The Dictionary of Human Geography (145 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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physical geography
The characterization and explanation of geological, hydrological, biological and atmospheric phenomena and their interactions at, or near the Earth's surface. This is often, but not exclusively, in relation to human occupation and activity. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Physical geography is something of an intel lectual chimera, whose role, relations and def inition have changed as the nature and focus of the geographical enterprise itself have shifted. Throughout its modern history, phys ical geography has been implicated in most of the central debates within geography but, arguably, prospered from none. From formal beginnings in the early Victorian age through to the period between the two world wars, a credible case can be made that physical geog raphy was geography. Physical geographers were part of the disciplinary elite, and geo graphical education and research necessarily began with the physical foundations of the Earth environment, as deployed in and across natural (geographical) regions. Somewhere in the inter war period, all this changed. Geography was recast as a subject with an essential duality of character. For the greater part of the twentieth century, debates con cerning either the curse or the virtue of this duality underscored geographical reflection, while in terms of geographical endeavour, it was physical geography that repeatedly lost its place as trend setter in the changing geo graphical tradition. By the later twentieth cen tury, geography had become an amorphous and disconnected enterprise, whose concerns were less with disciplinary identity, and more with following humanistic approaches. In what became a postmodern and post paradigmatic world, multiple and contested viewpoints were new virtues, but intellectual largesse was not bestowed on physical geog raphy, which was represented as the manifest ation of an unyieldingly, restrictive and unwelcome positivism. In the new millen nium, physical geography may, however, be on the verge of renaissance. Having fought something of a quiet rearguard action within the discipline, it may yet be revived from with out: first, as a new class of environmental issues demand a new kind of scientific approach; and, second, as Earth systems sci ence physical geography by another name and from other places moves in to meet this need. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Earlier nineteenth century works provided apparently firm foundations for the contem porary discipline. For example: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Physical geography is a description of the earth, the sea, and the air, with their inhab itants animal and vegetable, of the distribu tion of these organized beings, and the causes of their distribution. (Somerville, 1849, p. 1) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Physical geography was thus a broad, inclusive body of knowledge, embracing the work of the great natural scholars such as Alexander von Humbolt and Charles Darwin, and claiming an intellectual heritage as Immanuel Kant's ?propaedentic of natural knowledge? (Huxley, 1877). Its project was that of geography as a whole. Its scope and its holism, however, became problems as early modern science sought sophistication and institutional organ ization (see Livingstone, 1992), and as more and more about a wide class of natural phe nomena became both known and knowable (Dickinson and Howarth, 1933). Physical geography provided an elegant underpinning of classificatory schemes: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Few sciences offer better opportunities than physical geography for studying large units and grouping their various phenomena. (Emerson, 1909, p. vii) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Its virtues were repeatedly extolled in general education, and in support of emergent envir onmentalism (Marsh, 1965 [1864]). It was less secure, however, as a coherent intellectual enterprise, particularly as ExplaNatioN of phe nomena became the goals of science. Arnold Guyot, drawing a distinction between anat omy (description) and physiology (explan ation) demanded that: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Physical geography . . . ought to be, not only the description of our earth, but the physical science of the globe, or the science of the . . . present life of the globe in reference to their connection and their mutual depend ence. (Guyot, 1850, p. 3) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Here, then, were the seeds of a basic dilemma within physical geography, which provided the backdrop for the later schism within geog raphy as a whole. Physical geography, in search of both scientific prowess and academic distinction, had somehow either to narrow its focus (and risk trespass on established fields particularly geology), or make ambitious claim to unoccupied territory (which, as the century progressed, could draw on post Darwinian biology). Its response, in the shorter term, was physiography another pervasive term with tortuous associations and in the longer term, a dalliance with environmental deter minism and its nemesis, human ecology. