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Here is an essay on the ‘Foundation of Scientific Geography’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on the ‘Foundation of Scientific Geography’ especially written for school and college students.
Foundation of Scientific Geography
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Rise of Dualism
- Essay on Scientific Discoveries
- Essay on the Revival of Classical Roman Tradition
- Essay on the Beginning of Scientific Geography
- Essay on Special Geography vs. General Geography
- Essay on Geography in the Eighteenth Century
Essay # 1. Rise of Dualism:
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The geography of pre-classical period included both ‘general’ studies of particular kinds of phenomena on the Earth’s surface and description of many kinds of phenomena found in particular areas. The inclusion of these two forms of study within the single field has no doubt been the cause of more controversy than any other single problem in the methodology of geography.
It is significant, therefore, that it was not introduced into modern geography as a result of the chance combination of Humboldt and Ritter. On the contrary, the same difference is found in the works of the geographers of antiquity.
This period witnessed apparent dichotomy or dualism which is still a characteristic of geography. Some scholars have regarded it as the essential justification for the role of geography while others have argued for a division of the subject into physical and human geography on the ground that their respective methodologies must be different.
In studies of natural phenomena, including climate, geology and landforms, it is possible ‘to use the methods of natural sciences and to draw conclusions with a large measure of scientific precision. The methods of natural science, however, do not lend themselves very well to the study of social and cultural phenomena. Our generalisations about human groups must be limited in time and space, and must relate to statements of probability rather than certainty’.
Essay # 2. Scientific Discoveries:
Conceptual developments took place in different kinds of problems and tended towards the development of special branches of knowledge. The German scholars made significant contributions in geography and offered valuable concepts, models and paradigms, some of which are still relevant. However, some more developments took place in Great Britain, France, Russia, Poland and Italy.
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The idea of a heliocentric, universe proved by Polish scholar Nicolaus Copernicus (where he calculated the movement of the celestial bodies, with the Sun as a fixed centre) discarded the Ptolemic tradition of a geocentric universe. However, he still followed the Ptolemic tradition of a circular orbit of the planets around the Sun regarding their movements.
In 1618, Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer, developed the laws of motion, in which he recognised the elliptical planetary motion of the celestial bodies around the Sun. In 1623, Galileo recognised the idea of a heliocentric universe of Copernicus.
He, for the first time, formulated the concept of a universal mathematical order, a universe that could be described in terms of a mathematical law rather than in the verbal and logical terms of Aristotle. In 1686, Isaac Newton presented his law of gravitation.
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‘Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton sowed the seeds of scientific revolution that marked the beginnings of specialization.’ So deeply had the mathematical work of these scholars impressed the German geographer Varenius that he defined geography as a branch of mixed mathematics and rebuked those who tended to limit it to a description of various countries. Let us examine the contribution of the individual scholars of the period who identified themselves with different traditions, and laid the foundation of Scientific Geography.
Essay # 3. Classical Roman Tradition Revived:
Though the Christian world was much influenced by the scientific discoveries, which tended to ridicule the Ptolemic tradition, yet attempts were made to revive the classical Ptolemic tradition and also the classical Roman tradition of Strabo.
Peter Apian and Sebastian Munster are credited with having produced the great geographical compendia at the beginning of the Age of Renaissance, which for a century after their publication in the sixteenth century, remained the chief standard theoretical works – the one for its popular exposition of astronomy and mathematical geography and the other for its descriptive geography modelled on Strabo.
Peter Apian was an astronomer and cartographer, and was credited with two published works: one was an astronomical treatise, and the other dealt with those aspects of geometry and astronomy which are relevant to geography. His second work was published in 1524. Apian seemed to have conceived of a geocentric universe and also recognised the Aristotelian concept of the ekumene or the zone of habitability.
Sebastian Munster was born at Ingelheim near Mainz in 1489. He studied at Heildelberg and Vienna, and in 1536 was appointed to a chair of Hebrew at Basle where he remained till his death in 1552. He translated several important geographical works from Latin into German, but Munster is identified by his ‘Cosmographia Universalis’ which was published in 1544.
