Geography as a Field of Knowledge PDF

# Geography as a Field of Knowledge Geography as a field of knowledge had its roots in Greek scholarship. This is not surprising as in ancient times Greek was one of the well flourished civilizations dating back to 500BC - 200BC with its centre in Greece and its surrounding areas. - The Greek peri...

# Geography as a Field of Knowledge Geography as a field of knowledge had its roots in Greek scholarship. This is not surprising as in ancient times Greek was one of the well flourished civilizations dating back to 500BC - 200BC with its centre in Greece and its surrounding areas. - The Greek period is rightly called as the "Golden period" because all Greeks provided a framework of concept that guided Western thinking for many centuries. - The most advanced economy in the world, Greek philosophers of that time have provided the theoretical and scholarly base for the philosophical thinking through models, concepts, and paradigms which guided Western academia for many centuries. - A large number of concepts and theories in the geographical philosophy seem to have an inclination toward the Greek tradition. ## Homer Homer is regarded as the Father of Geography. This is because he introduced the literary tradition through his monumental work 'Odyssey' and 'Illiad'. - He described the four winds coming from different directions and named them: Boreas (North), Eurus (East), Notus (South), and Zephyrus (West). ## Thales Thales was the first Greek genius, philosopher, and traveller who was concerned with the basic theorems of geometry. He proposed the following six geometric propositions: 1. The circle is divided into two equal parts by its diameter. 2. The angles at either end of the base of an isosceles triangle are equal. 3. When two parallel lines are crossed diagonally by a straight line, the opposite angles are equal. 4. The angle in a semi-circle is a right angle. 5. The sides of similar triangles are proportional. 6. Two triangles are congruent if they have two sides and one angle respectively equal. - Thales visualized earth as a disc floating on water. He was also the first who started the measurement of the earth and location of things on the face of the earth; thus, establishing the mathematical tradition. - Not only this, he laid the foundations of empirical studies that is an explanation can be checked through ground observations and measures; a critique of the traditional unscientific explanations. ## Anaximander Anaximander is credited with the introduction of a Babylonian instrument known as Gnomon into the Greek literary world. - Gnomon is a pole set vertically above a flat surface on which the varying position of the sun and other celestial bodies could be measured by the length and direction of the shadow cast by the vertical pole. - He is even credited to produce a world map to scale. This map is based on the information gathered from the Sumerians who had an archive of pictorial maps. Interestingly, this map has an ocean encircling the world. ## Thales and Anaximander Thales and Anaximander are credited for the initiation of the mathematical tradition in geography. The credit for originating the literary tradition goes to Hecataeus. - He was a Greek scholar of 6th century BC from Miletus (the center of learning in those days). He was a pioneer scholar and one of the earliest writer of Greek prose. He was the first Greek scholar to classify the information about the then known world and brought it to Miletus. - His work is known as "Ges-periodos" or Description of the Earth. It was the first systematic description of the then known world, that was published by the end of 6th century BC. - Ges-periodos describes the places in the vicinity of the Mediterranean Sea which was called as perplus means coastal area. - Hecataeus divided his book "Ges-periodos" into two parts, part 'A' dealing with geographical information about Europe' and part B dealing with Libya. This book is a blend of the literary tradition and the topographical-ecological tradition. ## Hecataeus Hecataeus for the first time gave two approaches for the study of geography: 1. Nomothetic or law-seeking approach. 2. Idiographic approach (Descriptive) - Hecataeus prepared the world map but it was based on the map of Anaximander. He had just modified it. He divided it into two parts by drawing a line passing through Hellespont, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus mountains. - The northern part he named as Europa and the southern part of Libya that includes Africa and Asia. ## Herodotus Herodotus was an outstanding Greek scholar of 5th century BC. There is no exaggeration in the statement to say that Herodotus was the father of history. - He is credited with the idea that history must be treated geographically and all geography must be treated historically. - He is also identified as the father of ethnography as he provided a vivid portrayal of cultural traits of people who were unknown to Greeks. - His works were based on his own observations during his travels. - He contributed both in physical and human geography. - Herodotus came up with the concept that Egypt is the gift of the river where he emphasized that silt and mud of the river lead to the development of a delta. It was he who for the first time gave the concept that winds move from cold to hot places. - He attempted to measure the age of the earth on the basis of the rate of sedimentation and estimated that one foot of sediment is formed in 880 years. Taking the total sediment strata 158 km thick, Herodotus calculated the age of the earth as 440 million years when the exact age of the earth is 4.6 billion years. ## Plato and Aristotle