy port of Miletus. From these accounts he wrote a detailed prose account of what was known of the world. A similar work, and one that mostly survives today, is Herodotus' Histories. While primarily a work of history, the book contains a wealth of geographic descriptions covering much of the known world. Egypt, Scythia, Persia, and Asia Minor are all described,[8] including a mention of India.[9] The description of Africa as a whole are contentious,[10] with Herodotus describing the land surrounded by a sea.[11] Though he described the Phoenicians as having circumnavigated Africa in the 6th century BC, through much of later European history the Indian Ocean was thought to be an inland sea, the southern part of Africa wrapping around in the south to connect with the eastern part of Asia. This was not completely abandoned by Western cartographers until the circumnavigation of Africa by Vasco da Gama.[12] Some, though, hold that the descriptions of areas such as India are mostly imaginary.[13] Regardless, Herodotus made important observations about geography. He is the first to have noted the process by which large rivers, such as the Nile, build up deltas, and is also the first recorded as observing that winds tend to blow from colder regions to warmer ones.

Pythagoras was perhaps the first to propose a spherical world, arguing that the sphere was the most perfect form. This idea was embraced by Plato, and Aristotle presented empirical evidence to verify this. He noted that the Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse is curved from any angle (near the horizon or high in the sky), and also that stars increase in height as one moves north. Eudoxus of Cnidus used the idea of a sphere to explain how the sun created differing climatic zones based on latitude. This led the Greeks to believe in a division of the world into five regions. At each of the poles was an uncharitably cold region. While extrapolating from the heat of the Sahara it was deduced that the area around the equator was unbearably hot. Between these extreme regions both the northern and southern hemispheres had a temperate belt suitable for human habitation.

Hellenistic period

These theories clashed with the evidence of explorers, however, Hanno the Navigator had traveled as far south as Sierra Leone, and Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II of Africa is related by Herodotus and others as having commissioned a successful circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician sailors. While they were sailing west around the Southern tip of Africa, it was found that the Sun was to their right (the north). This is thought to have been a key trigger in the realization that the Earth is spherical, in the classical world.

In the 4th century BC the Greek explorer

Res Gestae 26), and perhaps the greatest Ancient Greek explorer of all, Alexander the Great
, who deliberately set out to learn more about the east through his military expeditions and so took a large number of geographers and writers with his army who recorded their observations as they moved east.

The ancient Greeks divided the world into three continents, Europe, Asia, and

Hellespont formed the border between Europe and Asia. The border between Asia and Libya was generally considered to be the Nile river, but some geographers, such as Herodotus objected to this. Herodotus argued that there was no difference between the people on the east and west sides of the Nile, and that the Red Sea
was a better border. The relatively narrow habitable band was considered to run from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to an unknown sea somewhere east of India in the east. The southern portion of Africa was unknown, as was the northern portion of Europe and Asia, so it was believed that they were circled by a sea. These areas were generally considered uninhabitable.

The size of the Earth was an important question to the Ancient Greeks. Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference with great precision.[14] Since the distance from the Atlantic to India was roughly known, this raised the important question of what was in the vast region east of Asia and to the west of Europe. Crates of Mallus proposed that there were in fact four inhabitable land masses, two in each hemisphere. In Rome a large globe was created depicting this world. Posidonius set out to get a measurement, but his number actually was considerably smaller than the real one, yet it became accepted that the eastern part of Asia was not a huge distance from Europe.

Roman period

Ptolemy world map
, reconstituted from Ptolemy's Geographia (c. 150)

While the works of almost all earlier geographers have been lost, many of them are partially known through quotations found in Strabo (64/63 BC – ca. AD 24). Strabo's seventeen volume work of geography is almost completely extant, and is one of the most important sources of information on classical geography. Strabo accepted the narrow band of habitation theory, and rejected the accounts of Hanno and Pytheas as fables. None of Strabo's maps survive, but his detailed descriptions give a clear picture of the status of geographical knowledge of the time. Pliny the Elder's (AD 23 – 79) Natural History also has sections on geography. A century after Strabo Ptolemy (AD 90 – 168) launched a similar undertaking. By this time the Roman Empire had expanded through much of Europe, and previously unknown areas such as the British Isles had been explored. The Silk Road was also in operation, and for the first time knowledge of the far east began to be known. Ptolemy's Geographia opens with a theoretical discussion about the nature and techniques of geographical inquiry, and then moves to detailed descriptions of much the known world. Ptolemy lists a huge number of cities, tribes, and sites and places them in the world. It is uncertain what Ptolemy's names correspond to in the modern world, and a vast amount of scholarship has gone into trying to link Ptolemaic descriptions to known locations.

