dealing less with theories than with facts, and illustrating rather than formulating the principles of the science.
Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. A.D. 150) concentrated in his writings the final outcome of all Greek geographical learning, and passed it across the gulf of the middle ages by the hands of the Arabs, to form the starting-point of the science in modern times. His geography was based more immediately on the work of his Ptolemy. predecessor, Marinus of Tyre, and on that of Hipparchus, the follower and critic of Eratosthenes. It was the ambition of Ptolemy to describe and represent accurately the surface of the oekumene, for which purpose he took immense trouble to collect all existing determinations of the latitude of places, all estimates of longitude, and to make every possible rectification in the estimates of distances by land or sea. His work was mainly cartographical in its aim, and theory was as far as possible excluded. The symmetrically placed hypothetical islands in the great continuous ocean disappeared, and the oekumene acquired a new form by the representation of the Indian Ocean as a larger Mediterranean completely cut off by land from the Atlantic. The terra incognita uniting Africa and Farther Asia was an unfortunate hypothesis which helped to retard exploration. Ptolemy used the word geography to signify the description of the whole oekumene on mathematical principles, while chorography signified the fuller description of a particular region, and topography the very detailed description of a smaller locality. He introduced the simile that geography represented an artist’s sketch of a whole portrait, while chorography corresponded to the careful and detailed drawing of an eye or an ear.[1]
The Caliph al-Mamūn (c. A.D. 815), the son and successor of Hārūn al-Rashīd, caused an Arabic version of Ptolemy’s great astronomical work (Σύνταξις μεγίστη) to be made, which is known as the Almagest, the word being nothing more than the Gr. μεγίστη with the Arabic article al prefixed. The geography of Ptolemy was also known and is constantly referred to by Arab writers. The Arab astronomers measured a degree on the plains of Mesopotamia, thereby deducing a fair approximation to the size of the earth. The caliph’s librarian, Abu Jafar Muhammad Ben Musa, wrote a geographical work, now unfortunately lost, entitled Rasm el Arsi (“A Description of the World”), which is often referred to by subsequent writers as having been composed on the model of that of Ptolemy.
The middle ages saw geographical knowledge die out in Christendom, although it retained, through the Arabic translations of Ptolemy, a certain vitality in Islam. The verbal interpretation of Scripture led Lactantius (c. A.D. 320) and other ecclesiastics to denounce the spherical theory of the Geography in the middle ages. earth as heretical. The wretched subterfuge of Cosmas (c. A.D. 550) to explain the phenomena of the apparent movements of the sun by means of an earth modelled on the plan of the Jewish Tabernacle gave place ultimately to the wheel-maps—the T in an O—which reverted to the primitive ignorance of the times of Homer and Hecataeus.[2]
The journey of Marco Polo, the increasing trade to the East and the voyages of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean prepared the way for the reacceptance of Ptolemy’s ideas when the sealed books of the Greek original were translated into Latin by Angelus in 1410.
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 Revival of geography. 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.
The earliest evidence of the reincarnation of a sound theoretical geography is to be found in the text-books by Peter Apian and Sebastian Münster. Apian in his Cosmographicus liber, published in 1524, and subsequently edited and added to by Gemma Frisius under the title of Cosmographia, based the whole Apianus. science on mathematics and measurement. He followed Ptolemy closely, enlarging on his distinction between geography and chorography, and expressing the artistic analogy in a rough diagram. This slender distinction was made much of by most subsequent writers until Nathanael Carpenter in 1625 pointed out that the difference between geography and chorography was simply one of degree, not of kind.
Sebastian Münster, on the other hand, in his Cosmographia universalis of 1544, paid no regard to the mathematical basis of geography, but, following the model of Strabo, described the world according to its different political divisions, and entered with great zest into the question of the productions Münster. of countries, and into the manners and costumes of the various peoples. Thus early commenced the separation between what were long called mathematical and political geography, the one subject appealing mainly to mathematicians, the other to historians.
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the rapidly accumulating store of facts as to the extent, outline and mountain and river systems of the lands of the earth were put in order by the generation of cartographers of which Mercator was the chief; but the writings of Apian and Münster held the field for a hundred years without a serious rival, unless the many annotated editions of Ptolemy might be so considered. Meanwhile the new facts were the subject of original study by philosophers and by practical men without reference to classical traditions. Bacon argued keenly on geographical matters and was a lover of maps, in which he observed and reasoned upon such resemblances as that between the outlines of South America and Africa.
