JULIE WINKLER
Another difficulty with the grafted tree
metaphor is that it ignores the transdisciplinary
quality that the authors argue is fundamental to
Geographical Sciences. A modification to the
authors’ metaphor might be that Geographical
Sciences is an overarching canopy formed by
the interlocking crowns of branches from the
trunks of all the disciplines contributing concepts,
techniques, and tools to Geographical
Sciences, including, among others, geography,
computer science, engineering, communication
arts, statistics, and psychology. In contrast
to a graft, a branch implies that Geographical
Sciences grows out of different disciplines
and is informed by these disciplines. Another difficulty with the grafted tree
metaphor is that it ignores the transdisciplinary
quality that the authors argue is fundamental to
Geographical Sciences. A modification to the
authors’ metaphor might be that Geographical
Sciences is an overarching canopy formed by
the interlocking crowns of branches from the
trunks of all the disciplines contributing concepts,
techniques, and tools to Geographical
Sciences, including, among others, geography,
computer science, engineering, communication
arts, statistics, and psychology. In contrast
to a graft, a branch implies that Geographical
Sciences grows out of different disciplines
and is informed by these disciplines.
Society’s
grand challenges are beset with uncertainty,
require multiple perspectives and a range of
approaches, and have few, if any, answers.
geographical scientists must embrace
complexity and uncertainty and recognize that
technical analyses, such as those using geographical
tools and techniques, “are only one
input to decision-making and not necessarily
the most important one”
Whatever the viewpoint, the authors, by
laying out their definition, description, and
conceptualization of Geographical Sciences,
have provided a jumping-off point for a
thoughtful and frank discussion of the goals,
opportunities, cross-fertilization, implications,
and future of Geographical Sciences. In the
end, Geography and Geographical Sciences
are intertwined, as geographers benefit from
the tools and techniques of Geographical
Sciences, and geographical scientists who are
trained withinGeography rely on the discipline
to provide them with unique perspectives and
knowledge that distinguish them from geographical
scientists trained in other disciplines.
A disciplinary journal, such as The Professional
Geographer, is in my view an excellent initial
forum for this discussion.
KEITH CLARK
My primary concern with the report is really
a consequence of how deeply the world
now finds itself in the throes of global
self-destruction and societal collapse. The
liturgy of ills that geographers are urged to
study by the report makes depressing reading:
We are killing the land and its flora and
fauna, changing the climate, overpopulating
the planet, starving people, creating new diseases,
and failing to treat the old ones. This is
followed by consumerism, international trade
with a massive carbon footprint, globalization
destroying regional and local identity, poverty
and inequality, with geopolitical posturing and
instability for all. Although the rise of geospatial
tools has allowed us to better visualize the
changing world, we have created a Web-based
monster that is eliminating personal privacy
and complicating life.
largely indistinguishable from environmental
science.
geography’s strength lies in synthesis and its
motivation lies in wonder (Weschler 1995).
With respect to wonder, Omenn (2006, 1696)
stated, “To a variable extent, we are all curious
about both the world of nature and the nature
of human societies.” How to pass that curiosity
and wonder on to a new generation that might
be able to solve some of the world’s problems
to me seems like the greatest challenge that
geography now faces, more so than identifying
today’s compelling problems.
Helge Nelson led his inquirer
up to the window from which one could see the
glittering water with an abundance of ships, the
abrasion slopes of Tycho Brahe’s island Ven,
farmlands and beech woods on both coasts, people
moving in the streets below, the towers
and chimneys of Copenhagen and the summerclouds
over Denmark. Professor Nelson swung
his arm across the scene and exclaimed: “This is
what we study.” And he did not mean bit by bit
but all at once.
it is well known that
breakthroughs in knowledge happen at the
edges and intersections of disciplines and
specialties (Kates 1987), not at their core.
geographers
need to first build a quiet and substantial respect
for their discipline by doing excellent
work in relevant areas. These areas are indeed
well covered by the eleven questions.
In the final section of the
report, the authors point to better means to
make their ideas heard by politicians. Although
political outreach is important for a discipline,
it is farmore compelling to have theworld come
to you. Geographers are well suited to build a
better mousetrap for the information future.
