The Expansion Of The Discipline Of Geography Before 1900

7 Pages 1758 Words

the run up to the 20th century. In this essay I intend to describe this expansion and the history of geography, from its origins as a physical based interest to its understanding today, and relate it to these changes. Explaining in more detail the periods and writers mentioned briefly above. Also drawing conclusions on the more significant changes in the shaping of the discipline of geography and the nature of the relationship between these changes and the expansion.
Geography’s earliest known and recorded interest stems back as far as ancient Greece, a time of great ideological and philosophical thought. Holt-Jensen, in his book Geography: History and Concepts, notes that “geographical thinking is older than the term ‘geography’” (Holt-Jensen, 1988:11). The Ancients Greeks interests were mainly theoretical but they produced many topographical descriptions of places in the known world of the time. Their philosophical concerns dealt with the divine purpose of the earth and later the influence of the surrounding environment on society, and it was this ideology and social setting that developed their keen interest on the earth and what it was. Indeed it was the Ancient Greeks that made the first known attempt to determine the shape and size of the earth and produce maps. The first map of the world by Ptolemy around 150AD depicted only 3 continents (Europe, Asia and Africa) and used concepts of longitude and latitude...