• spatial tradition
  • area-studies tradition
  • man-land tradition
  • earth-studies tradition

1. Spatial Tradition: a locational tradition—spatial unifying theme, similar patterns between physical & human geography.

Intellectual legacy: Claudius Ptolemy (A.D. 100?-170?), Greek

  • wrote 8-volume Geographia in the second century A.D. containing numerous maps
  • considered the "father of geometry"

Modern geographer: Alfred Wegener; climatologist

  • Studied spatial arrangement of landmasses, used geographical and geological evidence
  • Continental drift—landmasses were once part of supercontinent (plate tectonics)

Immanuel Kant:

  • Need disciplines focused not only on particular phenomena (such as economics and sociology) but also on the perspectives of time (history) and space (geography).

2. Area Studies Tradition:  an area-analysis tradition‐regional geography.

Intellectual legacy: Strabo (63? B.C.-A.D. 24?), Roman

  • investigator, who wrote a report called Geography, a massive production for the Roman government
  • report described the known world according to location and place, their character, and their differentiation.

Modern geographer: Carl Sauer (1889-1975), American

  • The work of human geography is to discern the relationships among social and physical phenomena
  • Everything in the landscape is interrelated.

3. Man-Land Tradition: a culture-environment tradition - relationships between human societies and natural environments

Intellectual legacy: Hippocrates; (5th century BC), Greek
  • physician
  • wrote that places affect the health and character of man.

Modern geographer(s):  Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and Carl Ritter (1779-1859); German

  • Move beyond describing earth's surface to explaining why certain phenomena are present or absent.
  • Origin of "where" and "why" approach
  • Environmental determinism – how the physical environment causes social development

4. Earth Studies Tradition: an earth-science tradition—physical (natural) geography

Intellectual legacy: Aristotle (384-322 B.C.); Greek

  • philosopher who looked at natural processes
  • Earth is spherical, matter falls together toward a common center

Modern geographer: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804); German

  • philosopher who wrote about space and time, cause and effect as essential to human understanding
  • all knowledge can be classified logically or physically
  • Descriptions according to time compromise history, descriptions according to place compromise geography
  • History studies phenomena that follow one another chronologically, whereas geography studies phenomena that are located beside one another