Perhaps, then the world will beat a path to geography’s
door.
RON JOHNSON
does those disciplines something of a disservice with its greater emphasis on the infrastructure
for data collection, visualization, and analysis at the expense of explanation and theory. It successfully
promotes some aspects of the disciplines but largely ignores other vibrant and important parts. Its long-term
impact is uncertain. Key Words: cyberinfrastructure, geographical sciences, problem solving, society–nature.
Beyond those hallowed halls, there
are immense problems overcoming public misapprehensions,
even ignorance, about what geographers
do.
offering a teaching
prospectus is not enough: Research is the key
because it brings status and, especially, money.
And money will only flow to a discipline if its
members can convince funding bodies of their
credibility—that they address major problems
from a particular perspective with the expected
(scientific) rigor and produce results that are
respected and built on by others across the relevant
associated disciplines.
the
national science community is still somewhat
unclear as to what geographers have to offer in
the contemporary world.
The word
theory rarely appears in this entire document—
which will make other natural and social scientists
wonder (wrongly, but understandably)
about the depth of scholarship in the geographical
sciences.
we also have a long
tradition of using them to answer important
questions; we are not just data collectors and
providers but analytical scientists with theories
and (provisional) explanations of the worlds
we study (on which see Chisholm, 1971a).
TREVOR BARNES
My commentary argues that this model of science,
with its celebration of large data sets, sophisticated methodological techniques, and various material tools and
hardware, is only one model of geography’s contribution. Instead, I suggest that the strength of geography is
in its pluralism and methodological variety, and in the end that will do more for understanding the changing
planet than anything else. Key Words: planetary crisis, pluralism, science.
Understanding the Changing Planet es el ´ ultimo de una larga serie de informes que toman a cargo la relevancia
de la disciplina de la geograf´ıa invocando la ciencia con una gran “C.” Mi comentario arguye que este modelo
de ciencia, con su celebraci ´on de grandes conjuntos de datos, t´ecnicas metodol ´ ogicas sofisticadas y varias
herramientas materiales y hardware, no pasa de ser un modelo de la contribuci ´on de la geograf´ıa. En vez
de eso, sugiero que la fuerza de la geograf´ıa se encuentra en su pluralismo y variedad metodol ´ ogica, y que
en ´ ultimas eso har´a m´as para entender el cambiante planeta que cualquiera otra cosa. Palabras clave: crisis
planetaria, pluralismo, ciencia.
Written under the auspices of the U.S.
National Research Council (NRC), Understanding
the Changing Planet is the latest in a
long line of reports that date back almost half
a century upselling the geographical sciences.
The first such report was The Science of Geography
published by the NRC (1965). Edward
A. Ackerman (1965, iv) was “Chairman” of the
Ad Hoc Committee on Geography that produced
that report. TheNRC had been brought
in two years earlier after the Office of Naval
Research, a central research funding agency
for American geography during the immediate
postwar period, gave a dodgy assessment about
“the status of geography” (Ackerman 1965, v).
It found that the discipline “does not have the
esteem which it merits by virtue of the importance
of its subject matter” (quoted in Ackerman
1965, v). Ackerman and his committee
(Brian J. L. Berry, Reid A. Bryson, Saul B. Cohen,
Edward J. Taaffe,William L. Thomas Jr.,
and “Reds” Wolman) fought back, trying to
douse doubts, making the argument that geography
“was on the threshold of an important
opportunity”: to be as scientific a science as
any other. “It would share in the development
of a common interest among several branches
of science,” and would include the deployment
of “a more or less common language for
communication . . . [defined by] mathematical
statistics and systems analysis . . . [along with]
farmore powerful techniques than ever before”
(NRC 1965, 1–2). The world would be geography’s
oyster in a way that it never was in the
past.
There is a sense when you read the preface
to Understanding the Changing Planet that,
like the 1965 Report, there is still a worry about
the esteem in which geography is held. The
preface begins with a long list of familiar grisly
The Professional Geographer, 63(3) 2011, pages 332–336 C _ Copyright 2011 by Association of American Geographers.