It was the

sun dials for determining direction, theodolites for measuring horizontal angles,[15] and triangulation without which the creation of perfectly straight stretches, some as long as 35 miles (56 km), would have been impossible. During the Greco-Roman era, those who performed geographical work could be divided into four categories:[16]

  • Land surveyors determined the exact dimensions of a particular area such as a field, dividing the land into plots for distribution, or laying out the streets in a town.
  • Cartographical surveyors made maps, involving finding latitudes, longitudes and elevations.
  • Military surveyors were called upon to determine such information as the width of a river an army would need to cross.
  • Engineering surveyors investigated terrain in order to prepare the way for roads, canals, aqueducts, tunnels and mines.

Around AD 400 a scroll map called the Peutinger Table was made of the known world, featuring the Roman road network. Besides the Roman Empire which at that time spanned from Britain to the Middle East and Africa, the map includes India, Sri Lanka and China. Cities are demarcated using hundreds of symbols. It measures 1.12 ft (0.34 m) high and 22.15 ft (6.75 m) long. The tools and principles of geography used by the Romans would be closely followed with little practical improvement for the next 700 years.[17]

India

A vast corpus of Indian texts embraced the study of geography. The

Diana Eck, a notable feature of geography in India is its interweaving with Hindu mythology,[19]

No matter where one goes in India, one will find a landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests, and villages are elaborately linked to the stories and gods of Indian culture. Every place in this vast country has its story; and conversely, every story of Hindu myth and legend has its place.

Ancient period

The geographers of ancient India put forward theories regarding the origin of the Earth. They theorized that the Earth was formed by the solidification of gaseous matter and that the Earth's crust is composed of hard rocks (sila), clay (bhumih) and sand (asma).

Kautilya (also known as Chanakya) contains a range of geographical and statistical information about the various regions of India.[18] The composers of the Puranas divided the known world into seven continents of dwipas, Jambu Dwipa, Krauncha Dwipa, Kusha Dwipa, Plaksha Dwipa, Pushkara Dwipa, Shaka Dwipa and Shalmali Dwipa. Descriptions were provided for the climate and geography of each of the dwipas.[20]

Early Medieval period

The Vishnudharmottara Purana (compiled between 300 and 350 AD) contains six chapters on physical and human geography. The locational attributes of peoples and places, and various seasons are the topics of these chapters.

Aryabhata accurately calculated the Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles.

Late Medieval period

The

Alberuni
.

China

An early Western Han dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD) silk map found in tomb 3 of Mawangdui Han tombs site, depicting the Kingdom of Changsha and Kingdom of Nanyue in southern China (note: the south direction is oriented at the top, north at the bottom).
The Yu Ji Tu, or Map of the Tracks of Yu Gong, carved into stone in 1137,[21] located in the Stele Forest of Xi'an. This 3 feet (0.91 m) squared map features a graduated scale of 100 li for each rectangular grid. China's coastline and river systems are clearly defined and precisely pinpointed on the map. "Yu" refers to Yu the Great, a Chinese deity and the author of the Yu Gong, the geographic chapter of the Book of Documents, dating to the 5th century BC from whence this map is derived.

In China, the earliest known geographical Chinese writing dates back to the 5th century BC, during the beginning of the

Han Rivers along with the southern parts of modern-day Shanxi province.[22]

In this ancient geographical treatise, which would greatly influence later Chinese geographers and cartographers, the Chinese used the mythological figure of Yu the Great to describe the known earth (of the Chinese). Apart from the appearance of Yu, however, the work was devoid of magic, fantasy, Chinese folklore, or legend.[23] Although the Chinese geographical writing in the time of Herodotus and Strabo were of lesser quality and contained less systematic approach, this would change from the 3rd century onwards, as Chinese methods of documenting geography became more complex than those found in Europe, a state of affairs that would persist until the 13th century.[24]

