Geography is revolutionary. Consider the task that is set before every geographer: Make sense of the whole world and everything in it. To consider the world as a system of systems, to create tools in which it is possible to study the world in its entirety and its variety, and to help the world become a more sustainable one in which its people, animals, and plants can thrive, is a radical, or revolutionary, idea. It is fitting that the title of this book focuses on 100 discoveries that revolutionized geography, for the history of geography is a series of ideas and innovations that changed our world, shaping it into what it is today.
It is also fitting that the title of this book is Interpreting Our World: 100 Discoveries That Revolutionized Geography, for a chief task of geographers is to do just that—interpret the world. To even attempt to understand the complex, interconnected 21st-century world in which we live is a major feat. But not only do geographers unflinchingly take on this task, they do so in three ways: First, geographers bring deep and rich content knowledge to our world, from the way river systems work to the manner in which human populations are changing; from the impact that natural hazards have on locations and the people living in those locations to the impact that global trade has on transportation, energy, food security, and human health.
Second, geographers bring specific skills to understanding the world. The skills include knowing how to perform spatial analysis within a geographic information system (GIS) environment or how to operate a GPS receiver or an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Indeed, the development of these technologies have been revolutionary not just to geography but also to people’s everyday lives: Consider the number of times you have accessed a live Web map on your laptop, tablet, or phone, or one in a vehicle (light rail, train, or bus) in the past week. These live Web maps were developed in large part by geographers. Geographers make extensive use of tools, but they are also critical of their use, recognizing that even GIS often oversimplifies the complex nature of the Earth, or that map projections or map symbology can influence perceptions that people develop about the world and the data being portrayed.
And geographers are even critical of methods used by their own discipline, such as the research by Tuan and others who maintained that quantitative methods are useful but that the sense of place is still an important force acting in our world, one that is worthy of appreciation and study. This critical nature of geography has always been a part of the discipline: Robert Morden, who co-created a globe in the 1680s, declared in his Geography Rectified, or, A Description of the World (1693), “It is a boldness justifiable by truth, to affirm that all former Geographies diligently compared with the more accurate Observations and Discoveries of late years are greatly defective, and strangely erroneous.”
Other skills honed by geographers include quantitative and qualitative research techniques, thinking critically about data, and modeling geographic inquiry. The geographic inquiry model begins with asking thoughtful questions and moves to gathering data, assessing data, analyzing that data, interpreting the results, and making a decision and recommending solutions. This usually leads to additional questions. In fact, asking good questions is the most important part of the process. All of the revolutionary geographic thinkers described in this book asked difficult questions and sought to find the answers. Eratosthenes asked, “How large is the Earth?” Thomas Malthus asked, “What are the constraints that agricultural production could have on future population growth?” James Hutton asked, “What processes created the landforms that we see, and how do they work?”
Third, geographers bring the geographic, or spatial, perspective to issues and events. The geographic perspective considers scale, changes over space and time, the uniqueness of and commonalities between places and regions, and the importance of geographic patterns, relationships, and trends. It is, in short, a quest to understand “the whys of where.” The geographic perspective brings a holistic view while not neglecting the components of that whole. Geographers consider the impact on, above, and below the surface of the Earth of concepts such as atmospheric conditions, urbanization, land survey systems, agriculture, and ecoregions. Geographers bring a systems approach—they recognize that such things as climate, oceans, biomes, and the carbon cycle represent major systems that are interconnected but are also connected to other systems.
Nearly all of the innovations described in this book cut both ways: Geography influenced many scientific and cultural advancements, and conversely, the scientific and cultural advancements influenced geography. For example, photography was seized upon by geographers, who pushed it to airplanes and then satellites, allowing the research community to study the Earth from above. But aerial photography and remote sensing also influenced society, as Web mapping tools allowed the general public to see their planet from the skies, greatly aiding city planning, agriculture, archaeology, meteorology, and other disciplines. In another example, geographers had great influence on the environmental and land conservation movements, but these movements also had an influence on the research and teaching agenda in geography.
A major theme in geography is that of change, and the revolutions described in this book represent changes in ways of thinking about the Earth, or the way that the Earth is studied, or focus on changes that are occurring—some with increasing frequency—on the Earth. Earth changes include the increasing pace of population growth, of converting land use to agriculture or urban areas, and of biodiversity loss; the increasing impact of natural hazards on human populations; and the increasing pace of cultural change as a result of social media, mass media, and the Internet of Things.