It is a compilation from many contemporary authorities rather than a carefully arranged treatise. History and genealogical tables take up a large part of the treatise. The work very much follows the geographic tradition of Strabo as it almost excludes mathematical and physical geography.
Munster recognises the geocentric universe and maintains the Ptolemic traditions. His book also deals with the dispersal of humankind over the Earth after the great flood. It provides us with a human and political geography of Germany on a chronological basis.
The last part of the book deals with Asia, Europe and Africa. However, he was amazingly uninformed about Asia and it is now held that he must have had access to only such information as was available in Germany. Cosmographia Universalis was regarded as the authoritative work on world geography for more than a century.
Cluverius (Philipp Cluver) (1580-1622) was the first German geographer to have produced universal geography, because he had better access to the new materials available in Germany. He carried forward the historical tradition of Sebastian Munster. In 1616, he published a book on the historical geography of Germany.
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He approached geography through the classics and history. His general work ‘Introduction in Universam Geographiam’ was published posthumously in 1624, in which he also maintained the Ptolemic tradition of a geocentric universe.
The compendium starts with a brief and inadequate account of mathematical geography with a distinction between geography and chorography and then passes on to a regional description of the countries of the world which occupy four-fifth of the whole. He set forth a paradigm in regional geography that for long was unsurpassed.
Essay # 4. Beginning of Scientific Geography:
However, the classical Roman tradition of Strabo and Ptolemy, which was carried forward by Apian, Munster and Cluverius, despite the scientific discoveries about the Universe, gradually disappeared with the beginning of the scientific geography in the early seventeenth century.
More influential, however, in the development of the scientific geographical thought was the work of Bernhard Varenius (1622-1650) who profoundly influenced the content and scope of geography for more than a century. He was born in 1622 at Hitzacker near Hamburg.
In 1640, he entered the University of Hamburg and studied philosophy, mathematics and physics and after three years went to the University at Konigsberg to study medicine and then moved to Leiden to pursue the same work. In 1649, he published a book entitled Descripto regnilaponiac et Siam.
The book contains five parts – a description of Japan; a translation into Latin of a description of Siam by J. Schonter; an essay on religion of Japan; some excerpts from the writings of Leo Africanus on religion of Africa; and a short essay on governments.
This was immediately followed by a companion volume on the religion of Japan. At this time, Varenius probably thought that descriptions of particular places could have no standing if they are not related to a coherent structure of general concepts.
Varenius started work on his famous work Geographia generalis in the fall of 1649 and completed it in the spring of 1650. The work should have been followed by a second volume, but it remained unfinished owing to his premature death in 1650. It is sometimes said that his Geographia generalis was a legitimate successor of Munster’s ‘Cosmographia Universalis’. It was the standard text for more than a century.
Geographia generalis is divided into three parts:
(1) The absolute or terrestrial section which describes the shape and size of the Earth and the physical geography of continents, seas and the atmosphere;
(2) The relative or cosmic section which treats of the relation between the Earth and other heavenly bodies, especially the Sun and its influence on world climate; and
(3) The comparative section which deals with the location of different places in relation to each other and the principles of navigation.
Varenius asserted that the Geographia generalis must be followed by what is called special geography in which descriptions of particular places should be based upon:
(a) Celestial conditions, including climates and climatic zones;
(b) Terrestrial conditions with descriptions of relief, vegetation and animal life; and also
(c) Human conditions, including trade, settlement and forms of government in each country.
In fact, he showed little enthusiasm to embark on the study of human geography as it was not possible to treat it in an exact way. He explained that he had included this last group of human conditions as a concession to traditional approaches to the subject. Varenius for the first time brought together contemporary knowledge of astronomy and cartography and subjected the different theories of his time to a sound critical analysis.
Varenius contended that the methods of the natural sciences could be successfully used to draw conclusions with a large measure of scientific precision for the treatment of natural phenomena, including climate, geology and landforms.
But these methods could not successfully be applied to treat the social and cultural phenomena. The generalisation about human groups must be limited in time and space, and must relate to statement of probability rather than certainty. He was thus one of the first scholars to point out these essential differences in the character of physical and human geography.
