GEOGRAPHY AND ITS DIVISIONS
Geography is a science that deals with the description, distribution, and
interaction of the diverse physical, biological, and cultural features of the earth's surface. It
also deals with the study of places and the relationships between people and their
environments. Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth’s surface and the
human societies spread across it. They also examine how human culture interacts with the
natural environment and the way that locations and places can have an impact on people.
Geography seeks to understand where things are found, why they are there, and how they
develop and change over time.
The modern academic discipline of geography is rooted in ancient practice,
concerned with the characteristics of places, in particular their natural environments and
peoples, as well as the relations between the two. Its separate identity was first formulated and
named some 2,000 years ago by the Greeks, whose geo and graphein were combined to mean
“earth writing” or “earth description.” The first person to use the word "geography"
was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). However, there is evidence for recognizable practices of
geography, such as cartography (or map-making) prior to the use of the term geography.
To most people, geography means knowing where places are and what they
are like. Discussion of an area’s geography usually refers to its topography—its relief and
drainage patterns and predominant vegetation, along with climate and weather patterns—
together with human responses to that environment, as in agricultural, industrial, and other land
uses and in settlement and urbanization patterns.
Geography, as an academic discipline is largely a 20th-century creation, forming a
bridge between the natural and social sciences. The history of geography is the history of
thinking about the concepts of environments, places, and spaces. Its content covers an
understanding of the physical reality we occupy and our transformations of environments into
places that we find more comfortable to inhabit. Geography provides insights into major
contemporary issues, such as globalization and environmental change, as well as a detailed
appreciation of local differences; changes in disciplinary interests and practices reflect those
issues.
Geography has been defined differently through different geographer in different
periods of time but the most common definition of geography is that geography is derived from
the Greek word geo meaning Earth and graphy meaning to study or to describe. Thus geography
refers to the study or description of earth. It is a science devoted to the study of lands, its
features, the inhabitants and various phenomenon of the earth. There are some more definitions
of geography by different geographer which are given below:
1. “The purpose of geography is to provide a view of the whole by mapping the location of
places.”- Ptolemy
2. “Geography is a discipline synthesizing findings of other sciences yhrough the concept of
area or space.”- Immuanuel Kant
3. “Geography is both science and art.”- H.C Darby
4. “Geography as a chronological Science in term of spatial difference and their relationship.”-
Hettner
5. “Geography describes how the things are distributed over space.”- Marth