The earliest extant maps found in archeological sites of China date to the 4th century BC and were made in the ancient State of Qin.[25] The earliest known reference to the application of a geometric grid and mathematically graduated scale to a map was contained in the writings of the cartographer Pei Xiu (224–271).[26] From the 1st century AD onwards, official Chinese historical texts contained a geographical section, which was often an enormous compilation of changes in place-names and local administrative divisions controlled by the ruling dynasty, descriptions of mountain ranges, river systems, taxable products, etc.[27] The ancient Chinese historian Ban Gu (32–92) most likely started the trend of the gazetteer in China, which became prominent in the Northern and Southern dynasties period and Sui dynasty.[28] Local gazetteers would feature a wealth of geographic information, although its cartographic aspects were not as highly professional as the maps created by professional cartographers.[28]

From the time of the 5th century BC Shu Jing forward, Chinese geographical writing provided more concrete information and less legendary element. This example can be seen in the 4th chapter of the Huainanzi (Book of the Master of Huainan), compiled under the editorship of Prince Liu An in 139 BC during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 202 AD). The chapter gave general descriptions of topography in a systematic fashion, given visual aids by the use of maps (di tu) due to the efforts of Liu An and his associate Zuo Wu.[29] In Chang Chu's Hua Yang Guo Chi (Historical Geography of Sichuan) of 347, not only rivers, trade routes, and various tribes were described, but it also wrote of a 'Ba Jun Tu Jing' ('Map of Sichuan'), which had been made much earlier in 150.[30] The Shui Jing (Waterways Classic) was written anonymously in the 3rd century during the Three Kingdoms era (attributed often to Guo Pu), and gave a description of some 137 rivers found throughout China.[31] In the 6th century, the book was expanded to forty times its original size by the geographers Li Daoyuan, given the new title of Shui Jing Zhu (The Waterways Classic Commented).[31]

In later periods of the

marine fossils found far inland, along with bamboo fossils found underground in a region far from where bamboo was suitable to grow. The 14th-century Yuan dynasty geographer Na-xin wrote a treatise of archeological topography of all the regions north of the Yellow River, in his book He Shuo Fang Gu Ji.[33] The Ming dynasty geographer Xu Xiake (1587–1641) traveled throughout the provinces of China (often on foot) to write his enormous geographical and topographical treatise, documenting various details of his travels, such as the locations of small gorges, or mineral beds such as mica schists.[34] Xu's work was largely systematic, providing accurate details of measurement, and his work (translated later by Ding Wenjiang) read more like a 20th-century field surveyor than an early 17th-century scholar.[34]

The Chinese were also concerned with documenting geographical information of foreign regions far outside of China. Although Chinese had been writing of civilizations of the Middle East, India, and Central Asia since the traveler

al-Muqaddasi. The later Song dynasty ambassador Xu Jing wrote his accounts of voyage and travel throughout Korea in his work of 1124, the Xuan-He Feng Shi Gao Li Tu Jing (Illustrated Record of an Embassy to Korea in the Xuan-He Reign Period).[33] The geography of medieval Cambodia (the Khmer Empire) was documented in the book Zhen-La Feng Tu Ji of 1297, written by Zhou Daguan.[33]

Middle Ages

Byzantine Empire and Syria

After the fall of the western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople and known as the Byzantine Empire, continued to thrive and produced several noteworthy geographers. Stephanus of Byzantium (6th century) was a grammarian at Constantinople and authored the important geographical dictionary Ethnica. This work is of enormous value, providing well-referenced geographical and other information about ancient Greece.

The geographer Hierocles (6th century) authored the Synecdemus (prior to AD 535) in which he provides a table of administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire and lists the cities in each. The Synecdemus and the Ethnica were the principal sources of Constantine VII's work on the Themes or divisions of Byzantium, and are the primary sources we have today on political geography of the sixth-century East.

George of Cyprus is known for his Descriptio orbis Romani (Description of the Roman world), written in the decade 600–610.[36] Beginning with Italy and progressing counterclockwise including Africa, Egypt and the western Middle East, George lists cities, towns, fortresses and administrative divisions of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, (6th century) also known as "Cosmas the Monk", was an Alexandrian merchant.[37] By the records of his travels, he seems to have visited India, Sri Lanka, the Kingdom of Axum in modern Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Included in his work Christian Topography were some of the earliest world maps.[38][39][40] Though Cosmas believed the earth to be flat, most Christian geographers of his time disagreed with him.[41]

Syrian bishop Jacob of Edessa (633–708) adapted scientific material sourced from Aristotle, Theophrastus, Ptolemy and Basil to develop a carefully structured picture of the cosmos. He corrects his sources and writes more scientifically, whereas Basil's Hexaemeron is theological in style.[42]

Karl Müller has collected and printed several anonymous works of geography from this era, including the Expositio totius mundi.