As is evidenced by this book, the study of geography has changed over time, but there have been consistent themes throughout the centuries: Geographers see the world as an “arena” where “place and space” provide the context within which events, behaviors, and decision-making occurs. Geographers see the world as a mosaic of patterns and forms, a complex “map” of small areas and regions with characteristics that reflect interactions of the environment and human responses and actions. Geographers see the world as a system of systems—an interacting set of processes that can be understood through investigating cause-and-effect relationships. Geographers see the world as an organism in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Specialization is essential to develop focused skills to understand one aspect of the Earth system, but the holistic view of all of the systems remains important. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are useful.
Geographers have a keen sense of using their knowledge and skills to make a positive difference in society and in people’s lives; thus, geography is often an applied discipline. Many revolutionary discoveries in geography occurred as a result of applying geography to solve specific problems, such as determining how the location of the continents came to be (Alfred Wegener), determining how to map a three-dimensional Earth onto a flat surface (Gerardus Mercator), or determining one’s position on the Earth’s surface (GPS). Professor Gilbert White, for example, was not just a geographer who studied flood management, but he also contributed to society in significant ways: He sought to bring safe water to all the world’s people as a human right, sought how to significantly reduce the global toll of deaths and damages from natural hazards, and considered how to facilitate peace through joint water development and management, how to make geography and science more useful to the world, and how to enable people to coexist with nature and develop sustainably. These are noble goals, yet they are commonplace amongst geographers.
Many of the people described in this book made contributions far beyond geography. While space does not permit a lengthy reflection on these contributions, consider a few examples: Copernicus served as a diplomat and signed numerous peace treaties. Explorer and surveyor John Wesley Powell went on to become the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey and the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, where he helped publish an influential classification of North American Indian languages. He also was a champion for land preservation and conservation. His warnings about water in the West would go unheeded until the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Talbert Abrams, the “father of aerial photography,” held numerous patents on inventions ranging from anti-fogging devices, to electronic programmers for rockets, to radar cameras. He and his spouse also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to engineering scholarships for students.
Geographer Alastair Bonnett’s view of geography comes down to “human survival.” Indeed, today’s issues of the growing scarcity of land, water, and energy resources, the loss of biodiversity and cultural richness, and the threats to human health and well-being are all geographic issues. Geography in the 21st century in some ways has “arrived”—the issues that geographers have long cared about are now part of everyday public discourse. The perspectives that geographers bring are increasingly valued in the workplace. According to geographer Susan Hanson, this is the “geographic advantage”—that the ability to think geographically has something distinctive to offer. The tools that geographers and a few other scientists regularly used in the past, such as examining satellite imagery and using Web maps, are now part of the common human experience. The skills that geographers have long promoted, such as inquiry, critical thinking, and problem solving, are embedded into most educational content standards around the world.
People have long enjoyed creating and reading ranked lists. These lists existed in the “print-only” days but have proliferated on the Web, from the top 10 trending news stories of the day to the top 10 places to visit before you die. Rather than a ranked list, this book focuses on 100 discoveries that revolutionized geography. Thus, Carl Sauer is not more important than Halford Mackinder, nor is GPS more important than remote sensing. Each of the 100 people, events, technologies, organizations, or initiatives revolutionized the way geography was researched, taught, or perceived, revolutionized the way in which people understood the world, or influenced society. For example, Strabo brought history, people, and places together in his Geographica. Matthew Maury helped people think of the ocean as a system and not just a vast blue or green emptiness on a map. Carl Sauer saw cultural landscapes as reflecting a complex and changing set of processes that could best be studied through fieldwork.
Some discoveries are based on the vision of one or two people, such as Smith’s first geologic map of England and Wales—the first geologic map ever made. But even those discoveries were usually supported by colleagues who didn’t desert the visionaries: Not all of Ferdinand Magellan’s crew mutinied, and not all of Copernicus’s colleagues thought his heliocentric view of the solar system was unfounded. Some discoveries are of new lands, formerly terra incognita and at least new to those traveling through it for the first time, such as what Central Asia was to Marco Polo or what the Columbia River was to Lewis and Clark. Other discoveries are of phenomena, such as aspects of the magnetic field by Gauss or Léon Teisserenc de Bort’s discovery of the tropopause. Still other discoveries are of relationships, such as William Morris Davis’s work in the relationships among erosion, rivers, and landscapes, or William Smith’s concept of the stratigraphic sequence as he mapped surficial geology in England and Wales.