Initial submission, October 2010; final acceptance, December 2010.
Published by
I want to make an
argument that the very strength of geography
is precisely in its methodological diversity and
pluralism, which in the end will best contribute
to understanding the changing planet.
always be prepared to give up our beliefs, even
our most cherished beliefs, for other ones. But
for this to be possible there must be other
beliefs available, even those we might loathe.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said,
“We permit free expression because we need
the resources of the whole group to get us the
ideas we need” (quoted in Menand 2001, 431).
This is the virtue of a geography not ruled by
a single big “S” Science approach. Its history
has always been one of a teeming variety of
approaches. There might have been too much
“blooming, buzzing, and confusion” for some
as a result, but for pragmatists it is precisely
the Irish stew of different and competing approaches
that simmer on the geographical disciplinary
hob that in the end will “get us the
ideas we need.”
The second is the idea that the world need
not cohere as a single unit but is inherently
fragmented and irreconcilable.
“nothing includes everything, or
dominates over everything. The word ‘and’
trails along after every sentence. Something always
escapes.” Consequently, there is no single
method that knits together the different parts
of the world.
Geography has
been a discipline that whenever it came to a
fork in the road took it. For the next report the
Geographical Sciences Committee needs to tell
the NRC about life off the highway.
ALEX MURPHY
the report should be seen as
a study demonstrating, for a broad audience, the types of contributions the geographical sciences can make
to addressing major issues of the day. Key Words: geographical research, geographical science, geography.
our efforts were channeled and shaped by the
charge we were given. We were to develop “a
short list of high-priority research questions in
the geographical sciences that are relevant to
societal needs.” Moreover, we had to write the
report in a manner that would be broadly accessible,
and we had to keep it relatively short.The
goal, we were told, was to put together a report
that would provide “guidance to policymakers
and research funding agencies in making commitments
to geographical science scholarship,”
and to write our questions “in a clear, compelling
way and summarize research progress
to date.”
the committee
members came to think that the report was
enriched by the collective effort that went into
it, and it is from the perspective of what we
tried to achieve as a collectivity that I turn to
the critical comments that have been raised.
The report’s focus on the “geographical
sciences” reflects both a shift in terminology
within the NRC and the desire of those who
wrote the charge to the committee to address
geographical work carried out beyond the
formal discipline of geography.
we sought to present a
vision of the geographical sciences as an emerging
perspective that was in no way threatening
to, or oppositional to, geography.
committee consistently embraced the idea that
the geographical sciences routinely employ
mixed methods and multiple approaches in addressing
complex problems.
Given the report’s remit
and the audience we were asked to address,
we thought it best to highlight a range of work
showing what the geographical sciences had to
contribute rather than provide detailed discussions
of fewer studies.
our focus in this section had to be
on what funding agencies, policymakers, and
educational institutions might do in support of
the geographical sciences enterprise, not what
types of roles we could imagine for the geographical
sciences in the twenty-first-century
academy.
metaphor
was intended simply to convey the idea that
something has grown beyond the initial “root
stock” of geography.
Whatever perspective one takes on
this matter, we framed our lead questions in
“how” terms in an effort to direct attention to
important processes unfolding on Earth’s surface.
Our unwritten assumption was that one
cannot get to how without, at some level, first
dealing with why.
our general approach was to demonstrate
that without geographical perspectives,
techniques, and methods, understandings and
theories are frequently inadequate.
it seeks to show how a series
of methods, approaches, and perspectives associated
with the geographical sciences (broadly
conceived) might be of use in addressing key
contemporary issues.
The effort to raise a
broad array of critical issues and show how geographical
approaches and techniques can help
address them can also stimulate the kind of constructive
reflection that is in evidence throughout
much of this Focus Section. As part ofthat reflection, the approaches we took and the
choices we made can and should be questioned,
but the discussion will likely bemost productive
if the report is taken on its own terms. Whatever
its limitationsmight be, I amconfident the
report can do some good for society, geographical
scientists, and geographers—if we will let
it.