Islamic world

In the latter 7th century, adherents of the new religion of

Arabic, employed Christians and Jews to translate
these and many other manuscripts into Arabic.

The primary geographical scholarship of this era occurred in

Syrian (Byzantine) or Persian, i.e. of either Zoroastrian or Christian background.[citation needed
]

Persians who wrote on geography or created maps during the Middle Ages included:

Further details about some of these are given below:

In the early 10th century,

Abū Zayd al-Balkhī, a Persian originally from Balkh, founded the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. The geographers of this school also wrote extensively of the peoples, products, and customs of areas in the Muslim world, with little interest in the non-Muslim realms.[48] Suhrāb, a late 10th-century Persian geographer, accompanied a book of geographical coordinates with instructions for making a rectangular world map, with equirectangular projection or cylindrical equidistant projection.[48] In the early 11th century, Avicenna hypothesized on the geological causes of mountains in The Book of Healing
(1027).

in 1154. Note that in this map, the north is at the bottom and south at the top, in contrast to modern cartographic conventions.

In mathematical geography, Persian

Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, around 1025, was the first to describe a polar equi-azimuthal equidistant projection of the celestial sphere.[49] He was also regarded as the most skilled when it came to mapping cities and measuring the distances between them, which he did for many cities in the Middle East and western Indian subcontinent. He combined astronomical readings and mathematical equations to record degrees of latitude and longitude and to measure the heights of mountains and depths of valleys, recorded in The Chronology of the Ancient Nations. He discussed human geography and the planetary habitability of the Earth, suggesting that roughly a quarter of the Earth's surface is habitable by humans
.

By the early 12th century the

Al-Idrisi, one of few Arabs who had ever been to France and England as well as Spain, Central Asia and Constantinople, was employed to create the book from this mass of data. Utilizing the information inherited from the classical geographers, he created one of the most accurate maps of the world to date, the Tabula Rogeriana (1154). The map, written in Arabic, shows the Eurasian
continent in its entirety and the northern part of Africa.

An adherent of

Afro-Arab writer al-Jahiz (776–869), who explained how the environment can determine the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of a certain community. He used his early theory of evolution to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed to be the result of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in the northern Najd as evidence for his theory.[51]

Medieval Europe

Fictional portrait of Marco Polo.

During the Early Middle Ages, geographical knowledge in Europe regressed (though it is a popular misconception that they thought the world was flat), and the simple T and O map became the standard depiction of the world.

The trips of

Crusades
of the 12th and 13th centuries, and the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration during the 15th and 16th centuries opened up new horizons and stimulated geographic writings. The
Maps of the Yuan Dynasty

During the 15th century,

Theodore de Bry
in what is now Belgium.

Early modern period

Tabula Hungariae, Ingolstadt, 1528 – the earliest surviving printed map of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Universalis Cosmographia, the Waldseemüller wall map dated 1507, depicts the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean separating Asia from the Americas.

Following the journeys of Marco Polo, interest in geography spread throughout Europe. From around c. 1400, the writings of Ptolemy and his successors provided a systematic framework to tie together and portray geographical information. This framework was used by academics for centuries to come, the positives being the lead-up to the geographical enlightenment, however, women and indigenous writings were largely excluded from the discourse. The European global conquests started in the early 15th century with the first Portuguese expeditions to Africa and India, as well as the conquest of America by Spain in 1492 and continued with a series of European naval expeditions across the Atlantic and later the Pacific and Russian expeditions to Siberia until the 18th century. European overseas expansion led to the rise of

communicable diseases
and culture between the continents. These colonialist endeavours in 16th and 17th centuries revived a desire for both "accurate" geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations. The Geographia Generalis by Bernhardus Varenius and Gerardus Mercator's world map are prime examples of the new breed of scientific geography.

The Waldseemüller map Universalis Cosmographia, created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in April 1507, is the first map of the Americas in which the name "America" is mentioned. Before this, the Native Americans referred to their land depending on their location, with one of the more commonly used terms being "Abya Yala", meaning "land of vital blood". These indigenous geographical discourses were largely ignored or appropriated by the European colonialists to make way for European thought.

