WHAT IS THE SCOPE AND VALUE OF GEOGRAPHY?

THE SCOPE OF GEOGRAPHY

Today geography is rooted in location, but it involves more than the position of place-names on a map. It integrates methods and knowledge from different disciplines and encompasses both the physical and the social sciences. It links all these disciplines to determine why things happen in a particular location or according to particular patterns.

Physical geography incorporates geology, climatology, biology, ecology, hydrology, and other natural sciences. Human geography includes cultural anthropology, economics, political science, history, demography, and other social sciences. Cartography, which is the art and science of map making, provides graphic representations of geographic settings. Geographers also use other tools in their data gathering, analysis, and representation-tools including statistics, photographs, remotely captured images (such as satellite photos), and computer-generated graphics.

Ancient cultures such as the Egyptian, Phoenician, and Chinese amassed geographical understanding, but few of those records survive, and so the Greeks have become today's main source of early knowledge. Homer's epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, written in the ninth century B.C., reveal the Greeks as intrepid travelers and keen observers of distant lands. They also excelled in scientific inquiry. Aristotle, for example, sought to determine the size and natural of Earth in the fourth century B.C.

Geographic knowledge advanced exponentially during the heyday of exploration by both European and Asian explorers in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Mapping, surveying, and specimen collecting became stock activities on every voyage.

In the 21st century, a few computer clicks can bring up photo images or map information for much of Earth's surface. We take for granted the ability to get directions to almost anywhere we need to go, without our needs to plot the course of the map.

Modern science and information gathering have given geographers more insight than ever before, and modern technology allows it to be shared worldwide, but for many people the facts and terms lack a context.

PTOLEMY / ANCIENT GEOGRAPHER

Born in Egypt of Greek ancestry, Claudius Ptolemy (ca A.D. 90-168) created a body of work synthesizing the Greco-Roman world's knowledge of cartography, mathematics, and astronomy. His eight-volume Geography offered instructions and information for preparing a world atlas, including a world map and 26 regional maps. He also refined a number of map projections and provided a list of some 8,000 place names and their coordinates. Almagest, his 13-volume treatise on astronomy, posited a geocentric model of the solar system, and his four-book tried to reconcile astrology with more scientific matters. Ptolemy's influence on geography and cartography spread through Arabic translations made by Islamic scholar, and influenced near Eastern and Western geographic and cartographic thought for centuries.

THE VALUE OF GEOGRAPHY

The value of geography or its importance include the following:

It enables man to have a better understanding of his environment.
Geography raises issues, problems and solutions vital to modern society.
It consists of knowledge of the world around us, i.e. it enables us to study the ways of lives of other people in other parts of the world.
A well-trained geographer can perform many vital roles in the politics and socio-economic sector of the society. He can use his geographical knowledge in such areas as urban, economic, rural or regional planning.
Geography helps us to understand some other related topics in physics, chemistry, biology, economics, history, mathematics e.t.c.
It enables us to have a better understanding of physical things around us such as vegetation, climate, rivers, soil, oceans, mountains e.t.c.
It enables us to choose a career from which we can earn a living.