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In some incarnations, physiography was physical geography in all its aspects: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Physiography is a description of the sub stance, form, arrangement and changes of all the real things of Nature in their relation to each other, giving prominence to compre hensive principles rather than isolated facts. (Mill, 1913, p. 3) (NEW PARAGRAPH) and having: (NEW PARAGRAPH) . . . a unique value in mental training, being at once an introduction to all the sciences and summing up of their results . . . (Mill, 1913, p. 14) (NEW PARAGRAPH) In others, physiography was a more limited and scientifically precise component of phys ical geography, which had been: (NEW PARAGRAPH) . . . too often degraded into a sort of scien tific curiosity shop, in which there is a vast collection of isolated facts . . . without the slightest attempt . . . to show how interde pendent they are . . . (Skertchly, 1878, p. 2) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Interdependence of natural kinds was a com mon theme in these early writings (see also Thornton, 1901) and recourse to the funda mental physical concepts of matter, work and energy (which seemed more at home under the label of physiography) was the common means by which this was treated. Indeed, the approach bore a striking resemblance to later attempts to rejuvenate physical geography through the applications of systems theory (see below). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Thomas Henry Huxley?s volume of 1877 was different. Huxley had ? . . . borrowed the title . . . which had . . . been long applied . . . to a department of mineralogy . . . ?. Significantly, Huxley?s purpose was to: (NEW PARAGRAPH) . . . draw a clear line of demarcation, both as to the matter and method, between it [physiography] and what is commonly understood by ?Physical Geography.? (Huxley, 1877, p. vi) (NEW PARAGRAPH) The grounds for this demarcation lay in the belief that physical geography had become too thoroughgoing a physical science! Huxley?s project, of course, was the extension of general elementary education, and the comments reflect his disappointment that the unique educational value of physical geography had been lost in more specialist study. Despite Huxley?s ambition to give a sense of place and purpose, where knowledge was grounded in the local and observational, his physiog raphy was far from regional geography. Its content reflected such practicalities as how to find the North Pole or read a Times weather chart, alongside (by then) standard chapters on ice, sea, earthquakes and the sun. Notwithstanding Stoddart?s (1986) attempt to place it more centrally within geography, it probably held back, rather than promoted, the subject albeit ahead of its time in educa tional terms and somewhat misunderstood. Certainly, more contemporary observers were able to label physiography as the elementary component of physical geography, and one more influenced (and limited) by concerns of relevance to human activity (Salisbury, 1907). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Later use of physiography confined it to the description of landscape, and placed it firmly within the geological tradition (Tarr, 1920). Indeed, according to Lobeck, physiography. (NEW PARAGRAPH) . . . should not be called physical geog raphy, . . . because the idea of the relation of life to physical environment is not within the scope of physiography. (Lobeck, 1939, p. 3) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Physiography was thus identified with geo morphology, and both terms became increas ingly synonymous with physical geography. Davis (1899b) attempted to distinguish physi ography from physical geography based upon a test of the presence or absence of ?causes and consequences? (p. iv) between environment and organic life. Physical geography made these connections; in their absence was pure landform study, or physiography as now cast. Davis rarely applied this prescription to his own work, and largely under his influence, physical geography become closely associated with regional landform description and evolu tion. In suggesting the test as a kind of pre scription for study, he had, however, helped raise the spectre of environmental determin ism, and to some, had thereby eased the passage of other areas of physical geography into a long, but ultimately blind, alley (Leighly, 1955). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Thus, while physiography allowed, as it were, greater room for manoeuvre in the jost ling arena of nascent disciplines, it did nothing to clarify or confirm physical geography (or geography itself) as a coherent whole. On the one hand, physiography was a polyglot phys ical geography, whose project remained more ambitious than its achievements warranted. On the other, it was a specialism, related to geography around its circumference, along with the other applied sciences (Fenneman, 1919: see figure 1). So many circumferential fields of enquiry begged the question of what was at the centre. It was into this that physical geography was placed in uneasy alli ance with the varying forms of regional enquiry. (NEW PARAGRAPH) For the first half of the twentieth century, physical geography informed regional geo graphic enquiry. At its most obvious, physical geography provided a natural definition of regions where economic and social activity appeared adjusted to, or bounded by, the nat ural environment. Away from the obvious physio climatic regions, where physical geog raphy was merely a convenient backdrop, the degree and manner in which physical geog raphy truly engaged the human landscape was a vexing issue. Failure to answer this sat isfactorily legitimized a fundamental dualism of geography, which was never successfully reconciled. Environmental determinism ran its course rather quickly, and human ecology (Barrows, 1923) became not merely its suc cessor, but one of the defining and prescriptive terms for geography itself (Turner, 2002). While the concern was still to find something new and unique to define the subject, there was a critical twist for physical geography, insofar as: (NEW PARAGRAPH) I believe that the age old subject of geog raphy, though it has lost many specialities, still seeks to cover too much ground, and that it would benefit by frankly relinquish ing physiography, climatology, plant ecol ogy, and animal ecology. (Barrows, 1923, p. 13) (NEW PARAGRAPH) In this way, geography was not only reorien tated but, with it, physical geography was cancelled from the geographical project (for an accessible treatment of these issues, see Unwin, 1992). Physical geography was increasingly identified as a particular form of geographical activity (most frequently mani fest as applied geography) rather than as a coherent intellectual field, and at best, referred to obliquely when considering the role of human environment relations within geog raphy as a whole. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Not all were happy with a separation of human and physical geography, of course, and displeasure or unease came from many quarters. Hartshorne (1939), for example, was at pains to draw attention to the effective elimination of physical geography, and thereby to the restriction of geography. This was not advocacy of physical geography for its own sake, but an appeal to the heritage of Humbolt and others, which held that nature was essentially unitary. Geography's mission was to disclose areal association, and systematic study took precedence over any particular sub ject matter. Dualism had arisen because of philosophical abstraction and a concern to study categories of phenomena in isolation (Hartshorne, 1959). Much the same senti ments were expressed by physical geographers such as Miller or Wooldridge, who maintained a belief in the foundational role of physical geography for regional study, even where con nections were subtle or unclear: (NEW PARAGRAPH) . . . to hurry on content with a few shallow remarks based on perfunctory observation of the physical elements of the environment may result in overlooking or falsifying the natural intimacy of relation that nearly al ways exists between the physical and the cultural landscape. (Miller, 1953, p. 196) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Such convictions, although deeply situated, were rarely compellingly demonstrated, and the prevailing view of geography was one of numerous separate branches, united only in the far distant past (figure 2). Moreover, the very appeals to unity based upon identification or prescription of some essential property of geographical analysis may have contributed to the overshadowing of physical geography, both within geography and in relation to the other environmental sciences (Leighly, 1955). Leighly argued, very simply, that geographical study of any Earth surface phenomenon could be justified not for its own sake (as often mis represented) but because its existence in place gave it legitimacy as the subject of geograph ical enquiry. By contrast, a physical geography that required a more complex geographical justification for its material and methods ham pered progress in achieving scientific engage ment with the environment. This kind of physical geography (founded either in the dis closure of spatial associations or in the examination of human environment relations the contested identities of the sub ject: Turner, 2002) demanded a vocabulary and style of enquiry adapted to the scale and scope of landscape and regional study, which set it far apart from the other sciences, and which, throughout the latter half of the twen tieth century, did not seem relevant to their increasingly reductionist methodologies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) As regionalism itself receded from the geo graphical stage, the role and relations of phys ical geography were once more examined. By this time, climatology, geomorphology and ecology were all well advanced separately, and without areal relations as a touchstone, there were uncomfortable parallels with the identity crisis of earlier generations: (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is clear that physical geography, however (NEW PARAGRAPH) much it overlaps with the earth sciences, (NEW PARAGRAPH) must be distinguished from disciplines (NEW PARAGRAPH) which study terrestrial

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