The Eurocentric map was patterned after a modification of Ptolemy's second projection but expanded to include the Americas.

Waldseemüller
also created printed maps called globe gores, that could be cut out and glued to spheres resulting in a globe.

This has been debated widely as being dismissive of the extensive Native American history that predated the 16th-century invasion, in the sense that the implication of a "birth certificate" implies a blank history prior.

16th~18th centuries in the West

Asia, from Relazioni Universali, by Giovanni Botero (1544–1617).

Geography as a science experiences excitement and exerts influence during the

Scientific revolution and Reformation. In the Victorian period, the oversea exploration gave it institutional identity and geography was "the science of imperialism par excellence."[54][citation needed] Imperialism is a crucial concept for the Europeans, as the institution become involved in geographical exploration and colonial project. Authority was questioned, and utility gained its importance. In the era of Enlightenment, geography generated knowledge and made it intellectually and practically possible as a university discipline. The natural theology required geography to investigate the world as a grand machine from the Divine. Scientific voyages and travels constructed geopolitical power from geographical knowledge, partly sponsored by Royal Society
.

The discourse of geographical history gave way to many new thoughts and theories, but the hegemony of the European male academia led to the exclusion of non-western theories, observations and knowledges. One such example is the interaction between humans and nature, with Marxist thought critiquing nature as a commodity within Capitalism, European thought seeing nature as either a romanticised or objective concept differing to human society, and Native American discourse, which saw nature and humans as within one category. The implied hierarchy of knowledge that perpetuated throughout these institutions has only been recently challenged, with the Royal Geographical Society enabling women to join as members in the 20th century.

After English Civil War, Samuel Hartlib and his Baconian community promoted scientific application, which showed the popularity of utility. For William Petty, the administrators should be "skilled in the best rules of judicial astrology" to "calculate the events of diseases and prognosticate the weather."[citation needed] Institutionally, Gresham College propagated scientific advancement to a larger audience like tradesmen, and later this institute grew into Royal Society. William Cuningham illustrated the utilitarian function of cosmography by the military implement of maps. John Dee used mathematics to study location—his primary interest in geography and encouraged exploiting resource with findings collected during voyages. Religion Reformation stimulated geographical exploration and investigation. Philipp Melanchthon shifted geographical knowledge production from "pages of scripture" to "experience in the world." Bartholomäus Keckermann separated geography from theology because the "general workings of providence" required empirical investigation. His follower, Bernhardus Varenius made geography a science in the 17th century and published Geographia Generalis, which was used in Newton's teaching of geography at Cambridge.

Science develops along with empiricism. Empiricism gains its central place while reflection on it also grew. Practitioners of magic and astrology first embraced and expanded geographical knowledge. Reformation Theology focused more on the providence than the creation as previously. Realistic experience, instead of translated from scripture, emerged as a scientific procedure. Geographical knowledge and method play roles in economic education and administrative application, as part of the Puritan social program. Foreign travels provided content for geographic research and formed theories, such as environmentalism. Cartography showed its practical, theoretical, and artistic value.

The concepts of "Space" and "Place" attract attention in geography. Why things are there and not elsewhere is an important topic in Geography, together with debates on space and place. Such insights could date back in 16th and 17th centuries, identified by M. Curry as "Natural Space", "Absolute Space", "Relational Space" (On Space and Spatial Practice). After

compresence
." In Modern Space as Relative, place and what is in place are integrated. "The Supremacy of Space" is observed by E. Casey when the place is resolved as "position and even point" by Leibniz's rationalism and Locke's empiricism.

During the Age of Enlightenment, advancements in science mean widening human knowledge and enable further exploiting nature, along with industrialization and empire expansion in Europe. David Hume, "the real father of positivist philosophy" according to Leszek Kolakowski, implied the "doctrine of facts", emphasizing the importance of scientific observations. The "fact" is related with sensationalism that object cannot be isolated from its "sense-perceptions", an opinion of Berkeley. Galileo, Descartes, later Hobbes and Newton advocated scientific materialism, viewing the universe—the entire world and even human mind—as a machine. The mechanist world view is also found in the work of Adam Smith based on historical and statistics methods. In chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier proposed the "exact science model" and stressed quantitative methods from experiment and mathematics. Carl Linnaeus classified plants and organisms based on an assumption of fixed species. Later, the idea of evolution emerged not only for species but also for society and human intellect. In General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant laid out his hypothesis of cosmic evolution, and made him "the great founder of the modern scientific conception of Evolution" according to Hastie.