To him, geography focuses attention on the surface of the Earth, where it examines such things as climate, surface features, water, forests and deserts, minerals, animals and the human habitats. The human properties of a place include a description of the inhabitants, their appearances, arts, commerce, culture, language, government, religion, cities, famous places and famous men.
Varenius recognised the idea of the heliocentric universe of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. He was the first to point out the difference in the amount of heat received from the Sun in the equatorial regions as compared with that in the higher latitudes.
The Sun’s heat, he suggested, thins the air close to the equator and therefore the cold, heavy air of the Polar Regions must flow towards the equator. This was the first step towards the explanation of the world’s wind systems.
Essay # 5. Special Geography Vs. General Geography:
These two terms were used by Bartholomew Keckermann in his lectures at Danzig in 1603, and later published in a book in 1617. It is commonly believed that Varenius made use of Keckermann’s work in an organised manner and provided a clean demonstration of the relation between these two points of view.
Varenius distinguished the relationship between geographical writings that dealt with the characteristics of particular places and those that described the general and universal laws or principles that could be applied to all places.
Thus, Varenius partitioned geography into ‘Special Geography’ and ‘General Geography’. In special geography, what Varenius intended was that with the exception of celestial features (climate), things must be proved by experience (by direct observation through the senses), but in general geography most things could be proved by mathematical or astronomical laws.
This intellectual problem of the relation, between the specific and general became of major importance in the early pre-classical period of modern geography, as a result of the redundance of new information about specific places and the effort to generalise this information.
However, Varenius observed that there was a need to demonstrate the close inter-connection between special geography and general geography so as to avoid contradiction. To him, special geography has great practical importance for government and commerce, but it leaves out the fundamentals of this field of study; and general geography provide- these fundamentals, but to be of maximum utilisation they must be applied.
Therefore, special geography and general geography are not just a dichotomy, but rather two mutually interdependent parts of a whole as he conceived of the whole world as a unit in his Geographia generalis. Special geography was primarily intended as a description of individual countries and world regions. It was difficult to establish laws in the special part, for explanation must be descriptive where people are involved.
The terms ‘general’ and ‘special’ geography later became the standard terms in Europe. The frequent use by German writers of the adjective ‘systematisch’ in describing ‘general geography’ supports the common use of the term – ‘systematic geography’. The term special geography was largely replaced in German literature by ‘Landerkunde’ which, in spite of obvious disadvantages, is commonly favoured over Non-Germanic terms like ‘special’ or regional geography.
Hartshorne observed that the distinction/division between general or systematic geography and Landerkunde or regional geography, as inducted into geography by Varenius, represented a form of dualism that was characteristic of geography throughout its initial period of development as a modern science. The distinction between the two aspects of geography was more explicitly stated by Gattener (1773-75), Krug (1800) and particularly by Bucher (1812).
Essay # 6. Geography in the Eighteenth Century:
The century after Varenius witnessed no advance in the scientific geography. Interest was now focused on the natural sciences. This was the period when the prodigious mass of empirical knowledge, accumulated to an extent under the guidance of the Scientific Academies, was organised on systematic lines. Such unprecedented expansion of knowledge paved the way for a new advance in geography.
The light thrown on the nature of physical and biological phenomena by natural sciences made it possible by the middle of the eighteenth century to give a more scientific description of the Earth’s surface than ever before.
The problem of man’s place in nature, as to whether or not the Earth was a stage purposefully created for the development of man and his culture, made such a description necessary. Equally important was the growing desire for some synthesis of the data produced by the systematic sciences.
Systematic studies were conducted to account for the origin of the landforms and that replaced catastrophism by uniformitarianism. This made the theories more viable and scientific which were based on the notion that all the processes of change observable today also operated in the past and could account for all the world’s surface features. One of the earlier European scholars was Leonardo da Vinci who argued that running water could level off the heights of land until the Earth was a perfect sphere.
John Ray (1627-1705), who is credited with the development of systematic study of botany and provided an empirical classification of plants, pointed out that water running down the slopes could slowly wash away the mountain. John Strachey in 1719 offered an explanation to show how landforms reflect the underlying structures.
