Twin Exhiliration

  When I begin writing the first word, my ankles take flight. Slowly I begin to tread down the street, as the pen lifts and I move to the next word; each word echoing a footstep. I feel relaxed, ready to let the words take me on a journey my mind has never been on, but only it is capable of doing. Nobody else follows the same path, or has running mechanics quite the same as my own.

 As I gather speed, the pen moves faster. Words flow out of my fingers with ease, like the muscles contracting with warmer blood in my legs: running flow and writing flow synchronized. Pit-pat, tip-tap, pit-pat, tip-tap. Oscillations of the great paradox of mechanical creation. Nature surrounds me, my brain feels connected to everything, writing in waves of windscape, running in runes of wordplay. They are exchangeable, like breath and thought.

 After a few minutes the body and mind become one. I tap into that familiar existential apex they call being "in the zone". It is the pinnacle of artistic and athletic experience, when you feel like nothing can stop the momentum of joyful movement, whether on the pavement or on the page. Dream and dance become more clear in these movements, allowing focus to dilate, a maximum potential for greatness to blossom. Here I am at my fastest, able to accelerate to the limits of my physicality, able to reach the most distant fragments of my imagination, make connections so desperate that genius is temporarily accessible. Everything becomes easier as the music crescendos. Things fall in place.

 And then the hand starts to tire, the heart pumps too fast, slowing the muscles in my appendages. Hands and feet, once married, divorce from the exhilaration. They return to their separate quarters to recharge, until the next day, when it happens again. Slowly I come to a halt as ideas wane and too many calories are burned. For one sweet moment I became like God, all he intended for me.

 In the moments between, as I catch my breath and absorb my surroundings, I stretch my mind with the extension of my muscles, making it more fertile for exploration. Balance becomes key, learning is the greatest element. When great energy goes one way within, it must be diffused by going one way without. Thus does stretching and balance preserve my running form, as the meditation of reading coordinates my writing. Physicality and mentality get tied in a knot, preserving a spirit that grows stronger. Prolific practice of these activities makes me ready for anything.

Bells for Beringia

 My children are little bells
 Chiming in laughter selected
 By tipsy rangers from the air itself.
 Outside they trip through the leaves
 Chirping like birds, tolling for the wind,
 Small voices carried aloft

 By the cold north wind
 Moving down the timberland coast,
 Turbulent vortices pivoting the trees.
 In tandem they laugh, unburdened,
 Tinkling in windrush drummed by branches,
 Swirls of gold and red and yellow
 Storming their fortresses of fall.
 A sound so delicate
 That the gods strain to hear

 Through whistling torrent of jet stream,
 Soaring melodies lifted 

 To the tip of heaven.

The Ringwoodite Ocean

  Far below the Earth's surface, there is a gemstone ocean that lies on top of the mantle. It circulates water, carrying it from subduction zones to the great magma chambers where it erupts as lava and steam. This ocean is thought to contain three times as much water as all the surface oceans combined. But it is not a typically liquid ocean. Ringwoodite, the mineral that transports it, only consists of 1.5% water. Thus it is more like a fluid gemstone ocean that passes water between its crystals. 

 I can't imagine how remarkably beautiful it must be. Of all the wondrous things I have learned in my life, this is among the greatest. And to think it came from a children's magazine (National Geographic for Kids). The biggest mystery to me is how this ringwoodite transports water, and what the forces are keeping it buoyant. Ringwoodite is thought to be a grade of olivine which gets harder the farther down into the mantle you go, due to increased pressure. The relatively light pressure of the ringwoodite layer allows it to be flexible enough to act as a liquid. It's like being able to see gold as a rolling river. Truly remarkable.

 This has awesome implications for the water cycle. A subducted water molecule could spend ages in a subterranean sea before finally getting out. The long journey wouldn't be made by every water molecule, as many are content to return to the atmosphere by quickly evaporating once they reach the ocean. But the more adventurous ones, the ones who find their way to the deep blue abyss, by any manner of underwater travel, may eventually buy that riskiest of tickets, who dared to make that potentially infinite ride down the slope of a sinking crust to meet that dazzling layer of ringwoodite, their courage increasing with each exponential jump in pressure, sinking through the darkness to a boling soup, not knowing it may spend the rest of its eternal life there. Until one day when extinctions have passed and the ice ages have come and gone, and when the Earth is ready again to release its bladder on the surface above, the patient molecules will finally have their day as the pressure gets too great, the earth erupts in many locations, releasing them from the prison below, a boiling riot of H20 and C02, obscuring the sun to complete the cycle, to rain down and fill up the oceans again.

