Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
How geographers work
This chapter turns to those aspects of geography concerned
with methods and applications. It attempts to answer two
main questions. First, what are the necessary skills that
enable geographers to understand their world or, in other words,
what are geography's tools of trade? The second question is,
does the contribution made by geography to society make a
difference?
Geography's key methods and skills
Throughout its history, geography has built a reputation as
an empirical discipline and the practice of applied geography
continues to have considerable resonance. In many ways, these
qualities were inevitable. Geography started with maps as the
products of exploration, discovery, and the careful recording of
data, and these have been the essential tools for a wide range of
human enterprises. Geography developed with the compilation
of inventories of regions and places, the basic building-blocks
for much of our knowledge of the Earth's surface. The so-called
'comparative method', which involved comparison of the
different combinations of factors affecting different places on
the Earth's surface, was often the fi rst step to achieving a deeper
understanding.
