Richard Hartshorne (1899-1992) was an American geographer well known for the wide dissemination of his main works: The Nature of Geography and Purposes and Nature of Geography. He is one of the main names in this science, with a vast work that left an important legacy, including concepts and observations still used today.
Hartshorne was largely responsible for the systematization and dissemination of the epistemology of Geography in his country, being a profound reader and follower of the ideals of the German geographer. Alfred Hettner, translating several of Hettner's works into English.
According to Hettner, Geography should not be the science that seeks to study the relationship between man and environment, as did the French and Germans of Classical Geography. For him, the objective of this science should be to differentiate areas, evaluating their general and specific characteristics, in order to understand their space within their uniqueness.
Following this perspective, Hartshorne argued that geography should be concerned with understanding how the phenomena are combined on the earth's surface, integrating natural elements and humans. In short, Geography for him should be understood as the science that studies the various aspects of the Earth's surface, based on the criterion of differentiating areas.
In addition to being able to elaborate an integrative perspective between human space and physical space, Hartshorne also had the merit of somehow integrating General Geography with Regional Geography. This is because he argued that there were specific characteristics of the places, but that there were also general conditions that integrated them, forming a kind of Web or of network that interconnected the different locations.
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Another important contribution was the elaboration and application of the concept of region. For him, region was not a reality present in itself in space, but a human intellectual elaboration to understand it. This conception is mainly due to the influence of Kant's thought, who argued that concepts do not exist a priori of human understanding.
From this, the concept of regionalization or regional division was understood as being a scientifically elaborated classification system to meet a particular objective in a survey or in a detailed study of different parts of the same area, space or territory.
The importance of Hartshorne's thought, among other aspects, was to carry out a new interpretation of Geography and provide the elaboration of theoretical-conceptual bases that instructed later geographical thought, with emphasis on the line of thought that later came to be known per New Geography.
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¹ Image credits: University of Wisconsin-Madison
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
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PENA, Rodolfo F. Alves. "Richard Hartshorne"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/geografia/richard-hartshorne.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.