But why this set of 100 and not a different set? One could certainly argue that some others should be considered. For example, Robert McClure captained HMS Investigator to map the last uncharted section of the Northwest Passage and spent three years trapped in pack ice until the crew finally abandoned ship on foot. But in so doing, he became the first to circumnavigate the Americas and to transit the Northwest Passage. Besides McClure, other explorers were considered for this book, such as the Phoenician Hanno the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot, Francis Drake, Jacques Cartier, Daniel Boone, Bartolomeu Dias, and Jacques Cousteau. I also considered additional modern-day explorers, such as mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Reinhold Messner and astronauts Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong. Other notable contributors to geography were also considered: Thales, Hecataeus, and Pythagoras of Greece; Yu Gong and Xu Xiake of China; Suhrāb of Persia; Paul Vidal de la Blache of France; and Richard Hartshorne and Waldo Tobler of the United States. Other innovations and movements were considered, such as the Roman transportation system, computer-based decision support systems for management and planning, the first computer and first supercomputer, the mobile phone, the outdoor education movement, and sustainable and alternative transport and energy. And certainly, the automobile and electricity are both worthy considerations, as they have arguably done more to alter the planet’s physical and cultural geography than just about anything else. I leave it to others to make the case for these important advancements.
A number of prominent female geographers have made significant contributions, all of whom were considered for the book. Marie Tharp, a pioneer in mapping the ocean floor, co-discovered seafloor spreading. Ellen Eliza Fitz in 1875 obtained a patent for an invention to mount globes that showed the position of the sun and the length of days, nights, and twilight for the entire year. Emma Hart Willard became head of Troy Female Academy in New York in 1821. Dissatisfied with the textbooks of the period, she wrote her own, illustrated by one of her students, Elizabeth Sherrill. She also collaborated with William Channing Woodbridge on the influential text A System of Universal Geography on the Principles of Comparison and Classification. She also was one of the first geographers to show on maps accurate information on the distribution and migration of Native Americans in the eastern United States. Ellen Churchill Semple became one of the 48 charter members of the Association of American Geographers in 1904, and two years later, she began teaching at the first department of geography in the United States, at the University of Chicago, retaining that post until 1924. Gertrude Dole’s work concerned the evolution of social organization, especially in South America, and ecology and conservation. Contemporary female geographers making enormous contributions to the discipline that were also considered were Dawn Wright (included as a call out box), Arlene Diane Blum, and Janice Monk of the United States and Jane Goodall and Eleanor Rawlings of the United Kingdom.
One thread running through this book is evidence that geography is misunderstood by the general public and at times by the rest of academia, but at the same time it has become well established as a discipline with profound relevance to the “real world.” In part due to the perceived misperception by those outside the discipline, some geographers have made special efforts to communicate the importance and relevance of its subject matter. For example, Richard Assman, an atmospheric scientist, published the popular monthly magazine Das Wetter for over 30 years, in addition to his research and teaching duties.
The inclusion of Zheng He, James Cook, and others make it clear that exploration has long been important to the discipline. But the inclusion of many others in this book who did not venture to lands unknown should make it plain that geography does not equate to exploration of new lands. A central theme of geography is exploration—investigating and developing new techniques, perspectives, and tools and discovering new insights about the world in the process.
The stories in this book bring out another fundamental aspect of geography—that it is, at the same time, a natural science, a social science, and even one of the humanities. Indeed, one might argue that geography is ideally all three, which bring a unique richness to the subject. This contributes to the tension of research methods taking a quantitative or a qualitative approach, or even a scientific versus what some would consider a “non-scientific” approach.
Some discoveries are of places that the discoverers’ readers did not know about, such as Ibn Battuta Rihla’s expeditions to the Middle East, David Livingstone’s expeditions to Africa, or Ernest Shackleton’s, Robert Scott’s, or Roald Amundsen’s visits to Antarctica, or Cook’s visit to Hawaii. Other discoveries were of things that most people still are not aware of, even though the things impact their daily lives “behind the scenes,” such as Anaximander’s concept of unending creation and decay or Roger Tomlinson’s development of the world’s first GIS in Canada. Some of the discoveries are what a reader of a geography-themed book might expect, such as Magellan’s voyage around the world, or the development of globes. Some might be unexpected, such as supply chain management, or the astronaut’s view of the Earth. Some discoveries, such as Pliny’s description of volcanic processes, were developed long ago and refined over a long period of centuries, while others, such as the Internet of Things or UAVs, are so new that their effects are just beginning to be felt.
