Physical Geography and the Geographic Thought Course

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are offered to Kendra McSweeney and Paul Robbins for a number of very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

¹ Since John Arnfield's retirement in 2003, I have continued with the same conception that we developed together.

² Given the quarter system, this is a seminar that has to be completed in only 10 weeks.

³ See also the Forum (1999) On Methodology in Physical Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 89(4), pp. 677–778.

⁴ Though this may owe something to the fact that we teach in a department where physical geography means climatology.

⁵ We should note here that there is also a certain sub-field imperialism in that although books about geographic thought proclaim themselves as representing the field in its entirety (as indicated by the various book titles) this is virtually never the case and physical geography struggles to get a look in.

⁶ Though, emphatically, not concept-determined!

⁷ Specifically: “… ‘manipulation and control’ means manipulation and controls in the interests of particular groups in society (specifically, the industrial and financial community together with the middle class) rather than in the interests of society as a whole” (p. 122).

⁸ That is the case at least in Britain and the United States though not apparently everywhere; Sweden is an oft-cited instance where there are Departments of Human and Physical Geography respectively.

⁹ The idea of spatial prediction was another fascinating product of Bunge's lively imagination. By this he meant extrapolating in the two dimensions of space as opposed to the one dimension of time.

¹⁰ See also Haggett and Chorley (1969) on networks in human and physical geography.

¹¹ As in Oke's (1988) work on the impact of the built environment on micro-climates.