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Geography is the study of the Earth
Geography is the study of the Earth – it literally means earth study from the Greek geo for earth and graphia to describe. By study of the earth we mean study of the lands, landscape features, creatures, and other phenomena such as processes e.g. the weather.
The first person to use the word “geography” was Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.) a typical polymath of his time who was an expert in mathematics and astronomy amongst others. He was the first person to successfully (and remarkably accurately calculate the circumference of the earth, developed ideas of latitude and longitude, worked out the tilt of the axis of the earth and produced a world map based on the knowledge of the time.
There are four traditions in geographical research namely the spatial analysis of natural (or physical) and human phenomena, the study of places and regions, the study of man-land relationships, and earth sciences. As geography has modernized it has become an all-encompassing discipline that seeks most fundamentally to understand the Earth in an holistic manner. It has moved away from simple descriptive studies of where things are and added the more important approach of attempting to explain how they have come to be and how they have changed over time. As such geography is a bridge between and among the human and physical sciences.
Naturally this means that geography as an academic discipline can be split broadly into two: human geography and physical geography. The former concentrates on the built environment and how space is created and managed by people. It looks at how people influence the space they occupy as they develop different approaches to living within their environments. The latter examines the natural or physical environment and how the components of it interact to produce the marvelously complex world around us.
In very recent times, the increasing realization that human and physical geography are inextricably linked and interdependent despite having different approaches, has led to the emergence of a third distinct field – environmental geography. Environmental geography combines physical and human geography and looks at the interactions between the environment and humans – something which we find increasingly relevant in modern times.
Danny Harrington
ITS Tutorial School Hong Kong
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