Abstract
IN her presidential address to Section E (Geography), Prof. E. G. R. Taylor points out that, while everyone admits that ‘circumstances of place’, that is, geography, are relevant to human history and human affairs, it remains true that geographical circumstances are normally regarded as ‘accidents’; and as being, moreover, of so obvious a character that it needs no trained geographer to point them out, much less being such as to deserve analysis in detail. This over-simplified idea of geography, which can be exemplified in the writings of historians, economists, military commentators and others, is responsible for the fact that the subject receives no mention in the schemes for revised university curricula aimed at the provision of a more balanced general education embracing both science and the humanities. Nor is it included in plans for the advancement and endowment of the social sciences. The pure scientist, too, rejects geography since (except in certain limited aspects) it is not susceptible of study by the method of controlled experiment. Yet departments of geography are over-full, and chairs in geography multiply faster than they can be effectively filled. Ordinary people are recognizing that the regional differentiation of the world's surface (although they would not thus define it) lies behind some of our most crucial problems, and is at the root (for example) of the effective reduction of the number of Great Powers to two.
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Geography in War and Peace. Nature 160, 285–286 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160285b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160285b0