Monday, May 16, 2011

What is Geography?

For some time I've just been sharing news articles from countries around the world, and adding maps so that you, the reader, can get an idea of where in the world these events are taking place.

Now I'm adding another feature, which is just, geography itself.

Geography (from geographia, lit. "earth describe-write") is the science that deals with the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena.

A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 BC).

Four historical traditions in geographical research are the spatial analysis of natural and human phenomena (geography as a study of distribution), area studies (places and regions), study of man-land relationship, and research in earth sciences.

Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline that foremost seeks to understand the Earth and all of its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography has been called 'the world discipline'. As "the bridge between the human and physical sciences," geography is divided into two main branches—human geography and physical geography.

I'll cover human geography in my next post.

No comments:

Post a Comment