Exploring the Past and Future of Our Planet: Not Bit-by-Bit but All at Once

Understanding the Changing Planet lacks the spark of wonder and synthesis that initially attracted me into geography. Its structure around compelling questions reflects disciplinary fragmentation and the model of interdisciplinary science favored in the late twentieth century. It is suggested that geography can move beyond the “big tent with three poles” approach, to a twenty-first-century hyperdisciplinary model where content, science, analysis, and synthesis blur and a new bottom-up science can emerge. In this science, new theory and even grand unified theory might be possible. As discussed in Understanding the Changing Planet, the Web and the emergence of volunteered geographic information are examples. This would make study of the whole earth and its systems “a respectable object for scholarly efforts.”