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philosophy The relationship between phil-
osophy andgeographyhas been a long and
interesting one. To provide examples from a
broadly Western tradition: Strabo argued for a
close and necessary relationship between
moral philosophy and geographical know-
ledge; Sir Isaac Newton published his own
editions of Varenius’Geographia generalisin
1672 and 1681; Immanuel Kant lectured on
physical geographythroughout his teaching
career (1755–96); and in a 1976 interview
Michel Foucault declared that geography
‘must necessarily lie at the heart of my con-
cerns’. Each of these authors had a different
view of philosophy, of course, but also of geog-
raphy and geographical knowledge. For
Strabo,chorographywas to provide empir-
ical particulars for reflection on truth, nobility
and virtue (and also to underwrite Roman
imperialism); Newton was interested in a
mixed mathematical–spatial conception of
geography; Kant’s lectures were descriptive,
comprising a series of observations about
oceans, landforms and the weather, an outline
of the plant, animal and mineral ‘kingdoms’,
and a survey of the ‘four parts of the world’
(asia, africa, europe and america); and
Foucault’s remark arose from his forensic
enquiries into the relationships between
power, knowledge and space.
Historians of geography had been keenly
aware of this historical itinerary – at least as
far as Kant – and major studies in the history
of geography (seegeography, history of)
paid close attention to philosophical reflections
on the tangled relationships between ‘culture’
and nature, notably Glacken’s landmark
(1967) survey. But modern geography was slow
to treat philosophy as a guide to contemporary
enquiries, and interest in it was, at first, largely
informal. Hartshorne’s (1939) exegesis ofThe
nature of geographyrepeatedly turned to Kant to
underwrite a view of concept-formation in
geography asidiographic, concerned with
the unique and the particular, but this was not
the product of any rigorous engagement with
Kant’s lectures on physical geography or their
place within his work as a whole, still less with
kantianismwrit large. Even the repudiation of
Hartshorne’s views in the 1960s was less
informed by philosophy than it was driven by
the desire to reconstruct geography as aspatial
science: its foundations in the philosophy of
science (and in particularpositivism) were not
codified until Harvey’sExplanation in geography
(1969).
In contrast, the critique of spatial science
and the formation of a series of successorprojects undoubtedly depended on – and in
several cases were directed by – explorations
of different, avowedly post-positivist philoso-
phies. Many of these approaches sought, like
positivism orlogical positivism, to identify a
sort of central generating mechanism (see
essentialism) and to ground their knowledge
claims in a bedrock of certainty (seefounda-
tionalism). Thus the first explorations of
post-positivist philosophies in human geog-
raphy typically found their anchors in the
human subject, language or the mind (Gale
and Olsson, 1979: see alsohumanistic geog-
raphy; phenomenology; structuralism).
But these are deep waters, and at the time
many geographers navigated them by treating
philosophy as a ready-made ‘machine for
explanation’ through which geographical cases
were to be fed (Barnes, 2008a); there was little
sense of aconversationbetween philosophy and
geography. Johnston’s (1983) mapping of
‘philosophy’ on to the terrain of ‘human geog-
raphy’ was typical in the privilege it accorded
to philosophy, and it proved to be a template
for other general surveys. Even Sayer’s (1984)
influentialwork,oneof the most philosophic-
ally astute investigations of the period, limited
placeandspaceto context and circumstance;
the architectonics of explanation were derived
directly from the principles of criticalrealism.
Pickles’ (1985) careful reading of phenomen-
ology (principally Edmund Husserl and
Martin Heidegger) was almost alone in its
recognition ofspatialityas a crucial concern
of both philosophy and human geography.
Olsson’s (1980, 1991, 2007) imperturbable
odyssey through philosophy (and beyond)
not only had much to say to human geograph-
ers but also focused directly on some of the
root-concepts in the field, especially since its
reworking through spatial science: but it
was conducted in such an exquisitely abstract
register that many readers were probably
lost en route. Part way through Olsson’s
quest, the rise ofpostmodernismin human
geography (and across the spectrum of the
humanities and social sciences) did much
to distract attention from the sort ofmodern-
ism that informed projects like Olsson’s.
Postmodernism, in concert (and often in ten-
sion) with the other ‘posts’,post-colonialism
andpost-structuralism, brought new writers
to the attention of human geography at large.
Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault were
perhaps the most prominent, later followed
by Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Gilles
Deleuze and others. But whether any of these
figures could properly be limited to the field ofGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 530 1.4.2009 3:20pmPHILOSOPHY