Domenico Guglielmini studied the laws of river flow. Louis Gabriel Comte de Bant of France developed the concept of ‘graded profile’ in 1786, and mathematically proved to show how the flowing water of a river could establish an equilibrium between velocity and the load of alluvium being carried forward. It was James Hutton (1726—97), the Scottish geologist who pioneered the concept of the geomorphic processes shaping the surface of the Earth resulting into the evolution of landforms.
His ideas were properly organised by John Playfair in 1802. These developments further tightened the bond between geology and geography and at the same time gave it a higher status in the contemporary scholarly world.
Johann Rheinhold Forster and his son Johann George Forster pioneered empirical explanation and approached geography from a practical standpoint. They accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage (1772—75) in which he sailed far to the south in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The Forsters carried out botanical observations and collected data which helped them to offer generalised explanations, George Forster was the first to identify the pattern of temperatures on the eastern and western sides of continents at the same latitude and to point out the climatic similarity of Western Europe and western North America. The Forsters seemed to have .derived their ideas of physical geography from Buffon, and their ideas about the classification of plants from Linneaus.
They had an advantage over their predecessors in that they could make their own observations and were no longer dependent on descriptions of what other observers had seen and made. They were critical of ideas about the influence of climate on man, supporting their criticism with careful observation of the Dutch in South Africa and of the Polynesians.
Endowed with keen powers of observation and a scientific attitude of mind, George Forster collected facts, compared and classified them, drew from this classification the generalisations for which he then sought a causal explanation.
His systematic treatment of material is well shown by the classification of his observations in the South Seas. Because of his empirical explanations of the observed facts and the skill of classification and generalisation, Forster is known as ‘the first great German methodological geographer in the modern sense’.
The problem of developing scientific methods for the study of the life forms also received attention in the late eighteenth century. Leibnitz and Buffon attempted to arrange all life forms in a scale from the simplest organisms to the most complex.
Linnaeus, on the other hand, arranged all life forms into taxonomic groupings. The passion for the scientific collection of specimens on voyages of exploration resulted in remarkable assemblage of accounts and new methods of classification that offered new hypotheses.
The great work of George Louis Leclerc Comte de Button offered explanation regarding the laws governing processes of change. He was director of the Jardin du Roi, the botanical garden in Paris, between 1739 and 1788.
There he had access to a vast number of specimens of plants and animals and description written by travellers and explorers from all over the world. In his study, Buffon followed the inductive procedure which aimed at finding some kind of order in the flood of new information. His approach was non-mathematical.
Buffon’s ‘Historie naturelle, generale et particuliere’ was a monumental work, published between 1749 and 1804. It was completed after Buffon’s death by La Cepede. He formulated the concept of man as agent of change as he had been changing the face of the Earth in the process of developing a civilisation.
He believed in the creative power of man. Buffon wrote much about forest clearance and the need for conservation. He opined that the removal of forests and the drainage of marshes might lead to temperature increase. As evidence of the beneficial results of forest cleaning, he pointed out that although Quebec and Paris are both at about the same latitude, Paris which is a cleared area is much warmer than forested Quebec.
Buffon was one of the early writers to offer an explanation on soils. These he grouped into clays, calcareous Earth and vegetable earths, the last falling into two forms—the terrean (leaf mould) and the limon which is the residue in the decomposition of the terrean.
Glacken (1960) has evaluated Buffon’s work as follows:
‘The Histoire naturelle satisfied a hunger for concrete and detailed knowledge that was not dependent on mathematics or Cartesian deductive reasoning, but on study, travel, observation, and description.’
This offers a background for understanding the philosophical views of scientific developments in this remarkable era that was marked by a prodigious enthusiasm for exploration, travel, and the collection of data about the Earth, its flora and fauna, and its primitive societies.
During the early part of the eighteenth century, it was the utilitarian attitude which prevailed in geography. Geography was only of value for the light it could cast on historical events or for its aid in the science of government. But the status of geography which it held as subordinate to history had to be abandoned in the light of the rapidly increasing mass of subject material and empirical knowledge.
