Contribution of Carl Ritter to Modern Geography | Geographers | Geography

In this article we will discuss about the contribution of Carl Ritter to the development of modern geography.

Carl Ritter exercised a much more direct influence on the development and growth of geography in Germany than did Humboldt. Ritter was born in Quedlinburg in 1779. His father was a physician and when he died his widow lacked any means of support for her family of five.

In spite of acute financial trouble, Carl was fortunate enough to have the guidance of a geographer named J. C. F. Guts Muths whose major interests were in nature study and in geography and who had earned a name for his contributions to the development of geography.

Carl Ritter received his early training in a school in Schnepfenthal near Gotha, where the teaching was based on the principles of Rousseau and Pestalozzi. Rousseau in his novel Emile (1762) devised a new educational procedure which contradicted the traditional method, as the purpose of the new procedure was to encourage a child to develop inborn potentialities.

The Swiss scholar and educator, Johann Pestalozzi, further developed the ideas and pointed out that concepts must be based on the observation of phenomena and the young children must be exposed to nature so that they could observe the close involvement of man with his immediate surroundings.

Salzamann was enthusiastic about these new suggestions and founded his school at Schnepfenthal in the Thuringerwald to experiment with them. Space relations were basically emphasised. Students were taught to observe the relationships of things in their immediate vicinity.

At an early age, Ritter was able to observe the close relationship between humankind and his environment. From the richly varied landscapes of the region of hills and low mountains, to which Ritter was exposed by his teacher, he derived the idea of unity of nature which became a basic theme of his geographical scholarship.

At the age of seventeen he entered the University of Helle, where he worked with Professor Niemeyer. He learnt Latin and Greek and read widely in geography and history. It was here at Frankfurt-on-the Oder that Carl picked up the habit of frequent field trips around the city.

He greatly increased his competence as an observer that helped him to develop his own methods. He went to Switzerland and Italy, etc. making careful and detailed observation. Ritter came into close contact with many eminent scholars of the day, of whom the most significant were the anatomist Sommering, the geologist Ebel, and the leader of educational reform Pestalozzi.

Ritter’s preparation for research covered an extremely wide field, in which on the one hand natural sciences (particularly the observational methods of nature study) predominated, but in which, on the other hand, his interest was increasingly human problem, i.e. history.

Geography maintained the connection between his earlier field of studies and his ultimate interests. Ritter’s meeting with Von Humboldt in 1807 was significant in many ways because Humboldt clearly demonstrated to him the importance of Earth conditions to humankind which had a profound impact on the scholarship of Ritter.

The Works of Ritter:

Ritter’s initial geographical works included two volumes on Europe which appeared in 1804 and 1807. These were supplemented in 1806 by a series of six maps of the continent. One of these books provided a brief study of the systematic geography of Europe which was reviewed in France. In 1810, Ritter prepared a more complete systematic geography of the world, a ‘Handbuch der Physischen Geographie, but it was never published probably because of the criticism offered by Von Buch.

Parts of this manuscript were used by various colleagues with whom he freely exchanged views and the work thus appeared in a number of tents of the time. It is in this unpublished manuscript that Ritter expressed his strong orientation towards the inductive method. He considered geography to be an empirical and descriptive science.

In 1814, he went to the University of Gottingen after the death of one of his pupils of the Hollweg’s family. At that University between 1814 and 1816, Ritter studied geography, history, pedagogy, physics, chemistry, mineralogy and botany.

The Erdkunde:

It was at the University of Gottingen that Ritter published the first volume of the Erdkunde in 1817. This dealt with Africa and volume II on Asia appeared in 1818. The publication of these two volumes in 1817 and 1818 made a tremendous impression in the contemporary academic world and he was recognised as the reformer of geography, as the master who first brought the field of geography into science.

His approach in the Erdkunde, Ritter said, had entirely changed, and he claimed that its distinctive theme was a comparative one which aimed at showing the connection between history and nature, both organic and inorganic. To him geography had a right to be considered a sharply defined science of kindred dignity with the others.