Francis Bacon and his followers believed progress of science and technology drive betterment of man. This belief was attached by Jean-Jacques Rousseau who defended human emotions and morals. His discussion on geography education piloted local regional studies. Leibniz and Kant formed the major challenge to the mechanical materialism. Leibniz conceptualized the world as a changing whole, rather than "sum of its parts" as a machine. Nevertheless, he acknowledged experience requires rational interpretation—the power of human reason.

Kant tried to reconcile the division of sense and reason by stressing moral rationalism grounded on aesthetic experience of nature as "order, harmony, and unity". For knowledge, Kant distinguished phenomena (sensible world) and noumena (intelligible world), and he asserted "all phenomena are perceived in the relations of space and time." Drawing a line between "rational science" and "empirical science", Kant regarded Physical geography—associating with space—as natural science. During his tenure in Königsberg, Kant offered lectures on physical geography since 1756 and published the lecture notes Physische Geographie in 1801. However, Kant's involvement in travel and geographical research is fairly limited. Kant's work on empirical and rational science influence Humboldt and at smaller extent Ritter. Manfred Büttner asserted that is "Kantian emancipation of geography from theology."

Humboldt is admired as a great geographer, according to D. Livingstone that "modern geography was first and last a synthesizing science and as such, if Goetzmann is to be believed, 'it became the key scientific activity of the age'." Humboldt met the geographer George Forster at the University of Göttingen, whose geographical description and scientific writing influenced Humboldt. His Geognosia including the geography of rocks, animals, and plants is "an important model for modern geography". As the Prussian Ministry of Mines, Humboldt founded the Free Royal Mining School at Steben for miners, later regarded the prototype of such institutes. German Naturphilosophie, especially the work of Goethe and Herder, stimulated Humboldt's idea and research of a universal science. In his letter, he made observations while his "attention will never lose sight of the harmony of concurrent forces, the influence of the inanimate world on the animal and vegetable kingdom." His American travel stressed the geography of plants as his focus of science. Meanwhile, Humboldt used empirical method to study the indigenous people in the New World, regarded as a most important work in human geography. In Relation historique du Voyage, Humboldt called these research a new science Physique du monde, Theorie de la Terre, or Geographie physique. During 1825 to 1859, Humboldt devoted in Kosmos, which is about the knowledge of nature. There are growing works about the New World since then. In the Jeffersonian era, "American geography was born of the geography of America", meaning the knowledge discovery helped form the discipline. Practical knowledge and national pride are main components of the Teleological tradition.

Institutions such as the Royal Geographical Society indicate geography as an independent discipline. Mary Somerville's Physical Geography was the "conceptual culmination of ... Baconian ideal of universal integration". According to Francis Bacon, "No natural phenomenon can be adequately studied by itself alone – but, to be understood, it must be considered as it stands connected with all nature."

19th century

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859)

By the 18th century, geography had become recognized as a discrete discipline and became part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially Paris and Berlin), although not in the United Kingdom where geography was generally taught as a sub-discipline of other subjects.

A holistic view of geography and nature can be seen in the work by the 19th-century polymath Alexander von Humboldt.[55] One of the great works of this time was Humboldt's Kosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the Universe, the first volume of which was published in German in 1845. Such was the power of this work that Dr Mary Somerville, of Cambridge University intended to scrap publication of her own Physical Geography on reading Kosmos. Von Humboldt himself persuaded her to publish (after the publisher sent him a copy).

In 1877,

Halford John Mackinder in 1887. However, the integration of the Geosphere, Atmosphere and Biosphere
under physiography was soon over taken by Davisian geomorphology.

Over the past two centuries the quantity of knowledge and the number of tools has exploded. There are strong links between geography and the sciences of

demographics
.

The

in 1887.

The National Geographic Society was founded in the United States in 1888 and began publication of the National Geographic magazine which became and continues to be a great popularizer of geographic information. The society has long supported geographic research and education.

20th century

Evolution of the Western knowledge of the world

In the West during the second half of the 19th and the 20th century, the discipline of geography at various time engaged with four broad themes: environmental determinism, regional geography, the quantitative revolution, and critical geography.

