provoke, significant discussion, an there have
been several refinements and alternatives
(Salmon, 1990). Harvey (1969) made the D–
N model the gold standard for explanation in
geography, but even at the time he recognized
that few geographical events could be located
within such a stringent framework, given the
absence of geographical laws on which explan-
ation would have to depend. By the late 1970s
there was a movement away from the D–N
model of explanation. Geographers were still
concerned to explain events and phenomena,
but they cast around for less narrowly con-
ceived approaches, ones that recognized that
the discipline centred on specific and contin-
gentcase studiesrather than a larger statis-
tical universe of events. For many human
geographers in the 1980s the philosophy of
realism, with its conceptual vocabulary of
causal powers and liabilities, and contingent
and necessary relations, offered a consistent
explanatory framework couched in terms of
causation and contingency. While realism
is still in use, there is a sense that even its
definition of explanation remains too closely
defined by a natural scientific sensibility.
Consequently, it is inappropriate for those
forms of human geography that draw upon
interpretive, non-essentialistand evennon-
representational theory. The task is to
re-conceive explanation in a form appropriate
tohuman geography’s new guise. tb
Suggested reading
Harvey (1969).
exploration At its basic level, exploration is
usually taken to refer to the growth of know-
ledge of theglobethat resulted from various
voyages of discovery and scientific exped-
itions. But the very vocabulary of discovery
andexploration is contested by revisionists,
who query its appropriateness in contexts
where it is more morally responsible to speak
ofinvasion,conquestoroccupation. The reason
is that these labels unmask the pretended
innocence and ethical neutrality that the
standard scientific-sounding idioms convey
(seeethics).
Whatever the allocation of moral account-
ability, there can be no doubting the signifi-
cance of what Driver (2001) calls the ‘cultures
of exploration’ on the scientific enterprise in
general and the development of geography in
particular (see alsogeography, history of).
Traditional chroniclers of these exploits have
tended towards a progressivist interpretation
of scientific knowledge, cartographic history
and global awareness (Baker, 1931). The vast
maritime expeditions of Cheˆng Ho from 1405
to 1433, for example, have been commended
for their contributions to Chinese marinecar-
tographyand descriptive geography, although,
in contrast to later voyages, the purpose of the
mission was neither the garnering of ‘scientific’
information nor commercial conquest (Chang,
1971). Similarly, the writings of Ibn Battuta
during the late Middle Ages have been read as
an encyclopaedic conspectus of the Islamic
world (Boorstin, 1983).
It is, however, with the European voyages
of Reconnaissance during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries that putative connections
between scientific ‘progress’ and geographical
‘exploration’ begin to be more closely
associated (see alsoscience; travel-writing).
Writers such as Hale (1967), Parry (1981) and
O’Sullivan (1984) suggest that the first scientific
laboratory was the world itself and that ‘the voy-
ages of discovery’ were in a fundamental sense
experiments to test the validity of Renaissance
geographical concepts. In such scenarios, the
names of Bartholomew Dias, Vasco da Gama,
Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan
and, perhaps most of all, ‘Prince Henry the
Navigator’ assume heroic status.
Indeed, the reciprocal links between voy-
ages of exploration and scientific enterprises
were deep and lasting. Francis Bacon reflected
in hisNovum organumof 1620 (§ lxxxiv) that
the opening up of the geographical world
through such expeditions foreshadowed the
expansion of the ‘boundaries of the intellec-
tual globe’’ beyond the confines of ‘the narrow
discoveries of the ancients’. Support for this
interpretation has come from those attaching
crucial significance to the Portuguese encour-
agement of navigational science and math-
ematical practice through the work of the
Jewish map- and instrument-maker Mestre
Jacome. This Jewish tradition of Mallorcan
cartography, instrumentation and nautical sci-
ence was perpetuated by Abraham Zacuto and
Joseph Vizinho, while Francesco Faleiro,
Garcia da Orta and Pedro Nun ̃es did much
to further medicinal botany, cartography and
natural history during the first half of the
sixteenth century (Goodman, 1991). Such
accomplishments have been canvassed to sub-
stantiate the claim that thisJewishstyle of
sixteenth-century Portuguese science pro-
vided the catalyst for ‘the emergence of mod-
ern science in Western Europe’ (Hooykaas,
1979; Banes, 1988, p. 58).
Nevertheless, even partisan commentators
concede that the scientific advances of theGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 230 1.4.2009 3:17pmEXPLORATION