Philosophical geography: establishment, development, formation of scientific foundations

Abstract

Science, at all stages of its development has always been in close connection with philosophical thought. Such synthesis is characteristic for any branch of science, including geography. This is related to the spatial content of geographical science, since the category of space itself is philosophical. At the boundary of geography and philosophy there are different scientific disciplines, each ofwhich hasits own specificity (geosophy, geophilosophy, etc.).This article dealswith philosophical geography in general as the most neutral interpretation of the sphere of knowledge and thought about the deep essence of the terrestrial space and its landscapes.The purpose of the article is to substantiate the stage of development of philosophical ideas in geography. The works of ancient and medieval authors on natural philosophy, geographical and cosmographic works demonstrate attempts to comprehend the essence of the terrestrialspace, to find itsrational justification, either in the context of generalization and systematization of known factual material (e.g., Eratosthenes’sphragides), or for the purpose of filling in knowedge gaps, Crates globe), or when trying to explore the sacral space, which was favoured over Earth, which was treated as a secondary object (e.g., cosmographic study by Al-Khwarizmi).The 17th - 19th centuries include the New European stage in the evolution of philosophical ideas in geography. It was then that Oecumene spread to almost all the land of the Earth. By this time, the classical geographic works by B.Varenius, A. von Humboldt and C. Ritter were appearing, whose philosophical content is related either to the conceptual and terminological aspect (as in A. von Humboldt concerning the concept of “landscape”), or with the reliance on a philosophical system (in particular, dialectical idealism)on the basis of geographical research (as by C.Ritter). The concept of geographical determinism of Charles Louis de Montesquieu was also philosophical as was the Genetic Approach in Ethnography by Johann Gottfried Herder. An important prerequisite for the further development of philosophical geography was the emergence of methodological trends of geographical studies in the second half of the 19th century, such as anthropogeography of C. Ritter, F. Ratzel, E. Reclus and chorogeography, perfected by A. Hettner on the basis of the philosophical ideas of I. Kant. Anthropogeographic search indicated the possibility for combining the natural and human in one research object, and the holographic concept acquired the character of a paradigm because of its coverage of the entire set of objects on the Earth’s surface which are amenable to spatial analysis. In the second half of the 19th century, geography experienced a methodological crisis related to the differentiation of science and, as a consequence, the threat of its loss of research object. Along with anthropogeography, a synthetic trend arose, which in the first half of the 20th century enabled this methodological crisisto be overcome, the emergence of V. Dokuchaev’s doctrines about the nature zones, L. Berg - about the landscape, A. Grigoriev - about the “physical and geographical” shell, P. Teilhard de Chardin, and V. Vernadsky - about the noosphere.The main feature of the modern stage of the development of philosophical geography is the most harmonious combination of concrete scientific and philosophical foundations, which objectively reflects the dialectical nature of the relation between science and philosophy. Organic continuation of philosophical and geographical exploration is exemplified by modern research in geo-psychohistory, geography of culture, geosophy and a number of other scientific disciplines.