Instant Encyclopaedia of Geography (In 25 Volumes)

Introduction to Geography Provides us with a penetrating highways and byways of the field pointing out the paths that have been trod and by whom and when. It is an excursion through a mass of literature sometimes little known an attempt to reel the views that prevailed at various points through time. It is a rigorous contribution of timeless value. It continues to provoke questions about the nature of the discipline, the place of geography in the history of science and the position of geography in relation to other fields of scholarly endeavour. Agriculture is the parent of all cultures; and agriculture has long been an object of study in geography. The evolution of geographic research displays a number of interesting facts that bear a striking resemblance to various shifts in governmental economic policy regarding agriculture. There are two distinct but related cognitive themes in this volume that reverberate within the overall behavioural geogrgraphy namely, the behavioural environment as itself crucial to human geographical cognition and, second the philosophical implications of knowledge of the behavioural geography for the study of geography. Undoubtedly the notion of behavioural geography may enable geographers to take more seriously into account the significance of subjective experience and people as active agents. There has been a vast increase in the published output of ecology and biogeography in the shape of scientific papers and voluminous reports. The papers on the subject as compiled in this volume show growing interest in applied ecology, resource management and conservation of nature so necessary for human survival. Trade and commerce are the sinews of the modern economic life. The days of human porters and bullock cart are over. The progress of commerce has made amazing advance as will be seen from the essays in this volume. Man is the life form with the most complex mental development to create culture which forms the pattern of learned behaviour. Culture is delicate like a fabric that can under some circumstances rip or become unraveled. Culture has enormous power to shape man’s actions and colour his view of the actual world. Thus human image of the world is the ultimate reason why various cultural world exist and why that resemblances cut across environmental differences and similarities. This volume contains a number of individual features not previously encountered. This distinct features of this volume are that it is relevant, selective and practical. The present volume is designed to stimulate the student’s curiosity in what this interesting subject has to offer, and to complement, rather than attempt to dispense with the work of lecturer or teacher. There has been a strong desire to make physical geography more relevant to human affairs, to integrate it more closely with human geography, to become more concerned with natural hazards, to investigate environmental problems and to assess the role of man in changing his own environment. This volume takes into account all such problems relating to environmental geography. The present volume is avowedly introductory to stimulate appreciation of the major issues currently confronting today’s geographers by those who will form tomorrow’s.