This short article is to help students understand what Geography is all about. This subject is studied right from the Primary schools and some pupils or students might not still know the definition of Geography.
If you happended to have forgotten What the definition of Geography is, then this short definition should help you reshape yourslef.
What is Geography?
In school, we were taught that there are science subjects, arts, and even social science subjects with an example being Economics.
Geography is classified as social science, but recently, many have come up with some points to justify that they rather see geography as a science rather than just a social science.
Putting that aside, the big goal of this article is what geography is. From the definition, you may probably coin your own idea as to whether it is should be classified as a science or social science.
Definition
Geography is a field of science that deals with the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth and planets.
Simply put, is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.
Eratosthenes, the ancient Greek scholar is called the “father of geography”. He was the first one to use the word geography and he also had a small-scale notion of the planet that helped him to determine the circumference of the earth.
The word geography can be broken into the two basic elements of “GEO” and “GRAPHY.” Geo comes from the Greek word for Earth (the word Gaea, also meaning earth, derives from the Greek as well). The “ography” part comes from the Greek word graphein, which is literally to write about something.
A person who studies geography and has expert knowledge in the field is called a Geographer.
At the broadest level, geography is divided into;
- Physical geography – nature and the effects it has on people and/or the environment.
- Human geography – concerned with people.
- Environmental Geography – a branch of geography that describes the spatial aspects of interactions between humans and the natural world.
- Regional geography – focuses on the interaction of different cultural and natural geofactors in a specific land or landscape, while its counterpart, systematic geography, concentrates on a specific geofactor at the global level.
You can rad more about Geography from here.
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