THE RELATION OF GEOGRAPHY TO THE SCIENCES. 



By Herbert M. Wilson, 

 United States Geological Survey. 



We are passing through a period in which methods of business, of 

 education, and of government are rapidly developing. From the cen- 

 tralization of many diverse units under one administration, as in the 

 change from the college to the university, from the company to the 

 syndicate, from the kingdom to the empire, there results a broadening 

 of interests. But this very aggregation of interests and power gives 

 opportunity for, and demands, more detailed study and more careful 

 management of the component parts. The small college, at which 

 only a few general branches of learning were taught, is giving place to 

 the greater university, in which all branches of learning are repre- 

 sented and yet the minutest detail is taught in each specialty. The 

 individual owner of the blast furnace or steel-rail mill is being replaced 

 by the great syndicate, which mines the fuel and the ore, transports 

 them to the mill, and works the product of the latter into finished 

 commercial form ; yet the very magnitude of the syndicate's interests 

 results in the more scientific development of its resources and products 

 through the medium of trained specialists, who supervise the details of 

 every branch of its industries. 



This spirit of the times is expressing itself in discussions by our 

 educators concerning the place of geography among other sciences. 

 That the reaction on geography of the study of other branches of 

 science has led to discussion of this subject is good cause for con- 

 gratulation. 



Some regard geography as scarcely a composite science, but only a 

 mosaic of others, having little right to a place among such specialized 

 sciences as geology, astronomy, botany, ethnology, etc., from each of 

 which it borrows something. Others conceive it to be one of the gen- 

 eral or administrative sciences, correlating the truths of the more 

 detailed sciences and knitting their results into a harmonious whole. 



It will be well, in the beginning, to recall the derivation of the 

 name and to observe the danger of a too literal translation. " Geogra- 

 phy" has generally been held to be a "description of the earth," and as 



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