While the discoveries in this book are arranged in short chapters, most did not stand alone in space and time: Alexander Von Humboldt’s Kosmos echoed the grand tomes of Greek geographers from 2,000 years before. Zheng He’s voyages depended on the development of the magnetic compass. The development of UAVs depended on advances in GPS, remote sensing, and even photography. And GPS, in part, depended on Al-Biruni’s development of geodesy centuries before.
Despite the wide range of dates and places represented in this book, the geographers and others described here share many common traits. Nearly all of the people in this book were, from an early age, keenly interested in the world around them, and they pursued exploring mountains, valleys, ice sheets, oceans, and even outer space as their era allowed. Indeed, the geographer Carl Sauer said it well: “The geographer and the geographer-to-be are travelers, vicarious when they must, actual when they may. They are not of the class of tourists who are directed by guidebooks over the routes of the grand tours to the starred attractions, nor do they lodge at grand hotels. When vacation-bound they may pass by the places one is supposed to see and seek out byways and unnoted places where they gain the feeling of personal discovery. They enjoy striking out on foot, away from roads, and are pleased to camp out at the end of the day.”
Often, the people described in this book overcame physical or cultural hardships: Maury’s oceangoing days came to an end in a stagecoach accident at age 33, but he went on to make significant contributions to oceanography and geography. John Wesley Powell navigated the rapids of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with one arm. Guyot overcame the challenge of the closing of his department at Neuchâtel Academy in Switzerland by moving to Cambridge in the United States. He also faced a challenge as a result of his failure to publish much of his work, when others—even contemporaries such as Agassiz—received all the credit. Wegener completed his groundbreaking work while grappling with financial difficulty, war, economic depression, isolation and skepticism from the scientific community, illness, and injury. Mercator holed up in a cell while his region was being purged of Lutherans.
And most often, the people in this book were tenacious—they conducted hundreds of experiments and observations under every conceivable laboratory and outdoor condition, sometimes for years with little to show for their efforts. For example, in his atmospheric experiments, Teisserenc de Bort noticed that air temperature decreased up to 6.8 miles (11 kilometers) in height and thereafter remained constant. Yet for many years he was uncertain whether he had discovered a true physical phenomenon or whether his measurements had suffered from a systematic bias in that his instruments could have been heated by solar radiation. Therefore, de Bort carried out over 200 more balloon experiments, including at night to eliminate radiative heating, until 1902, when he at last had the confidence to suggest that the atmosphere was divided into two layers.
Some revolutionary figures, such as Maury and Von Humboldt, were recognized during their lifetimes as making significant contributions, while the contributions of others, such as Wegener and Smith, were not fully appreciated until after they had died. The ideas of some, such as Copernicus, were not widely accepted for several generations. Some, such as Marco Polo, knew that what they were doing was revolutionary, while it is doubtful that others, such as Columbus, were fully aware of their contributions. Many, such as Magellan, Cook, and Shackleton, died doing what they loved doing, out in the field, carrying out their goals of discovery and research.
The span of time represented in this book, from Homer to the development of today’s Web mapping tools, is vast—around 3,000 years. Yet even the old and new revolutions are sometimes linked: Through a modern “citizen science” project, for example, document fragments from Strabo are being deciphered. The places represented in this book span the globe, from Zheng He’s voyages from China, to the work of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta in India, to the work of Mackinder in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, progress and innovation in geography, like other disciplines, had some setbacks in its forward movement. For example, al-Idrisi’s map of the 1100s represented a better effort to locate place than the map of al-Istakhri from 934, but the geographical knowledge of India contained in it is inferior to that of al-Biruni’s map of 1021. Lastly, while a few of the revolutionary moments took place in a single department in a university (such as Ritter’s work at the University of Berlin), and others represented expeditions across entire oceans (such as Eriksson’s voyage to Newfoundland), all had global impact. And all of the revolutionary moments are, in many ways, still being felt.
If you are passionate about geography, you can use this book to introduce your friends and colleagues to the idea that geography is much different from the “place name memorization” that many still perceive it to be. You can use this book in your advocacy efforts for the increased teaching of geography in education and its application in society. Use it to support your arguments that geography is a science with deep roots but is more relevant today than ever before. In addition, as this book should make clear, geography is a high-tech field, embracing and leading the development of many key tools in use in our world today, such as remote sensing, GPS, GIS, field equipment, and Web mapping.