This is ringwoodite. An ocean of it is thought to encompass the earth, where the bottom of subduction zones draining ocean water intercept the upper mantle.

Biogeographic Mystery Between Africa and South America

  It is thought that the New World monkeys and rodents migrated to South America on rafts to find new homes. Paleontologists know that their ancestors originated in Africa and that South America had been an island continent at the time of the first fossils on record. If it's true, it's amazing how mammals could migrate like this. Steve Brusatte calls it "Hail Mary migration", wherein thousands of species attempt to cross the ocean on natural rafts as a last resort from some cataclysmic event. In a hail mary pass, there is only a slight chance of success, but that chance can add up to 10-20 species that successfully relocate on a distant continent if enough of them attempt to cross. 99% of the other migrant species would have died on that journey.

 That only monkeys and rodents made the trip make me makes me suspicious: why weren't there other groups? Perhaps these groups were so small and resourceful that they were the only ones capable. A more reasonable explanation is that there are older fossils dating from before the breakup of South America and Africa. When cross-migration was easier. We just haven't found them yet.

Five Before Midnight

  North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. It's an island like any other in physicality, but it is the only one left in the world that is still inhabited by primitive humans. All the others have been stripped of their identity by the globalist machine of expansion. Colonial powers had left these people alone to face the elements a long time ago.

 This came to happen by their stubborn refusal to integrate, to lose their essence. British and Indian authorities had tried to subjugate them for centuries, yet they persisted in aggressive rejection. The cause for this was a double serving of isolationism: an intense desire for tribal immunity, and the power of story. Other islands in the area had been colonized by world powers, some whose cultures were destroyed, others who were wiped out entirely by war and disease. When the stories reached North Sentinel Island, they were cemented into their mythology, that the global man was evil and should be resisted at any cost. It didn't help that their garbage began to pollute the island around this time, getting worse as the years went on, reminding them of the nefarious nature of their distant brothers. Any time they saw one of his new inventions washing ashore- plastic, machinery, clothing- they were quick to burn or bury it.

 Over time it came to pass that the island was transformed into something of a preservation "facility" for tourists. The Indian government allowed sightseeing by boat and plane over the island, so that the natives became victims to a constant invasion of privacy. Photos and videos were distributed through social media of the one remaining tribe uncontaminated by modern living; the original savage and all his mysterious freedom, which the tourists envied on some conscious level but judged to be contemptible on a conscious one. The curious paradox was fed by a desire to participate in their observation by people all over the world, who flocked to the spectacle like it was of the seven wonders. So many boats and planes surrounded the island on any given day that the natives began to feel like prisoners in their own environment, artificially planted for the amusement of those distant intruders.

 Until one day a curious artifact washed ashore: an artificial intelligence clock that had been sent overboard during a colossal storm. The clock was curious to the natives because it shared the whole history of humanity. Depending on the time of day, it would relay a period of history to the observer at the click of a button. The present was also recorded, ominously at a few strokes before midnight. The natives were inspired by such a prophecy, hoping that in the coming years, as history unfolded against the countdown to midnight, it would mean that out the outside world would finally leave them alone.

 One evening, at 11:59, the final historical entry was heard for the first time among the council of elders in the tribe. It said that the Internet had revolted against mankind, killing everyone by inventing and spreading an incurable disease. Since North Sentinel Island was untouched by data and man, it was spared the disease, and the relieved inhabitants of the island were suddenly left alone just as they had been before. The clock was consecrated on a shrine for bringing this merciful prophecy. Signs of the planet healing were noticed by less garbage intercepting the island, and the sea level returning to normal. For all they knew, the Sentinelese were the only humans left on the Earth, and they wished to keep it that way.

The Capital Limit: Feminist and Marxist Control Points

There is a school of thought in feminism suggesting that matriarchal societies predominated prior to the rise of civilization, patriarchy, and state-sponsored religion. They argue that the view of women being associated with the Earth was strikingly universal across many cultures, dating back to prehistory. It has to do with nesting habits and body cycles, which are also tied to the moon. Goddess worship was more frequent; ritual and governance were more in tune with nature than the state, due to seasonal cycles. Part of what motivated the feminist movement was reclaiming that divinity, also known as wicca.

