- 1 Julian Huxley, The Humanist Frame (New York: Harper, 1961); and idem, Religion Without Revelation (London: Watts, 1967).
- 2 “History, in contradistinction to nature, is full of events; here the miracle of accident and infinite improbability occurs so frequently that it seems strange to speak of miracles at all. But the reason for the frequency is merely that historical processes are created and constantly interrupted by human initiative, by the initium man is insofar as he is an acting being.” Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Present (Cleveland: World, 1966), p. 169.
- 3 It is far from my intention, or that of any humanist, to belittle the wondrous accomplishments of nonhuman animals. As an example of what they can do, see Karl von Frisch, Animal Architecture (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974). In his conclusion, Karl von Frisch wrote: “We humans are proud of our inventions. But can we discern greater merit in our capabilities than in those of the master builders who unconsciously follow their instinct?… There are biologists who are convinced that they, or future generations of scientists will ultimately find the key to life in all its manifestations, if only research perseveres. They are to be pitied.” Op. cit., pp. 286–287.
- 4 “Let the argument [for the new geography] start from the spiritual ancestry of man rather than from his animal origins, put human will and aspiration and effort first, and the terrestrial domain second—it is after all underneath our feet if we stand up—and the old premises which have clamped us down so long must vanish, and maybe a new birth will be given to a most ancient part of knowledge.”William A. Auld, “Towards a New Geography,”Nature, Vol. 147 (1941), p. 548. My thanks to Fred E. Lukermann for this reference; it is an early trumpet call for humanistic geography.
- 5 John W. Berry, “Temne and Eskimo Perceptual Skills,”International Journal of Psychology, Vol. 1 (1966), pp. 207 29. An abstract and schematic account of the relation of culture to knowledge of space is in Georges Gurvitch, The Social Frameworks of Knowledge (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972).
- 6 Thomas Gladwin, East Is A Big Bird: Navigation and Logic on Puluwat Atoll (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). The book is more than a study of Micronesian navigation. Its broader frame of concern is the relation between spatial ability and spatial knowledge.
- 7 Cosmologies and their spatial structure are far more complex in West African societies than among tribes in Central and East Africa; Victor W. Turner, “Symbols in African Rituals,”Science, Vol. 179 (1973), pp. 1104 05.
- 8 Susanne K. Langer strongly criticized the ethological model of human behavior in Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp. 54–116. She compared and contrasted animal and human acts, animal and human perceptions of space and place. See also W. H. Thorpe, Animal Nature and Human Nature (London: Methuen, 1974).
- 9 Paul Leyhausen, “Dominance and Territoriality as Complemented in Mammalian Social Structure,” in Aristide H. Esser, ed., Behavior and Environment: The Use of Space by Animals and Men (New York: Plenum, 1971), p. 26.
- 10 A. Irving Hallowell, Culture and Experience (New York: Schocken, 1967), p. 210.
- 11 I have explored this theme in two papers, Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective,”Progress in Geography, Vol. 6 (1974), pp. 211 52; and Place: An Experiential Perspective,”Geographical Review, Vol. 65 (1975), pp. 151 65; see also Edward Relph, “The Phenomenon of Place,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1973.
- 12 Gunter Gad, “‘Crowding’ and ‘Pathologies’: Some Critical Remarks,”Canadian Geographer, Vol. 17 (1973), pp. 373 90; and Patricia Draper, “Crowding among Hunter-Gatherers: The !Kung Bushmen.”Science, Vol. 182 (1973), pp. 301–03.
- 13 See Jean-Paul Sartre's well-known analysis of the problem of the existence of others in Being and Nothingness (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966), particularly the section called “The Look,” pp. 340–400.
- 14 A. F. Westin, Privacy and Freedom (New York: Atheneum, 1967); and J. Plant, “Some Psychiatric Aspects of Crowded Living Conditions,”American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 9 (1930), pp. 849 60.
- 15 O. F. Bollnow, “Lived-Space,” in N. Lawrence and D. O'Connor, eds., Readings in Existential Phenomenology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice–Hall, 1967), pp. 185–86.
- 16 I put in the qualifier “almost” advisedly. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson wrote: “Noneconomic activity is not unknown amongst animals. The pelicans, whose economic life is all at water level, spend time soaring high in the air in the company of cranes. The elaboration of the dominance system amongst many species seems to be greater than is necessary for social discipline—it gives the creatures, so to say, an object in life beyond merely keeping alive.” Joan Robinson, Freedom and Necessity: An Introduction to the Study of Society (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970), p. 24.
- 17 The social scientist is tempted to exaggerate the way in which various human activities are related. As Ernest Gellner put it: “More merit attaches to showing that a feud really contributes to the coherence of the group, or that the religious ritual has important economic consequences, etc., than to saying that the overtly or apparently economic really is such, or that the apparently pointless ritual really has no point at all.” Ernest Gellner, Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 89.
- 18 Richard B. Lee, “What Hunters Do for a Living, or, How to Make Out on Scarce Resources,” in Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter. (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), pp. 30–48; and Marshall Sahlins, “Notes on the Original Affluent Society,” ibid., pp. 85–89.
- 19 Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Panteon, 1970), p. x.
- 20 David Lowenthal, “Past Time, Present Place; Landscape and Meaning,”Geographical Review, Vol. 65 (1975), pp. 1 36.
- 21 Herbert A. Simon identifies the complexity of human behavior as a reflection primarily of the outer (artificial) environment; The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge: MIT Press paperback edition, 1970).
- 22 For example, Jean Piaget and BÅbel Inhelder, The Child's Conception of Space (New York: Norton, 1967).
- 23 “I feel that I can cooperate best by discussing what it is in ethology that could be of use to other behavioral sciences. What we ethologists do not want … is uncritical application of our results to man. Instead, I myself at least feel that it is our method of approach, our rationale, that we can offer, and also a little simple common sense, and discipline.”N. Tinbergen, “On War and Peace in Animals and Man,”Science, Vol. 160 (1968), p. 1412.
- 24 Phenomenologists and philosophers concerned with the symbol have influenced my perspective on humanistic geography. A short list of names would include Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, and Nelson Goodman.
- 25 The Geography of Strabo, translated by H. L. Jones (London: Heinemann, 1917), Vol. 1, pp. 16 and 19.
- 26 Michael Gelven, Winter, Friendship, and Guilt: The Sources of Self-Inquiry (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973), pp. 12–20.
- 27 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio, translated by Marianne Cowan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), p. 407.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Volume 66, 1976 - Issue 2