Geography took its rightful place as an interdependent science and there emerged an interest in reine geographie or pure geography. This meant the use of natural physical land units instead of political units as a basis for description of both land and people. The two kinds of study were known as Landerkunde and Statenkunde, the seeds of which were sown long ago by Varenius.
There was a growing frustration among the contemporary geographers because of the predominance of the utilitarian attitude, which seemed to have stood in the way of rational basis for description and orderly presentation of real phenomena and the related spatial expression. It was in 1756 that a major breakthrough was achieved in the direction that caused the frustration to disappear.
Reine (Pure) Geography:
The French geographer Philippe Buache and the German philosopher and writer of geography Anton Friedrich Busching, attempted to describe the areal similarities and differences in an orderly manner, and provided rational explanation.
In his book published in 1756, Buache developed the concept of an Earth marked off into major basins bordered by continuous ranges of mountains. On land there are drainage basins, and the mountains form the drainage divides between different river systems. The basins continue under the oceans, and here the mountains form strings of islands or submerged sand banks.
The persistence of his idea that drainage basins are bordered by mountains is amazing in view of the easily accessible examples in Europe of rivers that rise in one basin and flow through mountains to other basins. It was Johann Christoph Gatter of Germany who carried forward the view of Buache and identified the drainage basins as natural regions and used them as the frame of organisation for geographical test. The river basin was widely used as the framework for the identification of what would be now called systems of interrelated elements.
Anton Friedrich Busching produced his famous Neue Erdbeschreibung in six volumes in 1792, in which he sought to provide a description of the known surface of the Earth. In many ways, the work reflects the Munster tradition, as political units were chosen for regional description.
It could be said that Busching made extensive use of the statistical materials provided by Anchenwall and Sussmilch. The work was, therefore, no different from that of the old masters such as Strabo. His contribution lay in his insistence on the critical handling of all source material and the setting up of a high standard of accuracy.
Busching was very much influenced by the ‘political-statistical school’ of his time which led him to make use of population density as a geographic element. He is credited with having formulated the theory of economic interdependence among countries and favoured the water transportation as it involved low transfer cost. Undoubtedly, Busching’s work started the trend towards pure Geography (reine geographie).
The idea of the natural division of the Earth’s surface in the late eighteenth century stirred the contemporary geographical scholarship to such an extent that the geographers became more and more involved in the development of the idea pertaining to reine geographic. H. G. Hommeyer carried the concept to its logical conclusion. He, however, abandoned political boundaries altogether, and divided his areas into ‘terrains’, natural regions which were in most cases river basins.
German writers of the twentieth century also believed that geographical study should have its basis in natural rather than in political units. Johann August Zeune sought to discover the interrelationships of plants, animals, and men and to define his sub-divisions of the Earth’s surface by reference to several factors, including climate and vegetation, not just relief.
He offered an explanation which sought for an orderly presentation of natural units in which the areal similarities and differences could be properly organised, and further strengthen the base of the regional concept.
Universal Geography:
Conrad Malte-Brun (1775-1826) is credited with the introduction of the first universal geography. He was born in Denmark and his name was Malthe Conrad Brunn. He was banished from Denmark in 1800 for liberal activities, and finally settled in France where he changed his name. His ‘Precis de la Geographic Universelle’ was published in eight volumes between 1810 and 1829 (though the work was completed by colleagues after his death).
He provides a vivid description of the history of geography, its ideas, concepts and paradigms that developed in the past three centuries. The work also provides the ‘general theory of geography’ which consists of its mathematical, physical and political principles. It then passes to ‘the leading features of nature’ and then to animals, plants, ‘all the beings that are nourished in the exhaustless bosom of the Earth in their native region’.
This introduction concludes with man in his natural and his political condition, meaning races, languages, beliefs and the laws which mark the progress of civilisation. In the second volume, he gives an outline of geographic concepts, including the shape of the Earth, the type of projections and the astronomical relation.
Malte- Brun in his universal geography also reviews the various theories regarding the origin of the Earth and the controversy between the catastrophists and the uniformitarianists and then observes that the only way to treat physical geography in a useful way is to remain purely descriptive.
