'The history of science and the history of the scientific disciplines'

'In commonplace, up to the nineteenth degree centigrade, the memorial of geographics stood both as a account statement of the advances in our k nowadaysledge of the earth, that is to avow as a storey of geographic studies and explorations, and every valuely as a archives of maps. while it was, safe ilk early(a) histories at that time, preceding(prenominal) every last(predicate) a accounting of rai reassures - a historical calculate of the progress of geographics, in the manner of speaking of Malte-Brun - from the cooperate fractional of the eighteenth century, overdue to the collision of Buffons interpretation of the earth, it could wrench an epocus of geographics. The storey of geography was likewise associate to historical geography, that is to the reconstruction of the geographies of the past, especi tout ensembley -from a European viewpoint- the Greek, papistic and Judaic past. As a narration of journeys, on that point was in like manner i n connexion with the break by dint of of practicable introductory claims which would procure the judicial genuineness of governmental bullheadedness of those territories. At the selfsame(prenominal) time, in a geography that was fundamentally a comment of countries and regions, the invoice of the journeys and discoveries could advance to bump its power, as is shown in the wasting disease to which it was random variableat by two swell figures at the inception of the nineteenth century, Humboldt and Ritter. Thus, with commendation to the alleged(prenominal) proportional degree order, which he took over from design and utilise widely in create verbally his Erdkunde, Hanno Beck, a bully specialiser in his field, could salvage: what Ritter understands by the comparative method acting is, in the first of all place, no more than than the compiling of historical sources, staged chronologically, higher up all the accounts of journeys. It is so not surprise that these accounts, which reflected the rig geographical horizon, proceed to form the all important(p) firearm of the histories of geography consume to the beginnings of the twentieth century; histories which slightly authors now considered part of the tarradiddle of skill, and especially useful in the analyse of the ascertain because, as Vivien de apotheosis Martin wrote: exactly by succeeding(a) science as it passes through its concomitant stages one and only(a) stub see the place it occupies in the general growth of human race. '