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| A REVIEW ON ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS: A HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHICAL IDEAS |
| YE Chao, CAI Yun-long |
| College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China |
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Abstract It is very important for geographers to know and understand the history of geographical ideas. The relative research findings about the history of geographical thoughts are not enough in China, and it has been ignored for a long time. The scholars who study the history of geographical ideas should not only master and state the geographical ideas and knowledge, and the formation and evolution of them, but also by way of this knowledge accurately understand the nature of the geography. In his book, Geoffrey Martin holds that the difference of the Earth's surface is the keystone of geography, and the main task of geographers is to describe and explain it. The whole history of geographical ideas can be divided into two major phases:the classical and modern times. The demarcation between the first and the second stage is in 1859, because the founders of modern geography, Humboldt and Ritter died in this year. Although geography has common object and subject all over the world, geography of each country has its own tradition and characteristics in the different stages. Geographers should absorb experiences from the history of ideas and learn from the professional counterparts, and avoid the dualism. In the future, geography will focus on some major issues about the development of humanity in the 21st century. In order to know and understand the historical facts of the geographical thoughts, geographers should more profoundly understand "history" and "thought" in the end, and not be limited in a field of geography. For scholars who study the history of geographical thoughts, they should combine tightly geography with history and thought, achieve the final goal that theorizes those historical facts of geographical thoughts. After all, geography is a kind of philosophy, because all geographers are influenced by some philosophical ideas. Judged by the level of philosophy and theory, the work of Martin's is traditional, broad and meticulous, but not enough deeply concerned with theory and philosophy and modern thoughts.
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Received: 03 February 2009
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2009, Vol. 24 
