Thanks to Shane Lavalette for the “Goesophy” post, it reminded me of a word in Phillip Perkis‘ book “Neotony” I’m not sure the words are really related, except for sounding alike and talking about ideas that interest me. Philip’s entire Teaching Photography book can be read here.
Geosophy is a concept introduced to geography by J.K. Wright in 1947. The word is a compound of ‘ge’ (Greek for earth) and ‘sophia’ (Greek for knowledge). Wright defined it thus:
Geosophy … is the study of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view. It is to geography what historiography is to history; it deals with the nature and expression of geographical knowledge both past and present—with what Whittlesey has called ‘man’s sense of [terrestrial] space’. Thus it extends far beyond the core area of scientific geographical knowledge or of geographical knowledge as otherwise systematized by geographers. Taking into account the whole peripheral realm, it covers the geographical ideas, both true and false, of all manner of people—not only geographers, but farmers and fishermen, business executives and poets, novelists and painters, Bedouins and Hottentots—and for this reason it necessarily has to do in large degree with subjective conceptions.
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