Environmental determinism

Environmental determinism is the theory that a people's physical, mental and moral habits are directly due to the influence of their natural environment. Prominent environmental determinists included Carl Ritter, Ellen Churchill Semple, and Ellsworth Huntington. Popular hypotheses[by whom?] included "heat makes inhabitants of the tropics lazy" and "frequent changes in barometric pressure make inhabitants of temperate latitudes more intellectually agile."[citation needed] Environmental determinist geographers attempted to make the study of such influences scientific. Around the 1930s, this school of thought was widely repudiated as lacking any basis and being prone to (often bigoted) generalizations.[citation needed] Environmental determinism remains an embarrassment to many contemporary geographers, and leads to skepticism among many of them of claims of environmental influence on culture (such as the theories of Jared Diamond).[citation needed]

Regional geography

Regional geography was coined by a group of geographers known as possibilists and represented a reaffirmation that the proper topic of geography was study of places (regions). Regional geographers focused on the collection of descriptive information about places, as well as the proper methods for dividing the Earth up into regions. Well-known names from these period are

Paul Vidal de la Blache in France. The philosophical basis of this field in United States was laid out by Richard Hartshorne
, who defined geography as a study of areal differentiation, which later led to criticism of this approach as overly descriptive and unscientific.

However, the concept of a Regional geography model focused on

Area Studies
has remained incredibly popular amongst students of geography, while less so amongst scholars who are proponents of Critical Geography and reject a Regional geography paradigm. During its heyday in the 1970s through the early 1990s, regional geography made substantive contributions to students' and readers' understanding of foreign cultures and the real world effects of the delineation of borders.

The quantitative revolution

The quantitative revolution in geography began in the 1950s. Geographers formulated geographical theories and subjected the theories to empirical tests, usually using

Waldo Tobler, which states that "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."[56][57]

Critical geography

The term critical geography has been in use since at least 1749, when the book Geography reformed: a new system of general geography, according to an Accurate Analysis of the science in four parts dedicated a chapter to the topic titled "of Critical Geography."[58] This chapter described critical geography as an approach geographers take to build upon the work of others, and make corrections to their maps based on new information. In the 1970s, the term saw a resurgence as so called "radical geographers" took on the framework of critical theory and Marxist philosophy, using critical geography as an umbrella uniting various theoretical frameworks in geography, including Marxist geography and feminist geography.[59][60][61]

Critical geography re-emerged within the discipline in part as a radical critique of positivist approaches that gained popularity during the quantitative revolution. The first strain of critical geography to emerge was

poststructuralist
theorists to explore the social construction of spatial relations.

Critical geography is often viewed as directly opposed to the positive approaches during the 20th century, and quantitative geographers have levied counter criticisms.

anti-science."[65]

21st century

Social theory/spatial analysis split

After an initial debate on the merits of positivism, where critical geographers attempted "to excise everything that went before in quantitative geography" and "overthrow the dominant quantitative approach" during the 1960s and 1970s, by 1995, GIS practitioners and quantitative geographers began to "decline comment" to critical geography in an academic context.[66][67] While quantitative geographers and critical geographers continued to work together in some context, a lack of "common vocabulary," and rounds of "polarizing debates," lead to a situation of "mutual indifference and absence of dialog between the two groups" during the 2000s.[67][68] The result of this split led to the creation of two camps within human geography that many view as irreconcilable, described by geographer Mei-Po Kwan as the "social-cultural geographies" and the "spatial-analytical geographies."[68]

