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Kantianism A philosophy developed by
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) (see Kuehn,
2001). Kant’s conception of the nature of
geographyand its location within the system
of knowledge as a whole provided the basis
for a series of major disagreements in the
twentieth-century discipline (see May, 1970).
Kant considered that knowledge could be
classified in two ways: either logically or
physically (cf.classification): ‘The logical
classification collects all individual items in
separate classes according to similarities of
morphological features; it could be called
something like an ‘‘archive’’ and will, if pur-
sued, lead to a ‘‘natural system’’’ (Bu ̈ttner and
Hoheisel, 1980). In a ‘natural system’, Kant
noted, ‘I place each thing in its class, even
though they are to be found in different,
widely separated places’ (cited in Hartshorne,
1939). He assumed this to be the method of all
the sciences except history and geography,
which depended, in contrast, on physical
classification. The physical classification col-
lects individual items that ‘belong to the same
time or the same space’. In this connection,
Kant asserted:
History differs from geography only in the
consideration of time and [space]. The for-
mer is a report of phenomena that follow
one another (Nacheinander) and has refer-
ence to time. The latter is a report of phe-
nomena beside each other (Nebeneinander)
in space. History is a narrative, geography a
description. Geography and history fill up
the entire circumference of our perceptions:
geography that of space, history that of time.
(Kant, cited in Hartshorne, 1939)
Although Kant’s views on geography were
broadly similar to those of architects of the
modern discipline like von Humboldt and
Hettner, they appear to have had ‘no direct
influence’ other than ‘as a form of confirm-
ation’ (Hartshorne, 1958; but cf. Bu ̈ttner
and Hoheisel, 1980). Indeed, they were not
explicitly endorsed in any programmatic
statement of the scope of geography in
English until Hartshorne’s account of The
nature of geography (1939), which accepted
that geography’s basic task was essentially
Kantian:Geography and history are alike in that they
are integrating sciences concerned with
studying the world. There is, therefore, a
universal and mutual relation between
them, even though their bases of integration
are in a sense opposite – geography in terms
of earth spaces, history in terms of periods
of time.
Others were more sceptical. Blaut (1961) con-
cluded that, for Kant,
Knowledge about the spatial location of
objects is quite distinct from knowledge
about their true nature and the natural
laws governing them. The latter sorts of
knowledge are eternal and universal, are
truly scientific [whereas] spatial and tem-
poral co-ordinates are separate and rather
secondary attributes of objects, and spatial
and temporal arrangement of objects is not
a matter for science.
Like Schaefer (1953), therefore, Blaut saw
Kant as the originator of anexceptionalism
that was inimical to theexplanationsand gen-
eralizations (rather than mere ‘descriptions’)
required for geography to be reconstituted as
aspatial science. That this was not a neces-
sary consequence was later demonstrated by
Torsten Ha ̈gerstrand, who revitalized Kant’s
distinction in order to demonstrate the possi-
bility of a recognizably scientific approach to
physical orderings. Althoughtime-geography
was predicated on a rejection of divisions
between ‘history’ and ‘geography’, ‘time’ and
‘space’, the contrast that Ha ̈gerstrand drew
between a conventionalcompositionalapproach
and his owncontextualapproach paralleled that
between ‘logical’ and ‘physical’ classifications
(seecontextuality).
Most of the foregoing formulations
depended on Kant’s lectures onphysical
geographydelivered from 1755 to 1796 and
recovered from various notes, but other
writers drew attention to Kant’sCritique of
pure reason(1781) and its emphasis on ‘the
structuring activity of the thinking subject’ to
develop an alternative to spatial science:
Space is not something objective and real,
nor is it a substance or an accident, or a
relation,but itissubjectiveandidealandGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_K Final Proof page 399 31.3.2009 2:26pm