The following table may help you begin to explore this book:
If you are interested in: |
Begin with these entries: |
Explorers |
Antarctica; Columbus, Christopher; Cook, James; Eriksson, Leif; Ibn Battuta; Lewis and Clark; Magellan, Ferdinand; Zheng He |
Technological Innovations |
Aerial Photography; Cross-Staffs, Astrolabes, and Other Devices; Geographic Information Systems (GIS); Global Positioning Systems (GPS); Harrison, John; Internet of Things; Photography; Supply Chain Management; Surveying; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; Web Mapping |
Ways of Thinking |
Christaller, Walter; Marsh, George Perkins; Time; Topophilia; Wegener, Alfred |
Events |
Earth in Space; International Geophysical Year; Latitude and Longitude |
Maps |
Al-Idrisi, Muhammad; French Geodesic Mission; Mercator, Gerardus; Pei Xiu; Universalis Cosmographia; Web Mapping |
Innovative Geographers |
Aryabhata and Brahmagupta; Davis, William Morris; Eratosthenes; Hutton, James; Sauer, Carl O.; Von Humboldt, Alexander |
Societal Forces |
Citizen Science; Environmental Movement; Land Protection |
For educators seeking to teach with this book, there are many ways in which to do so. For example, ask your students to read the book in its entirety or specific portions of it. Ask them to choose and rank the 20 discoveries that they consider to be the “most revolutionary.” What criteria did they use to make their selection? Can they create a compelling presentation in which they make a strong case for why their choices are sound?
The limited space in this book allows only short glimpses into the lives of the people who have made a contribution to geography. Ask students to select a character that is particularly compelling and to conduct further research into the person and his or her contributions. What were that person’s strengths? What were that person’s weaknesses? What were the challenges that person overcame? Why were his or her contributions revolutionary to geography? Where would geography and society be without that person’s contributions?
Ask students to research a discovery that revolutionized geography that is not in this book. What is their argument for why this discovery needs to be considered? Ask students to create a Web map, such as a story map where the 100 discoveries are mapped and described.
Some of the people and events in this book remain controversial. Conduct some research on why Columbus, the Treaty of Tordesillas, and the Great Trigonometric Survey of India are controversial, for example. Why are there privacy concerns about modern geographic innovations such as Web mapping, UAVs, and the Internet of Things?
Ask students to consider some of the key characteristics of the geographers and other researchers and explorers in this book. What characteristics do they feel are most important? Ask students to consider the future: What discoveries do they anticipate being revolutionary to geography during the remainder of the 21st century? What future discoveries do they feel the world needs?
It is my hope that this book will be useful to many. As a lifelong geographer, I have a keen interest in the subject. I am proud to have played a role in several of these revolutions: I served as a geographer at the U.S. Census Bureau during the late 1980s when the first nationwide digital street map—the TIGER system—was being built. Those were exciting times—we had a keen sense that we were building something that had never been done before, something that would revolutionize not just census taking, but also all facets of society. I helped the U.S. Geological Survey convert its paper topographic maps and aerial photographs to digital files that became the base maps for modern GIS. I helped the National Council for Geographic Education revise the geography standards, and I have been active for 25 years in educating teachers, professors, and students in geotechnologies—GPS, GIS, Web mapping, and remote sensing. I marvel at how much easier spatial analysis has become, thanks to the advent of Web mapping tools and digital spatial data. I co-wrote books on the environment and on implications of digital spatial data, including crowdsourcing and location privacy.
More importantly, think about the geographic revolutions that you have lived through. Think about the number of times this week when you have accessed an online map to navigate somewhere or to do some research on a place. Imagine a world where geographic considerations were not brought into decisions. The ramifications of such an “aspatial” world would be grim indeed. While we are far from the point where societies regularly consider geography in local, regional, national, and international decisions, thanks in large part to the revolutionary moments mentioned here, we are on our way to a smarter planet and a better life for its people.
Bonnett, Alastair. 2012. Geography: What’s the Big Idea? Geography 97(1): 39–41.
Dikshit, R. D., and Das Animesh. 2004. Geographical Thought: A Contextual History of Ideas. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India Pvt Ltd.
Hanson, Susan. 2004. “Who Are ‘We’? An Important Question for Geography’s Future.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94(4): 715–722.
Lambert, David. 2013. “Geography in School and a Curriculum of Survival.” Theory and Research in Education 11(1): 85–98.
Martin, Geoffrey J., and Preston E. James. 1993. All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Pitzl, Jerry. 2004. Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.