地理学是对地球的描述。作为一门科学,它的起源和早期发展反映了十九世纪获取有关地球表层上极其多样的环境,人民和地方的信息的兴趣。它在某种程度上是为商业冒险的需要服务,但在更大的程度上仅仅是为了满足受过教育的富有阶级的好奇心。现在,这种好奇心莫名其妙地消失了,它(尤其在人文地理学中)已被一种对假想的普遍规律的关注所取代,这些规律是人对环境,空间、地方和人民的反应,却忽视了自然与人文背景的多样性,而正是这种多样性构成了地球表层压倒一切的特征。地理学者中这种取向的转移是目光短浅的,也是有害的。紧迫地需要重新激起对于地球表层上所有部分的地理好奇心,这并非出于片面 Geography is a description of the earth. As a science, its origins and early developments reflect the interest of the nineteenth century in acquiring information about the very diverse environment, people and places on the surface of the earth. To some extent, it serves the needs of business ventures, but to a much greater extent just to satisfy the curious curiosity of an educated and wealthy class. Now curiously somehow disappeared, this curiosity (especially in human geography) has been replaced by a concern for the universal laws of hypothetical human response to the environment, space, places and peoples Neglecting the diversity of the natural and cultural backgrounds, it is this diversity that constitutes the overriding characteristic of the Earth’s surface. The transfer of this orientation among geographers is short-sighted and harmful. There is a pressing need to rekindle the geographic curiosity of all parts of the earth’s surface, not out of one-sidedness