Geography - The Nature Of Geography, Geographical Determinism, Military And Public Geography, Geographical Theories, The Limits In Geography
geographers universities
Only relatively recently accepted as a subject of study by universities, geography has been characterized as a Cinderella among the disciplines. It was not one of the traditional liberal arts, and it appeared in its modern form in the curriculum of universities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; it still remains a small component, and is sometimes not present at all, in institutions of higher learning. Part of the reason for this is that society, and even geographers themselves, are not sure of the nature of geography. Geographers are only rarely members of national academies of science, or of the humanities, falling between the stools with the social or so-called soft sciences.
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In his seminal studies on the methodology of the subject, Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) proposed the following definition: "Geography is concerned to provide an accurate, orderly, and rational description of the variable character of the earth's surface" (Hartshorne, p. 21). Understandably this characterization has not been universally accepted, and others have suggest…
A concept that retarded the acceptance of geography as a serious academic endeavor until quite recently was geographical determinism. Although stemming from earlier work by the German geographer and ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), with adherents in other European countries, the high priestess of this cult in the United States was Ellen C. Semple (1863–1932); another Americ…
If geography has had a mixed reception in research universities, its ideas and practitioners have been embraced by both the military and the public sectors. Thus Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) not only developed strategy based on knowledge of geography but also sponsored a translation of Strabo's Geography. Following the Napoleonic Wars there was a great interest in geographical…
Both Kant in Königsberg and Isaac Newton (1642–1727) at Cambridge University in England taught what might be called geography today, but they are not remembered for that activity. Newton also postulated that the Earth is an oblate (polar flattened) spheroid before it was proved by geophysical methods. This and other findings were to be of practical use in the development of detailed to…
What are the limits of the focus in the study of geography? It is usually assumed that geography is concerned with the surface or "shell" of the Earth, but workers do not specify how deep or high this sphere of interest to geographers extends. With some prescience Hartshorne wrote before 1966, "Man has for the first time projected his world of action beyond the [Earth's…
Before treating computer graphics and geographical information systems (GIS), which purists consider only tools, mention should be made of the criticism of academic geography as being mere description, with a lack of theories. Traditionalists would argue that all places on the Earth are different, that therefore description of these variations represents reality, and that geographers need only add…
Before the computer, proto-quantitative geography was developed with the aid of various calculating machines, but it was only after Herman Hollerith (1860–1929) combined punched cards with the then-recent electromagnetic inventions that it became possible to count and classify in a much shorter time and with greater detail and precision than by any previous methods. But through the 1950s th…
An attempt to bring the subject together, after a long hiatus, is Geography: A Modern Synthesis by Peter Haggett. This is suggested by the titles of a selection of chapters of his book: "The Fertile Planet"; "Environment Risks and Uncertainties"; "Ecosystems and Environmental Regions"; "Resources and Conservation"; "Spatial Diffusion&#…
Agnew, John, David N. Livingstone, and Alisdair Rogers, eds. Human Geography: An Essential Anthology. Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996. See especially: David Harvey, "On the Present Condition of Geography"; J. B. Harley, "Deconstructing the Map"; Yi Fu Tuan, "Space and Place"; Torsten Hager-strand, "Diorama, Path and Project"; and…
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7 months ago
abdu
it is very imporatnt but it is too short to get more information. Add some more articles please