Nature of Geography
We frequently use the term Nature. like the nature of any person, the nature of any product, etc. Nature is the basic or inherent feature of something, especially when seen as a characteristic of it.
So nature of geography, we can know by knowing the chronological development in geography at the successive stages and their characteristics.
Some of the earliest questions formulated by primitive man were related to the nature of his natural surroundings. A man like many other animals identifies a particular extent of territory as his living space and is curious to know about the world outside his own living space. This curiosity compels him to explore what it is like beyond the frontiers of his own home ground. Geography was born to satisfy this twofold curiosity, and to enable man to acquire knowledge about the lands and people lying beyond his familiar world. So, the history of geographical ideas, therefore, constitutes the record of man’s effort to give more and more logical and useful knowledge of the human habitat, and man’s spread over the earth’s surface.
This journey starts even before the Greek period, to Greek, Romans, Dark age in Europe and consequent development on Arab lands, Age of Exploration and it’s the effect on geographical knowledge, then, Debate on the man-Environment relationship that if a man is an active or passive agent in environment and related philosophy like Environmental Determinism-Determinism, possibilism, Neo-Determinism, etc.
In the 1950s and 60s the marked debate between Richard Hartshorn and Schaefer, and related Quantitative Revolution in Geography, then after rising of Behavioural and Humanistic Geography due to dissatisfaction with quantitative methods in geography, then after many trends like Marxist Geography, Radical Geography, Postmodernism, and post-structural Geography, etc.
Above all stages that occurred in different phases of time constitute the Geography of Today Geography as a field of learning is related to the significance of location and Spatial relations of things and events.
Asking questions about locations is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the field of Study we call Geography, Geography is concerned with the study of problems involving location, in the same way as history is concerned with problems involving sequences of events in the past.
Geography is still the field that deals with the association of phenomena that give character to a particular place, and with likenesses and differences among places. So nature of Geography had not been the same in different periods of time if we see the chronology of Geography, But whatever the context, Geography is always concerned with the characteristics of places on the surface of the Earth.
So we can conclude that—
- By, its nature, Geography is concerned with almost everything on the face of the Earth, in the sense that any phenomena(physical or human) that are irregularly distributed over the earth’s surface can be studied by the Geographic method.
- It has Spatial Nature
- It has temporal nature
- It has quantitative nature
- It has qualitative nature
Scope Of Geography
Scope means, what is its domain of it, i.e. what we study in it.
Often people classify it in Human and Physical elements of Geography which represents Human and Physical Geography respectively, but this division is very confusing, note that this division is made just only for the convenience of Study neither such division actually exists in nature nor in Geography, Because human and Physical phenomena are not independent but dependent on each other, so Geography aims to study the Spatial Manifestation of Man-Environment Relationship, which comprises the scope of it i.e., how human and Physical phenomena (Which are dependent on each other), Spatially distributed over the earth surface, with regard to 3 basic questions—
- Where it is?
- What it is like?
- What does it mean
Its scope also includes the answers to five fundamental questions that a geographer tries to know or ask–
- Generic questions: Questions relating to the distribution of phenomena on the earth’s Surface
- Genetic Questions: Questions concerned with the sequences of events and Interactions that have gone into the making of the present-day landscape
- Theoretical questions: Relating to the formulation of law-like statements.
- Remedial Questions: Concerned with the application of Geographic concepts to the solution of the real-life problems
- Methodological Questions: Concerned with the improvement of our Scientific skills
Thus the Geographer learns about the biophysical features of the Earth, is deeply interested in the interrelationship between society and habitat; needs to read the Cultural Landscape as the Earth-engraved expression of man’s activity; inspects and compares distributional patterns, and formulates concepts and principles.