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Geographic space: an ancient story retold

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Published online on

Abstract

Location, as the fundamental concept in geography, is important for all sciences that study objects and behaviours in geo‐space. Although other disciplines are capable of formulating definitions of location and geo‐space, they nevertheless look up to geography to devise and articulate a comprehensive and practical concept of ‘everything geographic’. Essentially quantitative in its concern, geography has yet to quantify the concept of geo‐space in order to both fulfil the ancient Greeks' vision of geography and advance it for use in other disciplines. We revisit the epistemological and broader philosophical principles of geo‐space and apply these principles to identifying and quantifying the key aspects of geo‐space: topos, choros and geos. Rather than following the narrow numerical tradition of quantitative geography and GIS, we adopt broader philosophical perspective of Kant on Quantity (Unity, Multiplicity, Totality) and argue that the ‘natural’ extension of the classical approach to geo‐space necessitates its further philosophical quantification. We show that the ancient Greeks' concept maps into locations (topos), spatial relations (choros) and topology (geos). Extending the concept further necessitates the use of the language of set theory for defining basic concepts. We show that the result is both tractable and quantifiable, connects classical with modern and completes the definition of geo‐space on all three levels of Quantity (unity, multiplicity, totality). We demonstrate the tractability of thus defined concept by reinterpreting Tobler's First Law of geography in theoretically sound terms. We show that a refined, modern concept of geo‐space is both philosophically fulfilling and practically useful – some properties of geo‐space are too important to be ignored or distorted.