Humboldt is believed to have described Ritter’s Erdkunde as the most inspired work of this kind (comparative geography) and further commented – ‘our country has yielded – it is the first work in which is presented the influence which the surface-view has had on the peoples and their fates.’ Humboldt also admired Ritter’s work on Asia and added that such an important work had not appeared in thirty years.

In 1822, Ritter published a second edition of volume I and in 1832 a second edition of volume II. He realised the magnitude of the work he had begun. He appeared to have given up many of his positions which he had held, such as his engagement with the Prussian Military School and his association with the scientific commission on geography and history.

Since 1831, he had devoted himself fully to the completion of the Erdkunde. Between 1832 and 1838, Ritter completed six more volumes, and between 1838 and 1859, 11 more volumes were completed. Yet the 19 volumes of the Erdkunde, he actually completed covered Africa and part of Asia.

In 1845, Humboldt described in the first volume of his Cosmos, about Ritter’s the Erdkunde which, to him, ‘has shown that the comparative geography can attain thoroughness only when the whole mass of the facts that have been gathered from various zones, is comprehended in one view, is placed at the disposal of the integrating intelligence’. In the same volume, Humboldt referred to Ritter’s work as the reflection of a part of the plan of Varenius, which in the earlier period of scientific development had not been accomplished.

He further remarked:

‘It was reserve for our time, to see the comparative geography cultivated in masterly fashion, in its widest compass, indeed in its reflex on human history, on the relation of the form of the Earth to the direction of the characteristics of peoples and the progress of civilization’.

Geography, according to Ritter, deals with local condition (Lokalverhaltnisse) and embraces the attributes of a place with respect to topical, formal and material characteristics:

(1) The first attribute was topographical, i.e. it dealt with natural divisions of the Earth’s surface and was intended for the searching presentation according to the principles of Pestalozzi.

(2) The second included the distribution and movements of water, sea and atmosphere: the bases of human life.

(3) The material conditions were described as the geographical aspect of natural history; this covered the distribution of minerals, plants and animals.

The central principle of geography is the relation of all the phenomena and forms of nature to the human race, examined and organised within the framework of the unique geographical association of land and man on the Earth’s surface. It is in the Erdkunde that Ritter provides the above explanatory definition of geography and makes his geography humankind-oriented or anthropocentric.

Ritter’s humankind-oriented geography clearly states:

‘The Earth and its inhabitants stand in the closest reciprocal relation and one cannot be truly presented in all its relationships without the other. History and Geography must always remain inseparable. Land effects the inhabitants and the inhabitants the land’. Because of this remark, it would be wrong to describe Ritter as a determinist as some commentators have done in the past.

Erdkunde, Ritter pointed out, was a more fitting name for scientific geography. This he used in the title of his major work, and in defining it observed – ‘Erdkunde should strive to embrace the most complete and the most cosmical view of the Earth, to sum up and organise into a beautiful unit, all that we know of the globe’, and to show the ‘connection of this unified whole with man and his creator’. The concept of regional individuality, a development from the ideas of Zeune and Forster, combined with the concept of a ganzheit or whole derived from Kant, became one of the motifs of the Erdkunde.

Geographical Ideas and Methods:

Carl Ritter is believed to have stated that he was teaching a new scientific geography ‘in contrast to the traditional lifeless summary of facts about countries and cities, mingled with all sorts of scientific incongruities’.

His scientific geography was based on the concept of terrestrial or spatial unity (Raumbegriff). To him, the concept of spatial unity presumed a causal interrelation of all the individual features in nature. The phenomena of nature had to be studied in order to establish the coherence and unity.

It may be noted that for Humboldt and Ritter, it was axiomatic that the terrestrial unity included organic and inorganic, human as well as non- human, material and immaterial. The exclusion of any part would be not only arbitrary, but would destroy the coherence and unity of the whole; all the features of an area in their interconnection form a naturally unified complex, whether or not that is to be considered as a unit whole or merely a part of the one natural whole of the world.

