Geographical information is so useful that the student is likely to overlook the scientific importance of geography in itself. The articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica described in this chapter, besides giving the fullest information on countries, cities, towns, rivers, mountains, etc., trace the development of the science from its beginning; and the gradual increase of geographical knowledge, as told in the Britannica, is a story of fine out-of-door adventure, of just the kind of spirited action that has supplied the theme of the most popular works of fiction.
This chapter will suggest an outline course of reading in geography, systematically grouping the more important articles in the Britannica.
The starting point for this course of study is the article Geography (Vol. 11, p. 619), equivalent in length to 70 pages of this Guide, written by Hugh R. Mill, author of Hints on the Choice of Geographical Books, etc. The story that it tells us is a most interesting one.
What Early Writers Taught about the Earth
The early Greeks thought of the earth as a flat disk, circular or elliptical in outline; and even in Homeric times this supposition had “acquired a special definiteness by the introduction of the idea of the ocean river bounding the whole.” Hecataeus recognized two continents on the circular disk. Herodotus, traveler and historian both (see the article Herodotus Vol. 13, p. 381, by George Rawlinson and Edward M. Walker), who knew only the lands around the roughly elliptical Mediterranean Sea, was certain that the earth was not a circle because it was longer from east to west than from north to south, and he distinguished three continents, adding Africa to Europe and Asia. “The effect of Herodotus’s hypothesis that the Nile must flow from west to east before turning north in order to balance the Danube running from west to east before turning south lingered in the maps of Africa down to the time of Mungo Park.” Aristotle (see also the article Aristotle, Vol. 2, p. 501, by Thomas Case, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and author of Physical Realism, etc.,) was the real founder of scientific geography. “He demonstrated the sphericity of the earth by three arguments, two of which are important ... only a sphere could always throw a circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse; and that the shifting of the horizon and the appearance of new constellations ... as one travelled from north to south, could only be explained on the hypothesis that the earth was a sphere.... He formed a comprehensive theory of the variations of climate with latitude and season ... speculated on the differences in the character of races of mankind living in different climates, and correlated the political forms of communities with their situation on a seashore, or in the neighborhood of natural strongholds.” The article Ptolemy (Vol. 22, p. 618), equivalent to 27 pages of this Guide, by the late Sir Edward Herbert Bunbury, the historian of ancient geography, and Dr. C. R. Beazley, author of The Dawn of Modern Geography, etc., should be studied in conjunction with the summary, in the article Geography, of Ptolemy’s achievements. “He concentrated in his writings the final outcome of all Greek geographical learning,” but his great aim was to collect and compare all existing determinations of latitude and estimates of longitude, and to solve the problem of representing the curved surface of the earth on the flat surface of a map.
Geography in the Middle Ages
The science of geography was at a low ebb in Christendom during the Middle Ages, when verbal interpretation of the Scriptures led the Church to oppose the spherical theory and also the theory of the motion of the earth. But among the Arabs, geography was kept alive—especially by Al-Mamun (see the article Mamun) (Vol. 17, p. 533), who had Ptolemy translated into Arabic.
New World: New Geography
The story of the great discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries is outlined later in the article Geography. The effect on geographical theory was enormous.
The old arguments of Aristotle and the old measurements of Ptolemy were used by Toscanelli and Columbus in urging a westward voyage to India; and mainly on this account did the crossing of the Atlantic rank higher in the history of scientific geography than the laborious feeling out of the coast-line of Africa. But not until the voyage of Magellan shook the scales from the eyes of Europe did modern geography begin to advance. Discovery had outrun theory; the rush of new facts made Ptolemy practically obsolete in a generation, after having been the fount and origin of all geography for a millennium.