The second half and the next five volumes contain general sections on the world’s major divisions. These divisions are selected on a basis that is essentially the same as the procedure of Strabo. Description is on the basis of countries, variously defined.
For example, Asia is divided as follows – Caucasian countries, Turkey-in-Asia, Arabia, Persia, Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, Tartary, Siberia, Central Asia, Manchuria and Korea, Japanese Islands, China, Tibet, Industan, Indo- China and Oceanica.
Brun is of the opinion that the description of an extensive country must be chronographic and ethnographic. He also discusses the land hemisphere concept and places the centre of the land hemisphere in France, to the west of Paris. However, be makes no reference to Buache.
The work of Malte Brun, in spite of its inadequacies and shortcomings, provides a landmark in the history of geographical description, for it offers a description of the lands and peoples of the Earth. However, it shows little, if any, advancement on the conceptual framework and procedure of Strabo who preceded him by almost a thousand years.
Philosophical Foundation of Scientific Geography:
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804):
A somewhat different stimulus to the development of scientific geography throughout this period came from the lecture course on ‘Physical Geography’ that the philosopher Immanuel Kant presented at the University of Konigsberg during 1756 to 1796.
To him, the study of geography represented only an approach to empirical knowledge necessary for his philosophical consideration. But finding the subject inadequately developed and organised, he devoted a great deal of attention to the assembly and organisation of materials from a variety of sources, and also to the consideration of a number of specific problems, for example, the detection of wind direction resulting from the Earth’s rotation.
His interest in physical geography was not stimulated by actual experience of the variety of nature in different parts of the Earth. It arose through his philosophical investigation of the whole field of empirical knowledge. His great contribution to geography, however, is arguably that he laid the philosophical foundation for the belief that the subject has a significant scientific contribution to make.
In contrast to Johann R. Forster, Kant was an armchair geographer. For this reason Kant’s contribution was more philosophical than Forster’s, since it consisted of his definition of the nature of geography and its relationship to the natural sciences. The definition given in the introduction of his lectures describes so completely the scope of geography that it has affected directly or indirectly all succeeding methodological discussion.
In his famous Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant rejected the teleological idea of final causes and insisted that explanations must be sought in what is chronologically antecedent. Physical geography, according to Kant, included not only the features of the Earth produced by natural processes, but also the races of man, and the changes on the face of the Earth resulting from human action. The later part of the philosophy conceiving of ‘man as an agent of change’, seems to have been borrowed from Comte de’ Buffon’s ‘Historic naturelle’.
Kant found that knowledge about the Earth as the home of humankind was a necessary support for his philosophical studies.
‘Knowledge, according to him, is obtained:
(a) Either by the existence of pure reason, or
(b) Through the senses.
Sense perception is of two kinds—those perceived by the inner and those by the outer senses—and together they furnish the whole of humankind’s empirical knowledge of the world.
The world, as perceived by the inner senses, is Soul (Seele) or Man (Mensch), that is the self; as perceived by the outer senses, is Nature. Anthropology (he uses anthropology in the modern sense of Psychology) studies the Soul or Humankind’s, physical geography studies Nature. Physical Geography is thus the first part of knowledge of the world; indeed it is the essential preliminary for understanding our perception of the world.
Kant’s conception of the nature of geography and of its location within the sciences as a whole has provided the basis for a series of major disagreements. He considered that knowledge could be classified in two ways – either in accordance with their nature, or in accordance with their position in time and space. The former is a logical classification; the latter is a physical one.
The logical classification collects all individual items in separate classes according to similarities of morphological features; it could be called something like an ‘archieve’, and will lead, if pursued, to a ‘natural system’.
The logical classification lays foundation for the systematic sciences—the study of animals is zoology, that of the rocks is geology and that of social groups is sociology. The physical classification, in contrast, collects individual items which ‘belong to the same time or the same space’.
In this connection, Kant asserted – ‘History differs from geography only in the consideration of time and (space). The former is a report of phenomena that follow one another (nachienander) and has reference to time. The latter is a report of phenomena besides each other (nebeneinander) in space. History is narrative, geography is descriptive. Geography and history fill up the entire circumference of our perceptions- geography that of space, history that of time’.