Ritter emphasised that the unity of nature could be recognised in theory and in practice and this could be established scientifically only by investigating the individual, single features in their relation to each other and building these up in their actual relationships to form the whole. The function of the scientific geographer was to perceive these features, not separately, but in their interrelation so that he could thereby reproduce intellectually the unified whole that was Nature.

Ritter emphasised that the enormous multiplicity of observations must be organised according to the chorological principle which should be considered both in a horizontal and a vertical sense. However, he attempted to show the ‘coherent relation’ of the different features in terms of cause and effect, and the formation of the multiplicity of features into the essential character of an area. By proceeding from the simple to the compound, Ritter tried to establish the totality of interrelated features as the distinctive character of each area.

Ritter seemed to have rejected Gattener’s and Hommeyer’s idea of pure Geography (reine geographie). However, his concept was somewhat akin to that of Zeune though much broader and logically more consistent. He objected to the procedure of dividing only by mountain ridges or the equally simple by drainage systems.

According to his theoretical statements, his divisions were made in terms of relief (in particular he divided the upper, middle and lower portions of stream basins), but in practice he also recognised other factors, as in his separation of the Sahara and in its sub-divisions in terms of climate and vegetation, etc. Thus, he was of the opinion that one must look to nature for its principles rather than to evolve a theory of natural divisions of the lands.

Ritter also strengthened the horizontal concept of unity of particular areas, as individual wholes, and emphasised on the individuality of the continents which at times he referred to as ‘organs’. However, he conceived of each continent as a natural whole in terms of all its characteristics.

Similarly, in some cases he wrote of the division of the continents as individuals (‘members’) rather than mere parts of the ‘organisms’ of the continent. The individual area had its own particular determined value. Nature in every corner of the Earth is a reflection of the whole. The forms of the organism repeat themselves in every different combination.

As in the Idealism of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, the concept of ‘wholes’ was linked with a Teleological View. Ritter’s concept of the unity of nature was shaped by his deeply religious outlook and by the accepted natural philosophy of his time.

His ideas on the ‘wholeness’ of things were in accordance with the writings of the German idealist philosopher Hegel whose attitudes amounted to an attempt to comprehend the entire universe to know the infinite and to see all things in God.

The scientific stance of Ritter was teleological. He studied the working of nature in order to understand the purpose behind its orders. His views of science sprang from his firm belief in God as the planner of the universe.

He regarded the Earth as an educational model for humankind, where nature had a God-given purpose which was to show the way for humankind s development. To him, the shape of the continents was determined by God, so that their form and location enabled them to play the role designed by God for the development of humankind.

The teleology in Ritter’s geography seemed to be an attempt to interpret philosophically that which science could not explain. Ritter observed that these were those fundamental facts of geography for which science could not offer any explanation.

These were the uniqueness of the Earth in the universe; the Earth as the home of that unique creature, man; and finally, the explanation of a host of geographic facts—the differentiation in the character among the major land units of the world.

The idea of a geographical whole, as in the integral nature of place and people, reflects Ritter’s attempt to develop a more scientific holism. His philosophy seems to have an all-embracing explicatory holism, particularly in the notion of teleology—the theory that the evaluation of anything can only be validated by consideration of the purpose to which it is in the end directed.

His philosophy seeks to understand the whole rather than the parts and suggests that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, i.e., it has emergent properties not predictable from knowledge of the constituent parts.

Ritter’s purpose always led from the individual facts towards a ‘whole’ of all phenomena, rather than to trace the inner relation of phenomena to a last ’cause’. His purpose was to find the coherence of forces in a whole, and these ultimately to indicate the purpose of the whole.

This purpose must be found most particularly in humankind (highest of Earth creatures), the only one who could conceive of an organisation of the whole. This concept makes geography much more human kind-oriented.

In his lectures before the Berlin Academy of Sciences (one in 1826 and the others in 1850), Ritter attempted to describe the size, form, construction and climatic conditions of the different continents. He sought to construct ‘a law of the arrangement’ of the parts of each continent to the whole; and particularly endeavoured to show how these conditions have determined the development of the peoples of the different continents at different periods of history.