Philip Cluver’s Introductio in geographiam universam tam veterem quam novam was published in 1624. Geography he defined as “the description of the whole earth, so far as it is known to us.” It is distinguished from cosmography by dealing with the earth alone, not with the universe, and from chorography Cluverius. and topography by dealing with the whole earth, not with a country or a place. The first book, of fourteen short chapters, is concerned with the general properties of the globe; the remaining six books treat in considerable detail of the countries of Europe and of the other continents. Each country is described with particular regard to its people as well as to its surface, and the prominence given to the human element is of special interest.
A little-known book which appears to have escaped the attention of most writers on the history of modern geography was published at Oxford in 1625 by Nathanael Carpenter, fellow of Exeter College, with the title Geographie delineated forth in Two Bookes, containing the Sphericall and Topicall parts thereof. Carpenter. It is discursive in its style and verbose; but, considering the period at which it appeared, it is remarkable for the strong common sense displayed by the author, his comparative freedom from prejudice, and his firm application of the methods of scientific reasoning to the interpretation of phenomena. Basing his work on the principles of Ptolemy, he brings together illustrations from the most recent travellers, and does not hesitate to take as illustrative examples the familiar city of Oxford and his native county of Devon. He divides geography into The Spherical Part, or that for the study of which mathematics alone is required, and The Topical Part, or the description of the physical relations of parts of the earth’s surface, preferring this division to that favoured by the ancient geographers—into general and special. It is distinguished from other English geographical books of the period by confining attention to the principles of geography, and not describing the countries of the world.
A much more important work in the history of geographical method is the Geographia generalis of Bernhard Varenius, a German medical doctor of Leiden, who died at the age of twenty-eight in 1650, the year of the publication of his book. Although for a time it was lost sight of on the continent, Sir Isaac Varenius. Newton thought so highly of this book that he prepared an annotated edition which was published in Cambridge in 1672, with the addition of the plates which had been planned by Varenius, but not produced by the original publishers. “The reason why this great man took so much care in correcting and publishing our author was, because he thought him necessary to be read by his audience, the young gentlemen of Cambridge, while he was delivering lectures on the same subject from the Lucasian Chair.”[3] The treatise of Varenius is a model of logical arrangement and terse expression; it is a work of science and of genius; one of the few of that age which can still be studied with profit. The English translation renders the definition thus: “Geography is that part of mixed mathematics which explains the state of the earth and of its parts, depending on quantity, viz. its figure, place, magnitude and motion, with the celestial appearances, &c. By some it is taken in too limited a sense, for a bare description of the several countries; and by others too extensively, who along with such a description would have their political constitution.”
Varenius was reluctant to include the human side of geography in his system, and only allowed it as a concession to custom, and in order to attract readers by imparting interest to the sterner details of the science. His division of geography was into two parts—(i.) General or universal, dealing with the earth in general, and explaining its properties without regard to particular countries; and (ii.) Special or particular, dealing with each country in turn from the chorographical or topographical point of view. General geography was divided into—(1) the Absolute part, dealing with the form, dimensions, position and substance of the earth, the distribution of land and water, mountains, woods and deserts, hydrography (including all the waters of the earth) and the atmosphere; (2) the Relative part, including the celestial properties, i.e. latitude, climate zones, longitude, &c.; and (3) the Comparative part, which “considers the
- ↑ Bunbury’s History of Ancient Geography (2 vols., London, 1879), Müller’s Geographi Graeci minores (2 vols., Paris, 1855, 1861) and Berger’s Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen (4 vols., Leipzig, 1887–1893) are standard authorities on the Greek geographers.
- ↑ The period of the early middle ages is dealt with in Beazley’s Dawn of Modern Geography (London; part i., 1897; part ii., 1901; part iii., 1906); see also Winstedt, Cosmas Indicopleustes (1910).
- ↑ From translator’s preface to the English version by Mr Dugdale (1733), entitled A Complete System of General Geography, revised by Dr Peter Shaw (London, 1756).