Kant’s views on geography appear to be broadly similar to those of Humboldt and Hettner. They appear to have had ‘no direct influence’ other than ‘as a form of confirmation’. Indeed, they were not explicitly endorsed in any major programmatic statement of the scope of geography until Hartshorne’s account of the nature of geography which accepted that geography’s basic task was essentially Kantian – ‘Geography and history are alike in that they are integrating sciences concerned with studying the world.
There is, therefore, a universal mutual relation between them, even though their bases of integration are in a sense opposite- geography in terms of each space, history in terms of periods of time’.
To Kant, ‘knowledge about the spatial location of objects is quite distinct from knowledge about their time, nature and the natural laws governing them. The latter sort of knowledge are eternal and universal, are truly scientific … (whereas) spatial and temporal coordinates are separate and rather secondary attributes of objects, and spatial and temporal arrangements of objects are not a matter of science.’
Kant is regarded as the ‘father of exceptionalism’ and was thus opposed to the explanation and generalisation (rather than mere descriptions) required if geography were to be reconstituted as a spatial science. It was Schaefer (1953) who traced out the exceptionalist view in the Kantian geography.
But when Kant was working, Schaefer claims, history and geography were cosmologies, not sciences, and cosmology is not rational science, but at best thoughtful contemplation of the universe.
Hagerstrand attempts to revitalise Kant’s basic distinction with regard to the classification of empirical knowledge. The contrast Hagerstrand draws is between compositional theory and contextual theory which clearly corresponds (in its essentials) to that between ‘logical’ and ‘physical’ classification.
Kant appears to have emphasised the structuring activity of the thinking subject in his ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ – ‘Space is not something objective and real, neither is it a substance or an accident nor a relation, but is subjective or ideal and proceeds from the -nature of mind by an unchanging law, as a scheme for coordinating with each other absolutely all things externally sensed’.
This stress upon ‘the epistemic structuring of the world by the human actor (is) the essence of the Kantian heritage, so it is claimed, and constitutes the common theme which has, in practice, been distilled from the variety of humanistic philosophies to which geographers of subjectivist orientation have turned in their endeavour to transcend the dichotomy inherent in subject-object relations’.
In the nineteenth-century Germany, there emerged what may be called Neo Kantianism, and those who maintained the tradition of Neo- Kantianism substituted a distinction between the cultural and historical sciences on the one hand, and the natural sciences on the other.
The cultural and historical sciences deal with an intelligible world of ‘non-sensuous objects of experience’ which have to be understood and which are thus concerned with the Idiographic. The natural sciences deal with the ‘sensible world of science’ which could be explained and which is thus concerned with the Nomothetic.
The Idiographic or empirical approach places primary emphasis on the description of particular groupings of nations and people in terms of lands, seas, countries and places. It does not seek to develop laws, but to find out how phenomena account for the genus loci, the character of a place and its relation with other places.
The Nomothetic (deductive) approach seeks to establish theories relevant to the location and interrelation of places and to establish laws and make deductions on the basis of laws.
These are the basic approach and the traditional approach in all geographical inquiry and their contrast and conflict have become more marked and difficult to bridge as knowledge of the surface of the Earth has increased.
In fact, the apparent dichotomy between Idiographic and Nomothetic approaches appears to have evolved at Miletus more than twenty-four centuries ago, at the time of Hecatacus but, in geography, the dualism developed only in the late eighteenth century in an organised manner.
Immanuel Kant is said to have pioneered other branches of geography which he defines as:
1. Mathematical Geography—’which treats of the form, size and movement of the Earth, and of the position in the solar system.’
2. Moral Geography—which discusses the different customs and characters of men, i.e. examines the contrast of Oriental civilisations where patricide is a most fearful crime, with customs in Lappland where a father, if wounded while hunting, expects his son to kill him.
3. Political Geography—’the study of the relationships between political units and their physical background’. For example, in ancient Persia two states existed whose mutual independence arose from, and was assumed, by the Kerman desert which divided them.
4. Commercial Geography—’which examines the reasons why certain countries have a superfluity of one commodity while others have a deficiency, a condition that gives rise to international trade’.