Raine Eisler, Merline Stone, and Monica Sjoo were powerful writers on the subject, though Sjoo did not have a degree. In past years I was more open to this line of reasoning, without any evidence to go along with it. Let's just say it would not surprise me if the theory were true that most societies were matriarchal. I would like to believe that sex didn't matter at all; that a society was equally likely to be matriarchal as patriarchal. One thing is clear: patriarchal societies developed with the rise of civilization, regardless of location or religion. Perhaps it was because growing fertility rates required women to focus more on childbearing than politics and government. The coinciding growth of patriarchal religions like Christianity reflect this trend, allowing men to have more power by the spectacular claim that God had written the Bible and not them. If women had written it, perhaps we would live in a matriarchy.

Things would be better, wouldn't they? More emphasis on caring, sharing, and compassion, not competition and greed. As women distribute equality and fairness among their children, so would they in a matriarchal democracy. We wouldn't have to worry about the planet suffering from nuclear winter or global warming, for she evidently cares more about the planet than the "treadmill of production" men have built. The wrench in the system was overpopulation- how it put women on the sidelines and gave men more freedom to roam. It was she who gave men this gift, at the expense of all she held sacred.

During the rise of civilization, groups could only survive by monopolizing resources, leading to a core capitalist ideology. But I want to point out this didn't happen everywhere. The Native Americans did not practice this and were more in touch with the environment, or natural world, so a Marxist geography did not develop. There are still isolated tribes in the world today that have nothing to do with civilization or capitalism. It seems that it is only civilization that harvests the root for capitalism that pollutes the planet, while the periphery gets swept off its feet defending it. Capitalism isn't the root of who we are, but a product of our behavior when there are too many people to sustain.

The central point is this: the capital limit is the point at which women, nature, labor, and freedom all suffer lapses from a growing population. Bureaucracy inflates, there are too many men, so they must specialize in things that make the system grow. This system has made us victims of our own success.

Make Stillness a Habit

Habit makes time elastic. When you do the same thing for too long, it compresses time like a spring, ready to expand at the first sign of release. Don't get too invested in your habits, or your life will fly by and you will stop growing. Try new things occasionally, as children are always doing, harnessing their wonder in years that flex. Ocean Vuong says that on earth we're briefly gorgeous, which we can maximize by doing gorgeous things. Even if it's one thing you enjoy doing, there are different angles to approach it, new ways of perceiving it. Learn all you can about it; never get complacent. That's what will separate you from being a specialist to a genius.

Conversely, too many habits can muddle life by making everything feel rushed. You must do this, you must do that, there is never enough time to get it all done. If you are feeling this way, it is best to reduce your habits, or find new ones that better align with your path. Embrace stillness, the pauses between activities, thoughts, and sentences. Stillness is underrated in our culture. Much of what we understand and enjoy could be amplified if we would only stop and stare, collect our thoughts, appreciate the beauty, and reflect on our feelings rather than keep scrolling, searching for a new stimulus or inspiration. Stillness turns a good story into a great one, a noisy song into a fluid one, a neurotic mind into a calm one. Meditate. Make stillness a habit.

Air Carnival

 Entrance

 Admission is free to all except children, who must pay with their black lungs. You must not touch the machinery for you risk a serious injury. Clowns are dressed in business suits; they get a commission for every laugh. Don't mind the fans, they are here to protect you. From what? Don't ask.

Ignorance Booth

 Your breath is fragrant with a minty dust. See the particles illuminated by fungi, viruses, and bacteria, too small to be seen with a naked eye. Each of them rolls through a kaleidoscopic slideshow, monster-sized symbionts dispersing in an invisible creepshow. Yes, even you breathe them in, you who thought the air wasn't alive.

Wind Booth

 Feel the wind on your face, that ancient air conditioner. You see jugglers gyrating a refrigerant as it compresses, sending cool relief through your nose. You are the wind and the wind is your body, sailing you aloft on imperceptible fluid that heals. The wind says, open your mouth for me, and I will make you see wonders.

Fish Booth

 A fish doesn't get thirsty because it doesn't need air. Their bubbles are what rise from the ocean to catch the wind. As the wind erodes canyons, so does it parch the flesh, rendering us ocean-dry, gasping for air.

Poetry Booth

 The calligrapher dances on salty sheets, painting the letters of a forgotten language, words that will speak to you only in death. It says that poetry is all you can breathe.

 Anatomy Booth

 Inside our bodies there is an atlas of open space where the air penetrates, deep pockets of fractalized labyrinthia that dark matter suspended. These are the roads where oxygen travels to ignite spirit, compounding energy into a stronger substance- that which cannot be extinguished by flames. It breathes life into you, this powerful elixir. You want to believe it will never run out, that resources will always be natural.