See also

Notes

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  2. ^ Montet, Pierre (2000), "Eternal Egypt"(Phoenix Press)
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  4. ^ Siebold, Jim Slide 103 Archived 2018-09-29 at the Wayback Machine via henry-davis.com – accessed 2008-02-04
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    . pp.209
  6. ^ Finel, Irving (1995). "A join to the map of the world: A notable discover": 26–27. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ^ Strabo, Geography, I, 1.
  8. ^ James Rennell. The geographical system of Herodotus, examined and explained, by a comparison with those of other ancient authors and with modern geography. Bulmer, 1800. p672
  9. ^ The Ancient History of Herodotus By Herodotus. p200. (cf., Asia is well inhabited; but from India eastward the whole country is one vast desert, unknown and unexplored).
  10. ^ The Cambridge History of the British Empire. CUP Archive, 1963. p56
  11. ^ Die Umsegelung Afrikas durch phönizische Schiffer ums Jahr 600 v. Chr. Geb (1800)
  12. ^ Die umsegelung Asiens und Europas auf der Vega. Volume 2. By Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. p148
  13. ^ Geographical thought. By Lalita Rana. Concept Publishing Company, 2008. p6
  14. ^ Russo, Lucio (2004). The Forgotten Revolution. Berlin: Springer. pp. 273–277.
  15. ^ Thompson, Logan Roman Roads Published in History Today Volume: 47 Issue: 2 1997
  16. ^ Lewis, Michael J. T. Lewis Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001, p. 3.
  17. ^ Thompson, Roman Roads
  18. ^ a b c d e Anu Kapur (2002). Indian Geography: Voice of Concern. Concept Publishing Company.
  19. ^ Diana L. Eck (2012). India: A Sacred Geography. Random House Digital, Inc.
  20. ^ a b c d Lalita Rana (2008). Geographical thought. Concept Publishing Company.
  21. .
  22. ^ a b c Needham, Volume 3, 500.
  23. ^ Needham, Volume 3, 501.
  24. ^ Needham, Volume 3, 512.
  25. ^ Hsu, 90–93.
  26. ^ Needham, Volume 3, 538–540.
  27. ^ Needham, Volume 3, 508.
  28. ^ a b Hsu, 98.
  29. ^ Needham, Volume 3, 507–508.
  30. ^ Needham, Volume 3, 517.
  31. ^ a b Needham, Volume 3, 514.
  32. ^ a b Needham, Volume 3, 510.
  33. ^ a b c d Needham, Volume 3, 511.
  34. ^ a b Needham, Volume 3, 524.
  35. ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 661.
  36. ^ "Article: The Representation of Lower Egypt (by Herbert Donner)". Archived from the original on 2013-09-29. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
  37. .
  38. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008, O.Ed, Cosmas Indicopleustes.
  39. .
  40. ^ Miller, Hugh (1857). The Testimony of the Rocks. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. p. 428.
  41. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008, O.Ed, Cosmas Indicopleustes.
  42. ^ Romeny, Bas ter Haar, Ed. Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2008, p. 224
  43. ^ Young, M. J. L., J. D. Latham and R. B. Serjeant, Editors The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Religion, Learning and Science in the 'Abbasid Period Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990, p. 307
  44. ^ Yarshater, Ehsan IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period Vol. XIII, Fasc. 3, Originally Published: December 15, 2004 Last Updated: March 29, 2012, pp. 225–227
  45. Alhazen#Biography
  46. .
  47. ^ Brentjes, S. "International Encyclopedia of Human Geography: Cartography in Islamic Societies" Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain, 2009, p. 421.
  48. ^ a b E. Edson and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Views of the Cosmos, pp. 61–3, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
  49. ^ David A. King (1996), "Astronomy and Islamic society: Qibla, gnomics and timekeeping", in Roshdi Rashed, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Vol. 1, pp. 128–184 [153]. Routledge, London and New York.
  50. ^ Bagrow, Leo History of Cartography Original publication: Precedent Publications, Chicago, 1985, pp. 56–57
  51. JSTOR 3632188
    .
  52. ^ Snyder, John P. (1993). Flattening the Earth: 2000 Years of Map Projections, p. 33. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  53. ^ Hebert, John R. The Map That Named America Library of Congress Information Bulletin, September 2003, Accessed August 2013.
  54. ^ Livingstone, David (1992). The Geographical Tradition. Oxford: Blackwell.
  55. ^ Jackson, Stephen T. "Alexander von Humboldt and the General Physics of the Earth" (PDF). Science. Vol. 324. pp. 596–597.
  56. S2CID 34085823. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 8 March 2019. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  57. . Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  58. ^ Cave, Edward, ed. (1749). Geography reformed: a new system of general geography, according to an Accurate Analysis of the science in four parts (2 ed.). St John's Gate, Clerkenwell. p. 241. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  59. S2CID 128738768
    .
  60. .
  61. .
  62. OCLC 3126299.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  63. .
  64. .
  65. ^ a b Graf, W. (1998). "Why Physical Geographers Whine so Much". The Association of American Geographers' Newsletter. 33 (8).
  66. .
  67. ^ .
  68. ^ .

References

External links