Plato and Aristotle also made valuable contributions in the field of geography. - Plato is regarded as the master of deductive reasoning, from the general to the particular. He is considered to be the first scholar who adopted the idea of a round earth located in the center of the universe with the other celestial bodies revolving around it in a circular motion. - Aristotle provided the first paradigm within the theoretical framework that existed in Europe at that time. He emphasized that the observations which were made through the senses do not provide explanations; especially the scientific explanations. - He formulated laws or fundamental principles of scientific explanation, which became a guiding force for scholars in future centuries. - He agreed with Plato that the earth is spherical in shape and went a step further by seeking an explanation for the spherical shape. - He even contributed to the branch of human geography when he put forward the concept of variations in habitability on the surface of the earth on the basis of latitudinal position. - He opined that the regions nearer to the Equator were uninhabitable and he named it as the Torrid Zone. Similarly, the parts of the earth which were away from the Equator and were permanently frozen were also uninhabitable - the Frigid Zone. - The population of the Earth lived in the Temperate zone which existed between the Torrid and the Frigid Zones. ## Eratosthenes Eratosthenes has been regarded as the 'Father of Geography'. - He is the one who coined the term Geography, deriving from two words 'ge' meaning 'the earth' and 'graphy' meaning 'to describe'. - He is credited to provide the definition of geography as the "study of earth as the home of man". - His outstanding contribution for which is known throughout the world is his measurement of the earth's circumference. - He has used Thales' theorem - when two parallel lines are crossed diagonally by a straight line, the opposite angles are equal - while measuring the earth's circumference. - He has also prepared a world map with respect to correct distance. - His remarkable contribution was his text "Geographica". He also delineated the world into five climatic zones: one Torrid Zone, two temperate zones, and two frigid zones. - He also measured different latitudes and longitudes. - It is for this reason that Eratosthenes is considered as the father of "Geodesy". ## Hippocrates Hippocrates in his book On Airs, Waters, Places explained the man-nature relationship in the context of climatic conditions. ## Hipparchus Hipparchus established the concept of locating the exact position of each place on the surface of the earth. - On the basis of an Assyrian arithmetic, he divided the circle into 360 degrees. - He made an attempt of showing the three-dimensional earth on a flat surface. - He is credited with devising two projections to do so; these are the stereographic and the orthographic projections. - He even pointed out that these projections have their limitations as they can only represent a hemisphere and not the entire world. - Thus, he supported and flourished the mathematical tradition of geography. - Another important contribution of Hipparchus is the invention of Astrolabe - an instrument similar to Anaximander's Gnomon but easier to handle. - The purpose of the Astrolabe was to provide accurate measurement of latitude at sea by observing the polestar's angle. ## Posidonius Another important Greek scholar who deserves mentioning is Posidonius. - He recalculated the earth's circumference and came to a figure much smaller than that of Eratosthenes. ## Strabo Strabo, a Greek scholar and traveller, was highly influenced by the historical topographical tradition of former Greek scholars, especially Homer, Hecataeus, and Aristotle. - He was in acceptance of Aristotle's zones of habitable world - the Ekumene (as defined by Eratosthenes). - His biggest contribution is his monumental work 'Geographia' in 17 volumes; a compilation of writings of his predecessors. - Out of these 17 books, eight are in Europe, six on Asia, and one of Africa (Egypt and Ethiopia). - The first two books were devoted to the historical review of the development of geography from the times of Homer. ## Roman Geographers The geographical scholarship in the ancient period is incomplete without the advancements made in the Roman Empire. - Although Romans did not contribute at such a large scale that it can be compared to the contributions of the Greeks, the writings and the contribution of Ptolemy cannot be overlooked. - He revived the mathematical tradition of Thales, which was long forgotten. - For him, geography was a science of the art of map-making. This concept was borrowed from the works of earlier Greeks, especially Aristotle, Hipparchus, Posidonius, and Marinus the Tyre. - He came up with a monumental work known as "The Almagest" - the standard reference for the study of the movement of celestial bodies for a long time. - He even accepted Aristotle's view that the earth was spherical in shape, centered in the universe and remained stationary; the celestial bodies revolving around it in a circular motion. - Another significant contribution of Ptolemy was in the field of map-making. - He improved and modified previous maps by adopting a projection for the world map which had a graticule of meridians of longitude and parallels of latitudes. - After the completion of the *Almagest*, he started writing *Guide to Geography*, which consisted of eight volumes. In the first volume, he discusses the map projections. - In volumes two to seven, he provides a table of latitudes and longitudes, so that every place can be given a precise location.