Air Tax Rollercoaster

 We'll erase your debt if you let us buy your air. We come in peace, with a gun on our shoulder. You have no choice  really. Once you're on the roller coaster there's no turning back. So ship all your air to us. Take your last breath at the top before plunging into the abyss of smog.

The Magic Show

 Intimate chemicals that see all, touch all, exchange with all, in Brownian motion they swivel as basketballs. They're everywhere and nowhere, breaching every opening, no matter how small. They reach every space of the court, all the matter wedged between its sidelines. They embrace you, the divine ether passing rays of information through your bones, transformative passes and jump shots emanating from the wand-shaped arms. Stars in every diamond of the net that brands your lungs. 

Encore

 Birds of all sizes and colors swoon the audience, dropping balloons from their talons that bounce about, their beaks popping each one in a frenzy of cacophony. Only when the silence comes can the music be heard, voices of nature that drift along on the currents, rising and falling like the journey of a score. The curtain closes on a galaxy of notes that levitate in the sky.

Chuckanut Drive

Healingly enter serenity from the north. Tangled trees narrowed by moss filter October sunlight. Early October, leaves of gold and yellow dressing the seaside escape. Cliffs of oceanfront glittering gladly affore the distant islands, sun-kissed by gold light, glinting off seascape. The road winds narrowly, thrillingly, past vistas of tree-curtained sea lanes, the whales swimming gallantly in cerulean splendor. Off the mountain flank, silent rooks look sternly at this autumn festivity in full colors awash by seashore artistry, whence changing seasons come to paint the forest gaiety. High on the terrace we drive, swallowed by solace, a garden-crested troll bridge otherworldly, dripping fingers of lichen-colored garlands bleeding the amber ambience profusely. It takes your breath away, your first taste of nature in years, after the challenges of childbirth pushed you to your limits. 

And now comes the valley, looming to the south, where sea meets the road and grass meets the forest, where the naval of the Earth uproots and you wonder how humans could possibly ignore her. Distant forms pepper the flatlands before the mountains; cows, horses, sheep, a cornucopia of domestic grains; simmering the fertile land with natural ornaments. The transition between equally beautiful places with such a strong contrast is quick and surreal. Now it seems like a dream, that the change is too disorienting, that there aren't really wonders so prolific in your own backyard, where the city fogs your view of the surrounding environment, reality snuffed by metropolitan smoke. But it's the trees back by the sea you'll remember most; those divine threads of sunlight draping the solemn tinted leaves like God's own fingerprints, bringing you to a stillness so strong that you couldn't even take a picture.

Environmental Determinism

        Environmental determinism is the idea that the natural environment determines all the varieties of human society and culture (Cresswell 2013).  Environmental determinists argue that aspects of human behavior and society are not innate, but due to environmental factors like climate and landscape.  The environment is seen as limiting cultural development by placing natural barriers on ambiguous human qualities like ethics and intelligence (Cambridge).  Though environmental determinism was a popular academic position in the past, its critics stressed that such ideas supported colonialism and racism, causing it to lose merit through the 20^th century.  Because it sounded scientific enough that people didn’t have to fully investigate it themselves, it held tremendous power in persuading large groups of people about human behavior.

            According to Onal (2018), environmental determinism argues that “in order to be successful in their struggle for life, man has to adapt to the rules of nature”.  Superficially this makes sense because humans can’t live without basic resources like air, water, and a moderate temperature.  However, it also suggests that the variability of these resources is what determines the degree of behavior in a society. 

Its rise to the forefront of geography in the early 19^th century was a consequence of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which posited that changes to body plans occur by natural selection, or the process of weeding out ones that are no longer sustainable in changing environmental conditions.  Thus, the environment was deterministic in the sense that it created favorable conditions for certain body types.  For instance, northern climates are beneficial for people with white skin because they are more sensitive to sunlight (due to having less melanin).  This gives them the advantage of being more efficient with vitamin D production over those with darker skin, who would find it more of a challenge in northern climates.

