论十九世纪德国地理学的统一性观点

“地理学要免被瓜分,就要坚持它的中心原则,这个原则就是各种自然现象和形态同人类的相关。”欧洲古希腊、罗马时代的光辉地理思想经历中世纪黑暗时代的长期窒息,其生命力日见衰竭。十六世纪的地理大发现与文艺复兴使人们的眼光既回顾到古希腊时代的地理观念,又萌生出对于地理学探讨的浓厚兴趣。但十九世纪之前的地理研究大多是抽象的哲理性的探讨和单纯的地理资料的堆砌。十九世纪以德国地理学为代表的欧洲地理学,由于洪堡和李特尔等人的富有创造性的工作,赋予了地理学以新的生机和新的个性,井促使其迅猛发展。本文旨在通过对当时哲学和自然科学发展情况的分析,论述这一时期德国地理学统一性观点的确立。

ON THE INTEGRITY CONCEPTION OF THE 19TH CENTURY’S GEOGRAPHY IN GERMANY

The middle of the nineteenth century is the great turning point in the development of geography, marking the end of the classic and the beginning of the scientific geography. All these happened in Germany. The geography in this period synthesized all kind of concepts from the great discoveries, the rich facts of geographical knowledge, the great advances of natural science and philosophy. Geography at that time was based on the conception of integrity. The division of geography into the physical and the human was a phenomenon of later development. The establishment of the 19th century's unifying cencept in Germany had a profound influence upon the modern and contemporary geography.This paper aims at analysing the development of philosophy and matural science of that time in the relation with integrity conception.The geographical idea is synthetically influenced by philosophy ideas of kant, Hegel and Feuerbach, Marx and Engels etc., while the development of natural sciences provided the basis for establishing conception of unity for the contents of geography reguired in the connection of phenomena. Later, the authors discuss the conception of unity from the angle of the geography itself. The pioneers of the scientific geography were Humboldt and Ritter, followed by Richthofen and Ratzel. They played an active role in the development of scientific contents of geography both in theory and practice.The authors emphasize that both the regional and unifying conceptions are still the core of modern geography in spite of the tendency of branching off in the field of geography itself.