The History of American Geographical Science

这个项目试图揭示美国大约1870-1960年间地理思维和成就的形式和内容，追溯从主题到学科再到科学的过程。到目前为止，完成这项调查所需的未知数据来自十几个国家的123个档案收藏品。调查人员可以从地理学家那里获得大量信件，这些信件对美国学术界和政府地理学在这几十年中发生的事情有个人回忆，对收集的材料进行了补充。在这一项目过程中，将对近51 000份档案表进行分类和利用。地理学是美国仅存的一门没有公开历史记录和表现的大型学术领域。随着这项工作的进行，人们将对地理学家的贡献产生新的见解，因为他们在一系列问题上提出了假说和定律：创新和批评促进了对地理学家和地质学家、人类学家、人口学家、环保主义者、社会学家和其他人相互交流或相互学习的方式的新见解。例如，地理学家对高原农业问题的贡献、对地峡(巴拿马)运河路线的评估、测绘和航空摄影与世界大战、保护事业的相关性，以及实地计算的出现。这项研究工作将提供地理知识、中介科学、历史和哲学的新综合。以这种方式，它为地理科学提供了一种不断发展的设计，展示了科学取得进步的多种方式，并提供了启动新的科学进步序列的范例划分。这项研究几乎肯定会在地理学领域的科学进步方面产生进一步的研究。它还将为教师和学生提供有价值的参考作品，并提供鲜为人知的档案来源的详细信息，包括每个主要档案存款的相关性。

This project seeks to reveal the forms and content of geographic thinking and accomplishment in the United States c. 1870-1960, tracing the processes involved from subject matter to discipline and then to science. The hitherto unknown data needed to complete this investigation has been drawn from 123 archival collections located in more than a dozen countries. The material collected is complemented by extensive correspondence available to the investigator from geographers with personal recollections of what was happening in both American academic and governmental geography in those decades. A collection of nearly 51,000 archival sheets will be classified and utilized in the course of this project. Geography is the last remaining large field of learning in America that does not have a published history of its record and performance. With this work will come new insights concerning the contributions of geographers as they developed hypotheses and laws on a multiplicity of matters: innovation and criticism facilitated new insights concerning the ways in which geographers and geologists, anthropologists, demographers, conservationists, sociologists and others exchanged with, or learned from, each other. Examples include geographers' contributions to matters involving agriculture on the High Plains, evaluating the Isthmian (Panama) Canal Route, the relevance of mapping and aerial photography with regards to both World Wars, conservation undertakings, and the coming of numeracy to the field. This research effort will provide a new synthesis of geographic knowledge, mediating science, history, and philosophy. In that fashion it provides an evolving design for geographical science, demonstrates the multitudinous ways in which science makes its advances, and provides paradigmatic divides that initiate new sequences of scientific advance. This study will almost certainly generate further investigations in the scientific advance of the field of geography. It will also provide a work of reference of value to both faculty and students, with details provided on little known archival sources, including the relevance of each major archival deposit.