History of Geography

See main article: History of geography

Ptolemy's 150 CE World Map (redrawn in the 15th century)

The foundations of geography can be traced to the ancient cultures, such as the Greeks, who were the first to explore geography as both art and science, whether through Cartography, Philosophy, and Literature, or through Mathematics. There is some debate about who was the first person to assert that the Earth is spherical in shape, with the credit going either to Parmenides or Pythagoras. Anaxagoras was able to demonstrate that the profile of the Earth was circular by explaining eclipses. However he still believed that the Earth was a flat disk, as did many of his contemporaries. One of the first estimates of the radius of the Earth was made by Eratosthenes.^[6]

The first rigorous system of latitude and longitude lines is credited to Hipparchus. He employed a sexagesimal system that was derived from Babylonian mathematics. The parallels and meridians were sub-divided into 360°, with each degree further subdivided 60′ (minutes). To measure the longitude at different location on Earth, he suggested using eclipses to determine the relative difference in time.^[7] The extensive mapping by the Romans as they explored new lands would later provide a high level of information for Ptolemy to construct detailed atlases. He extended the work of Hipparchus, using a grid system on his maps and adopting a length of 56.5 miles for a degree.^[8]

During the Middle Ages, the fall of the Roman empire led to a shift in the evolution of geography from Europe to the Islamic world.^{[citation needed]} Scholars such as Idrisi (produced detailed maps), Ibn Batutta, and Ibn Khaldun provided detailed accounts of their Hajj. Further, Islamic scholars translated and inteperated the earlier works of the Romans and Greeks and established the House of Wisdom in Baghdad for this purpose.^[9]

The Age of discovery during the 16th and 17th centuries where many new lands were discovered and accounts by explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo and James Cook , revived a desire for both accurate geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations.^{[citation needed]}

The 18th and 19th centuries were the times when geography became recognized as a discrete academic discipline and became part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially Paris and Berlin). The development of many geographic societies also occurred during the 19th century with the foundations of the Société de Géographie in 1821,^[10] the Royal Geographical Society in 1830,^[11] Russian Geographical Society in 1845^[12] and the National Geographic Society in1888.^[13] The influence of Immanuel Kant, Alexander von Humbolt, Carl Ritter and Paul Vidal de la Blache can be seen as a major turning point in geography from a philosophy to an academic subject.

Over the past two centuries the advancements in technology such as computers, has led to the development of geomatics and new practices such as participant observation and geostatistics being incorporated into geography's portofilio of tools. In the West during the 20th century, the discipline of geography went through four major phases: environmental determinism, regional geography, the quantitative revolution, and critical geography. The strong interdisciplinary links between geography and the sciences of geology and botany, as well as economics, sociology and demographics have also grown greatly especially as a result of Earth System Science that seeks to understand the world in a Holistic view.