Dualism & Dichotomy I Perspectives of Human Geography I Neetu Singh

Dualism in Geography In almost all the disciplines dualism has developed. It represents different methods of studying same ideology. Dualism in Geography dates back to prehistoric times. The Greek scholar Eratosthenese used the term geography for the first time. He defined the discipline to be related to earth and its different components. The variabilities of such earth related components forms the cause of dualism. Herodotus, Hipparcus, Aristotle (Greek), Ptolmey, Strabo (Roman_, Al Masudi and Ibn Khaldun (Arab) attempted to interpret influence of physical environment of life style of various people. The real beginning, however, has been post renaissance in Europe. Varenius and Kant, the twin propounders of classical geography, initiated the dualistic approach of systematic and regional and physical and human respectively. The modern geographers Humbott and Ritter further nurtured it as inspite of being contemporary, they were extremely different in their ideologies and approach. The sequential order of development of dualism includes – i) Systematic Vs Regional ii) Physical Vs Human iii) Determinism Vs Possibilism iv) Theoretical Vs Applied v) Idiographic Vs Nomothetic vi) Historical Vs Contemporary and also the division of the subject matter into geomorphology, climatology, hydrology, population etc. “Geography is description of the world and of its inhabitants” (L. Dudly Stamp) “Geography is the science of places” (Vidal De la Blache) “Geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth’ surface” (Richard Hartshorne) “Geography tells what is where, why and what it is made of”(Bowman) “Geography is study of earth as the home of man” (E.A.Macnee) “Geography is science of distributions” (Marthe) “Geography is correlative science” (Taylor) “Geography is human ecology” (H. Barrows) “Geography is study of spatial distributions and space relations on the earth`s surface”(Ackerman) “Geography is the study of spatial organisation expressed as patterns and processes” (Taaffe)