Geography is that discipline that seeks to describe and interpret the variable character from place to place of the earth as the world of man.

Geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface.

Geography is a science, but it is also an art, because understanding the meaning of area cannot be reduced to a formal process. The highest form of the geographer's art is producing good regional geography- evocative descriptions that facilitate an understanding and an appreciation of places, areas, and regions.

We may once again modify our statement of the purpose of geography to read: the study that seeks to provide scientific description of the earth as the world of man.

The word “geography” is not going to go away. It has been in use for hundreds (some would say thousands) of years…It is clear to me that the overall process is that of earth description; in short, it is geography. It has been demonstrated beyond any refutation that geography matters in human decision making.

The border position of geography between the natural and the social sciences is fairly generally recognized. Concerned primarily with differences in the different areas of the world, geography studies both natural and cultural features. In some universities, it is included among the natural sciences, in other among the social scientists. In England and America, geographers have particularly cultivated that portion of their field which leads naturally into economics, i.e. .

Since my youth geography has been for me the primary object of study. When I was engaged in it, having applied the considerations of the natural and geometric sciences, I liked, little by little, not only the description of the earth, but also the structure of the whole machinery of the world, whose numerous elements are not known by anyone to date.

"What is that big book?" said the little prince. "What are you doing?"

"I am a geographer," said the old gentleman.

"What is a geographer?" asked the little prince.

"A geographer is a scholar who knows the location of all the seas, rivers, towns, mountains, and deserts."

"That is very interesting," said the little prince. "Here at last is a man who has a real profession!"

The unique purpose of geography is to seek comprehension of the variable character of areas in terms of all the interrelated features which together form that variable character.

The core study of geography is the study of places, that is the analysis of the significant differences that distinguish the various areas of the world from each other. Among the differences that are significant to this areal differentiation, one of the more obvious are differences in landforms; one of the least obvious to the eye, but nonetheless important in molding the character of areas, are the differences in their political organization. In pursuing these and other separate topics, geographers "radiate out in diverse directions" "and for various distances, toward the cores of other disciplines." As long as they realise where they are in reference to the central core, they may hope to understand each other purposes.

There are two particularly bothersome problems in treating geography as a science. The first problem is concerned with the role of description in geography and the second with the predictability of geographic phenomena.

Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God. That share in it accorded to humans is one of the reasons that humanity is the image of God.

Geographers are wont to boast of their subject as a very old one, extending, even as an organized science, far back to antiquity. But often when geographers in this country discuss the nature of their subject, whether in symposia or in published articles, one has the impression that geography was founded by a group of American scholars at the beginning of the twentieth century.

[T]he increases of optics, geography and other sciences... are also due to the application of the more intricate geometry to philosophical matters. Hence has been made clear the curvature of the rays of light in the same medium; hence the causes of extraordinary s have been laid bare; hence, given one surface of a lens, another may be determined by means of which a ray entering the lens with given position will have a given position in emerging from it; hence in geography the excess of the normal diameters of the axis over the axis is found, and also the al figure of any planet; hence the varying gravity of the same body in different parts of the Earth, and the varying length of an isochronous pendulum according to the latitude of its place, and then indeed, after the due correction, the construction of a universal measure and of a perfect .