I've spent part of the mornign reading the local North Karelian newspaper (Karjalainen) with the help of my pocket dictionary. After going trough a selective reading (It takes to me a lot of time to read in Finnish), I gave up and I took an antology in Human Geography. I read one article written by the geographer Halford J. Mackinder in 1887 named "On the scope and methods of geography". It is said that this guy paved the way of Geography in Great Britain as a distinctive discipline. In this article he states geography as a comprehensive science and as the "bridge" between many disciplines.
Hr suggests that geography has been used for describing the new territories discovered and as the world is already fully discovered, geography is expected to dissapear. Against this, he claims that geography should be used to explain the world on a comprehensive way, as it is the only discipline able to trace the interaction of man in society and so much os his environment as this varier locally. In order to achieve this, the interactive elements must be preliminary analyzed an later put in relation to each other. Like this, he claims a distinction between description and analysis. Thus, a physical geographical approach that works on the relation of all physical phenomena is put in relation with the "political" geographical approach is based on history. Understanding the causal relations he claims, is a way of economizing "the power of memory".
However, he also claims that within the wide geography, a science must be especialized in order to be good, but this is not a problem because geography offers thousands of approaches from which to depart. His arguments are supported with the examples of South England and India. In this examples he explains all the geological and biological history that precedes to the settlement of humans. It is interesting his vision on how man changes his environment and the environment changes his consequences over the human.
He concludes his writing stating that geography can meet the practical requirements of the statesman and merchant; the theoretical requirements of the historian and scientists; and the intellectual requirements of the teacher.
Reading this article it came to my mind the first weeks of my geography studies; we were given lectures about the dynamics of the earth and tectonics, and after the lessons one classmate that nowadays is one of my best friends, told me that this dynamics sounded to him as fabulous phenomena, typical to be heard or read on a fiction book. I think this literary character of the geographical thinking is what makes it so attractive and fascinating.
Thanks Halford!
