# Philosophy of geography

Part of a series on :
Geography :
Portal
Outline :
History of geography
Graeco-Roman
Chinese
Islamic
Age of Discovery
History of cartography
Historical geography
Environmental determinism
Regional geography
Quantitative revolution
Critical geography :
Human geographyFields
Behavioral
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Critical
Cultural
Animal
Children's
Economic
Agricultural
Cyber
Development
Financial
Histo-economic
Labor
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Retail
Theoretical economic
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Language
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Emotional
Neo
Sexuality
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Time
Historical
Palaeo
Time
Imagined
Internet
Political
Critical geopolitics
Electoral
Geopolitics
Strategic
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Population
Settlement
Regional
Urban
Music
Transport
Social
Tourism
Tropical :
Physical geographyFields
Biogeography
Ecology
Phytogeography
Zoogeography
Climatology / Paleoclimatology / Palaeogeography
Coastal geography/ Oceanography
Earth science
Geology
Geomorphology
Glaciology
Hydrology / Hydrography
Landscape ecology
Limnology
Pedology
Quaternary science :
Technical geographyFields
Geodesign
Geodesy
Geoinformatics
Geographic information science
Geomatics
Statistical geography
Spatial analysis :
Integrated geographyFields
Environmental social science
Environmental studies
Landscape architecture
Landscape ecology
Time geography :
Methods
Quantitative
Cartography
Computer cartography
Web mapping
Geochronology
Geographic information system
Distributed GIS
Internet GIS
Web GIS
Geologic modelling
Geomathematics
Geostatistics
Geovisualization
Global Positioning System
Hydrography
Map algebra
Participant observation
Photogrammetry
Remote Sensing
Statistical survey
Surveying
Land change modeling
Qualitative
Ethnography
Geopoetics
Interview (research)
Survey (human research) :
Theoretical Approaches
Behavioral
Critical
Feminist
Marxist
Non-representational theory
Modernism
Structuralism
Semiotics
Postmodernism
Post-structuralism
Deconstruction :
Societies
Index
Geographers :
vte :
Philosophy of geography is the subfield of philosophy which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and axiological issues in geography, with geographic methodology in general, and with more broadly related issues such as the perception and representation of space and place.
Though methodological issues concerning geographical knowledge have been debated for centuries, Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) is often credited with its first major systematic treatment in English, The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past, which appeared in 1939, and which prompted several volumes of critical essays in subsequent decades. John Kirtland Wright (1891–1969), an American geographer notable for his cartography and study of the history of geographical thought, coined the related term geosophy in 1947, for this kind of broad study of geographical knowledge. Other books oft-cited as key works in the field include David Harvey's 1969 Explanation in Geography and Henri Lefebvre's 1974 The Production of Space. It was a discussion of issues raised by the latter which in part inspired the founding of a Society for Philosophy and Geography in the 1990s.

## Modern

The Society for Philosophy and Geography was founded in 1997 by Andrew Light, a philosopher later at George Mason University, and Jonathan Smith, a geographer at Texas A&M University. Three volumes of an annual peer-reviewed journal, Philosophy and Geography, were published by Rowman & Littlefield Press which later became a bi-annual journal published by Carfax publishers. This journal merged with another journal started by geographers, Ethics, Place, and Environment, in 2005 to become Ethics, Place, and Environment: A journal of philosophy and geography published by Routledge. The journal was edited by Light and Smith up to 2009, and has published work by philosophers, geographers, and others in allied fields, on questions of space, place, and the environment broadly construed. It has come to be recognized as instrumental in expanding the scope of the field of environmental ethics to include work on urban environments.
In 2009 Smith retired from the journal and Benjamin Hale from the University of Colorado came on as the new co-editor. Hale and Light relaunched the journal in January 2011 as Ethics, Policy and Environment. While the journal has since focused more on the relationship between environmental ethics and policy, it still welcomes submissions on relevant work from geographers.
A book series, also initially published by Rowman & Littlefield, and later by Cambridge Scholars Press, began in 2002 to publish the transactions of the Society for Philosophy and Geography's annual meetings, organized by Gary Backhaus and John Murungi of Towson University. In 2005 the society sponsoring these annual meetings became the International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place, and in 2009 the book series gave way to a peer-reviewed journal, Environment, Space, Place, published semiannually and currently edited by C. Patrick Heidkamp, Troy Paddock, and Christine Petto of Southern Connecticut State University.