            This was seemingly good science until some geographers started arguing that environmental determinism was responsible for character traits as well as body traits, for which there is no evidence.  There is a long historical tradition of using this flaw in reasoning to justify discrimination of character.  For example, Thomas Jefferson suggested tropical climates induced laziness and degenerate societies, while cooler climates induced a harder work ethic and more civilized societies (Jefferson 1775).  When some geographers adopted these stale arguments, and reinforced them by using Darwin’s theory, it imposed racial stereotypes on whole societies.  In cases where a superior power subjugated a lower one, often by colonialism, or worse- slavery and genocide- determinism was used to rationalize exploitation and war (Shirlow et al 2009).  The plight of environmental determinism rests in the role it has played in the biased judgment of tropical peoples, causing a widely imbalanced socioeconomic world system.  Environmental determinism did not survive this major shortcoming, as the emergence of regional geography and spatial science took its place later in the 20th century.

            Though largely discredited, environmental determinism is still studied in universities, mainly from an historical perspective to show students how it is an erroneous way of thinking.  One way it is discredited is by looking at regions that are physically similar but dissimilar socially, such as British Columbia, Tasmania, and Chile (Cresswell 2013).  Each of these places are so different socially that it would be nonsensical to apply environmental determinism in all situations.  Climate and terrain certainly play some part in the development of a society, but not all of it.  Possibilism is a better way of describing the course a society takes, for it acknowledges the major role the environment plays in social development but leaves the door open on how cultures respond.

Cresswell, T. 2013. Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Jefferson, T. 1998. Notes on the State of Virginia. Penguin Classics S. Harlow, England: Penguin Books.

Önal, H. 2018. Reflections of Environmental Determinism in the Questions Prepared by Geography Teacher Candidates. Review of International Geographical Education Online (RIGEO). Retrieved Oct 3, 2023 (http://www.rigeo.org/vol8no1/Number1Spring/RIGEO-V8-N1-4.pdf)

Shirlow, Peter, Gallaher, Carolyn, Gilmartin, Mary. 2009. Key Concepts in Political Geography. SAGE Publications Ldt.

The Cambridge Dictionary.  “Environmental Determinism.”  Retrieved Oct 3, 2023 (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/environmental-determinism#google_vignette)

20th Century Geographic Thought

            The dominant periods of geographic thought since the beginning of the 20^th century were regional geography, spatial science, and humanistic geographies.  Each of these advanced geographic thought and research in important ways.  It’s debatable whether each new period improved on the previous one, but I believe they did, as each added something to make the subject of geography stronger as a whole.  Regional and humanistic geographies provided key insights into socially based research that was qualitative, while spatial science provided key insights into general laws that were quantifiable and more in line with scientific methods.

            Regional geography was subjective in that it depended on the parameters one was talking about (Cresswell 2013).  For instance, regions can be characterized by different features, including climate, architecture, economics, religion, ritual, and even watersheds.  This school of thought began in France, around 1908 when Paul Vidal de la Boche published his theory about genres de vie, or ways of life (Cresswell 2013).  It was heavily influenced by possibilism, or the ways in which people make choices about how to optimize the natural attributes of a region.  Regional geography was more philosophical than practical in that it was focused on the particular attributes of a place, which is sometimes based on social constructs.  It advanced geographic thought by improving on the idea of what comprises a region and how it is always changing (Creswell 2013).  However, its shortcomings ultimately led to the quantitative revolution, as many geographers questioned its ambition, universality, and scientific prestige.

            The quantitative revolution of the 1950s and 1960s challenged regional geography’s fixation on the particular by deriving spatial laws that could be generally applied as universal (Cresswell 2013).  Many geographers found it more relevant and prestigious to academia than the arbitrariness of regional geography.  This school of thought developed out of positivism, or the belief that only things which can be experienced through the senses can be known, making it rely heavily on the use of mathematical languages and models.  The transition to spatial geography during this time vastly improved the subject because it introduced reliable quantitative methods that were more testable than regional qualitative methods.  Critics argued that its structural rigidity ignored the humanistic elements of geography by simplifying behavior into unrealistic principles that involved minimizing distance.

            Humanistic geographers in the1970s argued that since humans aren’t always predictable, distance minimization can’t be universal.  They didn’t so much propose a return to the particular of regional geography as they did an alternate version of the universal: that the essence of place as humans experience it is more universal than spatial laws (Creswell 2013).  Nonetheless, a return to the qualitative research methods favored by regional geographers was advocated, and that is why these movements are often grouped together today.  Many forms of humanistic geography emerged during the period, including ones based on literature, Marxism, feminism, and mobility in the lifeworld (Cresswell 2013).  It improved on the subject by allowing for the human experience, in all its psychological and spiritual grandeur, to manifest a superior interpretation of place.  Critics argued that humanistic geography was subjective, untestable, and elitist, crucially unconcerned with power struggles in the world.