Each continent was designed to a particular function which each had played in the course of world history. Ritter in his research did not proceed from pre-conceived opinions, but his scientific procedure was directed throughout on temperate, purely factual, comprehension of the facts and their relations. In the knowledge of the Earth, he attempted a comprehension of the divine world plan in no other way than the natural scientists pursue the thought of evolution.

Ritter was among the first to show that the theory of a continuous network of mountains was opposed by the records of observed facts and that, likewise, there was no general correspondence (as often assumed) between the crestlines of the mountains and the divisions of the drainage basin.

He was convinced that there were laws governing the relation of human and non-human phenomena on the Earth. He opined that if he could bring together all the facts and relationships observed in areas, these would make it possible to state such laws.

In order to achieve the highest degree of accuracy, Ritter’s plan was to bring together on each question the greatest number and variety of reliable evidence of all times and from all peoples, so that their testimony might be seen together, whether in agreement or for comparison. The material was by no means confined to the works of travellers, whether scientific or otherwise, but was drawn also from the works of large number of specialised scientists.

Thus, he combined a basic teleological standpoint with a most critical scientific precision, and remarked that ‘my system builds on facts, not on philosophical arguments’. ‘Accumulation of facts was not to be an end in itself…. The plans of God, which give purpose and meaning, could only be discovered by taking into account all facts and relationships in the world as objectively as possible’.

Ritter defined geography as an empirical science, rather than one deduced either from rational principles of philosophy or from apriori theories of general geography. He felt that the geographic studies must proceed from observation to observation, not from opinion to hypothesis, or pre-conceived notion to observation.

He was convinced that the phenomena of the Earth’s surface were governed by laws, but these would only become apparent when all facts and relationships had been observed in all parts of the Earth. Causal relationships had to be sought by the comparative method that had proved so successful in other sciences, particularly anatomy.

Hence the Erdkunde carried the sub-title – ‘All gemeine vergleichende geographie (general comparative geography).’ All geography that went beyond mere description was comparative and the scheme of a general comparative geography would give in broad outline the system of an Erdkunde.

Ritter sought for relations or connections, between sets or phenomena in the same area and between one place and another. The task of the geographer is to get away from mere description to the law of the thing described; to reach not a mere enumeration of facts and figures, but the connection of place with place, and the laws which bind together local and general phenomena of the Earth’s surface.

The task imposed upon geography is to reach the connection which exists between parts; or, in other words, to get at the relation between places and what fills and occupies them’. The geographer traces ‘causation’ and ‘interdependence’ of the spatially distributed phenomena, and the relations of everyone to the country which supplies its condition of being. These words are the keynote to Ritter’s approach.

Ritter emphasised on the relative values of wet and dry boundaries, such as rivers or mountains, which he conceived of as a means towards the real purpose of geography the understanding of the content of areas.

The areas of the Earth surface are to be studied in terms of the particular character resulting from the phenomena, interrelated to each other and to the Earth, which fill the areas. The great function of geography, according to him, is to show the unison of human social phenomena with the complex of natural forces in the locality.

Most of Ritter’s earlier works point towards his zeal in the systematic studies. One of the earlier publications on Europe (which appeared between 1804 and 1807) was a brief study in the systematic geography, based on individual categories of phenomena.

It is presumed that the interest in the systematic studies that developed in young Ritter just have stemmed from the influence of Humboldt’s writings. In 1810, Ritter produced a more complete systematic geography of the world, which he considered to be the completion of geographic work and a bridge in history. But this work was not published.

Ritter insisted repeatedly that the proper method for the study of a science of the Earth was ‘to ask the Earth itself for its laws’. It must use the objective (empirical) method, calling attention to the main types of formation of nature, by investigating the relationship grounded in nature itself; this method leads to a ‘natural system’. This clearly reflects Ritter’s zeal in the systematic studies of regional geography which also implies the importance of systematic studies of individual features and phenomena.

In reaction to those who had specialised in systematic studies and never reached the actual formulations of interrelated factors in areas, Ritter urged them first to study the areas filled with interrelated phenomena.

When this had been achieved and done for the whole world, the material would then be available for a more successful development of the general principles of systematic geography. His earlier studies on Europe are often exemplified as the model for systematic studies and as the handbook of general (systematic) geography.