5. Theological Geography—’which studies the changes theological principles undergo in different environments (Boden). For example, one would make a comparison of the form of Christianity in the Far East with that in Europe, and of the variation of Christian beliefs in different parts of Europe.
Evaluation:
Kant gave geography a central place amongst the sciences, and geographers have often reiterated his views in justification of the existence of the subject and its special position amongst sciences. Hettner admitted that for a long time he had not paid sufficient attention to Kant’s exposition of geography, but had rejoiced to discover a close correspondence between the conclusion of the great philosophers and his own.
Hartshorne pointed out that Kant’s approach led to satisfactory understanding of the nature of geography and answered all its basic questions. Hettner believed that the unity of geography can only be maintained through Kant’s concept of a chronological science, i.e. a subject which studies things which are mutually coordinated, not subordinated, in space. Within human geography, Kantianism may be attributed to, among other things, the Possibilism of French School of Human Geography, and to modern humanistic geography.
Today, it is widely considered to be impossible, and to some extent philosophically untenable, to draw such sharp divisions between the ‘sciences’ as Kant did. The systematic sciences study phenomena with reference to time and space, and it is difficult to separate time and space in studies of human geography. Understanding of geographical situations is always improved when we consider their development over time.
Just as there are geographers who wish to study the cultural landscapes of former times without necessarily using their knowledge to illuminate contemporary condition, so historians cannot neglect the study of the distribution pattern of phenomena. Here the individual sciences overlap each other.
During the period between the death of Kant in 1804 and Hettner’s book in 1927, this methodological rule had not only been broken, but almost systematically opposed, since Kant’s philosophical guidelines for the subject had been virtually forgotten until Hettner and Hartshorne reviewed them.
Kant not only included man as one of the features ‘encompassed in the Earth surface’, but also considered man as one of the principal agents affecting changes on the Earth. Indeed, Kant’s ‘Physical Geography’, both in purpose and in content, might be considered as ‘anthropocentric’, a point of view which Ritter appeared to have inherited from Kant.
Although the new science of geography sought its foundation in the more permanent physical features of the Earth, it was characteristic of its time in considering these primarily in relation to humankind. Throughout the period most writers, consciously or unconsciously, followed Kant in regarding physical features in terms of their ultimate importance to man.
Muller in 1785 and Kayser in 1810 specifically emphasised the study of the Earth as the dwelling place of humankind. ‘In large part, however, the new science of ‘reine geographie’ represented the expression of purposes and hopes rather than of accomplishment.
In spite of the insistence on establishing facts, the geographers of this period, with few exceptions, continued to set-up a priori systems of facts without putting them to the test, and many of these concepts we still inherit—or have constructed anew’.
Russian Geography:
The Russian geography of the pre-classical period also appears to have been rooted in the new sciences of reine geographie. As the new geography found its basis in physical rather than political features, it did not exclude the specific problems of social and political geography.
M. V. Lomonosov is credited with the systematic collection of information about the physical character of the land, the population, social condition and the economic situations. He was made the head of the Department of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1758.
The contemporary Russian geography was very much influenced by the Germans. The great German philosopher and writer in geography, Anton Friedrich Busching who was the pastor of a German Lutheran Church in St. Petersberg from 1761 to 1776, provided the Russian ‘reine geographie’ with some kind of dynamism because his Neve Erdbeschreiburg dealing with Russia was translated into Russian. The Russian geographers of the time laid greater emphasis on region as the basis of organisation for geographical work and insisted that regions were the real entities which could be objectively defined.
However, the political units were used for regional base and description as extensive materials, based on empirically observed facts, were made available by Ivan Kirilov, the first Russian named head of the cartographic office. Expeditions were organised to establish the location of rivers, coasts, mountains, places, political units and to identify places where furs or precious metals could be found.
Viewed as a whole, the work of the eighteenth century geographers is very notable. Academic controversy between political, statistical and pure geographers levelled the barriers of traditional thought and opened the way for fresh unimpeded advance. The foundations were thus laid on which during the next 50 years the edifice of scientific geography arose.