Geographic Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The key is (A) is true but (R) is false, and the second half is contestable.

(A) is true: in the Critias, Plato describes the hills of Attica stripped of their forests and soil, with springs dried up, and blames human use of the land. Geographers cite this as an early view of man as a destroyer of the environment.

The key calls (R) false, reading Plato's account as philosophical reasoning set inside a dialogue rather than a systematic empirical study. Others would say the Attic landscape was something he could see, which would make (R) true. That could not be settled, so the answer follows the key. On that reading A is not the answer, since (R) is false, and options B and D are out as well.

Answer: B

The key is it was based on the then concept of science and purely logical considerations. The source of the keyed reason could not be traced.

Georg Gerland, a German geographer and ethnologist of the nineteenth century, proposed a programme to make geography a scientific discipline by building it from the prevailing idea of science and from logical argument. The key takes that as the reason the programme matters.

The other reasons are weaker as stated. The programme was not an account of the subject's historical development, which rules out the first. Neither a 'correct' perspective nor a standard frame that lasted is something found claimed for it, so the third and fourth look like overstatements.

Answer: C

The correct match is a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii.

• Alexander von Humboldt wrote Kosmos (1845-1862), his survey of the physical universe (a-iv).
• Bernhardus Varenius (printed 'Verenious') wrote Geographia Generalis (1650), which divided geography into general and special parts (b-iii).
• Immanuel Kant wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781); he also lectured on physical geography at Konigsberg (c-i).
• Count Buffon wrote the many-volume Histoire Naturelle (from 1749) (d-ii).

Option A pairs Humboldt with Kant's book, option B gives Humboldt Buffon's work, and option D gives him Varenius's.

Answer: D

The discipline is Psychology.

The behavioural movement of the 1960s reacted against the quantitative revolution's 'rational economic man'. Geographers such as William Kirk, Julian Wolpert, Peter Gould and Kevin Lynch argued that people act on the environment as they perceive it, not as it objectively is. They borrowed their concepts of perception, cognition, learning and decision-making from psychology, especially cognitive and environmental psychology.

Economics was the base of the earlier location theories that behaviouralism criticised. Physics inspired the gravity and spatial interaction models of the quantitative era, and anthropology shaped cultural geography rather than the behavioural approach.

Answer: A

The key's answer is Peter Gould.

Peter Gould's paper On Mental Maps (1966), and his book Mental Maps (1974) written with Rodney White, introduced the idea to geography. He asked people to rank places by where they would prefer to live and mapped the results as surfaces of preference, showing how images in the mind shape behaviour.

Roger Downs and David Stea edited Image and Environment (1973) and wrote Maps in Minds (1977), important later works on cognitive mapping, but they built on Gould's seminal lead and worked as a pair, so neither alone fits. T.F. Saarinen is known for studies of hazard perception among farmers in drought areas.

Answer: B

The key is Humboldt.

Alexander von Humboldt saw geography as the study of the connections (Zusammenhang) among the many phenomena of a place, and of nature as a harmonious whole. The quotation, which talks of interconnections among diverse phenomena existing together in harmony in particular segments of the earth's surface, fits that outlook. The exact wording could not be found in a source.

Hartshorne is known for areal differentiation, a later and different formulation. Ritter stressed the regional and purposeful arrangement of the earth, and Malte-Brun is known for his universal geography. The keyed choice rests on Humboldt's emphasis on interconnection.

Answer: D

The answer is Vidal de la Blache.

Paul Vidal de la Blache, founder of the French school, held that people adjust to nature through their genre de vie (way of life), which is shaped by inherited habits, techniques and cultural borrowings from other groups as much as by the environment. This is the basis of possibilism: nature offers possibilities, and culture decides which are used.

Alfred Hettner developed the chorological (regional) view of geography, Ferdinand von Richthofen worked on geomorphology and the geography of China, and Halford Mackinder is known for the Heartland theory. None of them centred on inherited traits and cultural borrowing.

Answer: C

The key is Logical, but the exact source could not be traced.

In classification, a logical (natural) scheme sorts items into classes by essential likeness and common origin, here morphological similarity and process of origin. It is set against arbitrary or artificial schemes that use a convenient but unrelated trait.

A random grouping has no principle at all. Intuitive grouping is by feel rather than stated criteria. 'Physical' names a kind of phenomenon rather than a basis for sorting. So of the four, only logical names a method that uses form and origin, which is why the key gives C.

Answer: C

The key is Inductive.

For forming concepts, Aristotle began from observation of many particular cases and drew general statements from them. That is induction. Geographical-thought texts set him against Plato, who started from ideal forms and reasoned downward.

His formal logic, the syllogism, is deductive, so some writers stress that side and sources do not agree on which he favoured. The question asks about the formulation of concepts as generalisations, which points to induction. Geometrical and mathematical procedures belong more to Plato and the Pythagoreans.

Answer: A

It is the existence of centripetal forces that makes an area a region.

Centripetal forces pull an area together: common features, shared history, interaction, and ties to a common centre give it internal unity and a distinct identity, which is what makes it a region rather than an arbitrary piece of territory.

Centrifugal forces work the other way, pulling an area apart. 'Natural' and 'regional' forces are not the established terms; the contrast in regional and political geography is between centripetal and centrifugal forces.