He was one of the founders of regional geography and stressed that geography should first concentrate on the study of all the interrelated phenomena to be found in each of all the areas of the world, and then on their basis systematic studies could be made on the relations of individual type of phenomena.

‘Areal phenomena are so interrelated as to give rise to the uniqueness of areas as individual units.’ Ritter, therefore, insisted that a real synthesis and description must precede the world-wide analysis of particular sets of features and phenomena. ‘The collection of facts was not an end in itself, the systematisation and comparison of data, region by region, would lead to a recognition of unity in apparent diversity.’

Ritter’s search for the unity in diversity led him to make use of the regional approach to geography rather than the systematic study of individual features. Yet, he realised the importance of systematic studies and acknowledged his indebtedness to Von Humboldt whose general studies made Ritter’s special studies of regions possible.

His ambition to produce a regional geography led him to consider regions of relatively large size. His major geographic units were the continents or Erdteile, and he applied the traditional definition for the continents as the major regions.

Each continent was subdivided by its orography into highland core, surrounded by terrace lands, drained by major rivers and peripheral coastal low lands. Ritter believed that each continent had a similar built. Therefore, these are the divisions of a second order arrived at deductively.

Ritter appears to have envisaged each continent as a complex of individual units whose whole structure and extent could be arrived at by inductive procedures from the smallest areas of associated phenomena within the framework of his regional geography.

He attempted to formulate generalisations concerning the continents or Erdteile; and their population. The continued use of continents as major regional entities not only for the teaching of geography, but also for the formulation of concepts has retarded the progress of geographical scholarship.

Ritter’s regional geography was centred on humankind; the aim was to study the Earth’s surface from an anthropocentric standpoint; to seek to relate humankind and nature and to see the relationship between humankind and his history and the ground on which he lived. Thus, a dynamic element entered his teaching. ‘He saw he must not just describe the Earth’s surface and subdivide it into natural regions, but he must understand, it as the fundamental cause of events’.

Evaluation:

Ritter’s concept of the unity of nature simply reflected his teleological standpoint and he saw the unity as an evidence of God’s divine plan. Even in the arrangement of the regions (i.e. the continents), he saw an evidence of God’s plan.

Asia, said Ritter, represents the sunrise where the early civilisation of man flourished. Africa represents the noon—because of the smoothness of outline and the uniformity of climate; the inhabitants are induced to slumber and to shun outside contacts.

Europe represents the sunset, or the end of the day, the culmination of humankind’s greatest accomplishments. The Polar Regions represent mid-night, where land and people are locked in eternal sleep. He enlarged the concept of the land hemisphere and remarked that this was also a part of God’s plan. Only in this central location among the Earth’s land areas that a world-conquering civilisation could arise.

Ritter’s teleological standpoint with regard to the major regions of the world was subject to criticism as his contemporaries felt that religion could not provide explanations of natural phenomena, especially in the arrangement of the major regions (i.e. continents).

His view that ‘among all the creatures on the Earth only man could comprehend the existence of a divine plan and so could adjust his life to it and make maximum use of god’s gifts’, was also criticised as valueless and unscientific because it did not take into account the concept of struggle and survival.

Ritter’s significance as a scientist lies in his thorough and critical study of sources and his ability to systematise extensive material. He seems to have laid the foundation of the holistic tradition in the nineteenth-century geography.

Ritter’s influence in the development of the methodology of geography during the middle of the nineteenth century was of much greater importance. He exerted great influence beyond the range of his immediate students as he was a geographer in the true sense of the term, whereas Humboldt’s influence was on the non- geographers. Ritter repeatedly expounded his views on the nature and problems of geography in methodological papers, Humboldt’s numerous discussions of such questions were scattered through his general writings.

For this reason, his concept of relation of geography to other sciences was lost sight of for nearly a century. Undoubtedly, Ritter gave to geography its systematic frame which remained valid for the successive periods of modern geography. The classical period in the development of modern geography came to an end with the death of both Humboldt and Ritter in 1859.