            Each of the three periods improved on the last by adding new insights and laws to the discipline, even if they were philosophical.  However, geography did not experience the crucial paradigm shift that Thomas Kuhn predicted to elevate it as a hard science (Kuhn 1962).  Thus, it was not welcomed as a scientific discipline by universities at the time, though it was making progress.  Instead, it was relegated to one of the social sciences because of the various ways it applied to human data that wasn’t physically based.  But geography’s strength is that it balances elements of natural/physical (hard) and social/human (soft) science into a powerhouse of useful information.  This flexibility means it can be applied to virtually every other science that has emerged since the Renaissance, rendering it capable of involving more data than any other subject.  In my mind, there isn’t a subject more universal than geography.

Cresswell, T. 2013. Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Kuhn, T. S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press.

Early Geographies

        The course of early geography followed a roughly similar debate pattern through the centuries, based on three major lines of thought.  The first is the intersection between history and geography.  In the ancient world, Herodotus was the first to theorize humanistic elements of geography by suggesting that history depended on it (Creswell, 2013).  Kant followed this up in the 18th century by explaining how history is defined by geographical limits.  Since all history occurs in space, geography forms the bedrock of all knowledge.  History can’t be told without geography, for without a sense of space we are left with fictional stories.  The obverse is also true though; you can’t have humanistic geography without history because most human data arise from an historical record.  There would be no way to map human behavior without history.  The human element means that history and geography fundamentally rely on each other even though they describe different things (story vs. space).  Both are human constructs that can only be studied from a mutual lens.

            The second line of thought was the relationship between the natural world and humans.  Environmental determinism was advocated by many philosophers, including Herodotus and Albertus Magnus (Cresswell 2013), for the simplicity in which it described the natural world as determining human behavior.  What ran parallel with it was the relationship between humans and the environment provided by possibilism, or the way the natural world places constraints on human behavior that isn’t fully predictable.  This version of geography began with Strabo, who was the first to document a regional approach to the study by describing known locations in his Geographia.  The sheer variety of human cultures inhabiting similar environments meant that there were a number of ways humans could adapt to changing conditions, and they could all be studied regionally.

An example is the way Native Americans migrated from Siberia over the Bering land bridge 12,000 years ago.  As they migrated southward, each tribe retained the essence of the one it separated from but adopted its own culture in light of new environmental conditions, their political preferences, and spiritual beliefs.  Since many tribes lived in the same areas, it follows that it wasn’t only the environment determining new behaviors, but social changes as well.  This pattern of thinking eventually won over environmental determinism, lending strength to the study of regional geography in the 19^th & 20^th centuries.  Pioneered by Alfred Hettner, Carl Ritter, and Paul Vidal de la Blanche (Cresswell 2013), regional geography retained the human elements of determinism without fully embracing the natural one.  Environmental determinism was discredited shortly thereafter.

The third line of thought is the debate between the general and the particular.  While a study of the particular began with Strabo, it was countered by figures like Eratosthenes and Ptolemy, who pioneered the scientific side of the debate by being the first to measure distances and apply cartographic techniques, respectively (Cresswell 2013).  In the 19^th century it was Humboldt and Ritter who believed they produced universal geographies but in different ways (Creswell 2013); Humboldt by doing extensive fieldwork that left him a legacy of being the “father of modern geography”, while Ritter was more interested in humanistic techniques, helping him become the “father of regional geography” (Cresswell 2013).  In the 20^th century, the gap widened as the quantitative revolution further divided spatial science from human and regional geography, stressing the importance of logic, models, and mathematics in research methods rather than quantitative methods, hearsay, and abstract ideas.  Spatial scientists rejected the particular for the general, causing a backlash from humanistic geographers who felt it was excessive to only focus on spatial laws. 

Like the balance between history and geography and nature and humans, the balance between the particular and the general wasn’t fully realized in early geographic thought.  What emerged was a smorgasbord of differing attitudes about what geography is and how it should be growing.  Each new idea introduced something that tipped the balance in one direction, only to swing it back the other way when the next conception came along.  Until the 1980s, the whole history of geography had been a balancing act, suffering from an identity crisis due to the very strength of its nature, as a fulcrum for all the other sciences.  Perhaps the people who study it are also seeking balance in knowledge, by the beauty of its range.  I know I am.

 

References (ASA):

Cresswell, T. 2013. Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.