Theoretical Issues in Geography

Contents: Preface. 1. The origins of geography. 2. Geographical ideas. 3. The influence of the philosophies on geography. 4. Empiricism in geography. 5. The geographic environment. 6. The unity of geography. 7. The boundary between geographical analysis and geographical synthesis. Index.

Man started to acquire geographical knowledge in early antiquity, evidently even before the emergence of the slave owning system, since even the most primitive economy was impossible to manage without such knowledge. Although geographical theories varied among different tribes and peoples during these times one can still see in them several important common features. The tribes and peoples of early antiquity through of their place of habitation, their country (or more accurately, habitat) as being the center of the world. Their concrete geographical knowledge was distinguished by its territorial limitations. Although they had adequate knowledge of the territory of their settlements and the environment in which they struggled for existence, primitive peoples knew very little about the territories beyond their own.

Observations of nature by primitive peoples reduced to the establishment of individual facts, without ascertaining the general character of territories. Therefore in our modern terms these observations could scarcely be called geographical. The processes occurring in nature were perceived as the acts of Gods and demons. Still, even before the emergence of the slave-owning system, ancient peoples had a store of knowledge about rocks, plants, animals, winds, se currents and so forth. The needs of economic life, trade among tribes, conquests sand collections of tribute all resulted, as did many other things, in the necessity of accumulating concrete geographical knowledge.