---
title: "History of geography"
chunk: 9/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:47.409771+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Humboldt and Ritter are both regarded as the founders of modern geography as they later established it as an independent scientific discipline. Humboldt is admired as a great geographer, according to D. Livingstone that "modern geography was first and last a synthesizing science and as such, if Goetzmann is to be believed, 'it became the key scientific activity of the age'." In 1789, Humboldt met the geographer George Forster in Mainz, before travelling with him through parts of Western Europe the following year. Forster's travel accounts and writings influenced Humboldt. His Geognosia including the geography of rocks, animals, and plants is "an important model for modern geography". As a Prussian mining officer, Humboldt founded the Free Royal Mining School at Steben for miners, later regarded the prototype of such institutes. German Naturphilosophie, especially the work of Goethe and Herder, stimulated Humboldt's idea and research of a universal science. In his letter, he made observations while his "attention will never lose sight of the harmony of concurrent forces, the influence of the inanimate world on the animal and vegetable kingdom." His American travel stressed the geography of plants as his focus of science. Meanwhile, Humboldt used empirical method to study the indigenous people in the New World, regarded as a most important work in human geography. In Relation historique du Voyage, Humboldt called these research a new science Physique du monde, Theorie de la Terre, or Geographie physique. During 1825 to 1859, Humboldt devoted in Kosmos, which is about the knowledge of nature. There are growing works about the New World since then. In the Jeffersonian era, "American geography was born of the geography of America", meaning the knowledge discovery helped form the discipline. Practical knowledge and national pride are main components of the Teleological tradition. Institutions such as the Royal Geographical Society indicate geography as an independent discipline. Mary Somerville's Physical Geography was the "conceptual culmination of ... Baconian ideal of universal integration". According to Francis Bacon, "No natural phenomenon can be adequately studied by itself alone – but, to be understood, it must be considered as it stands connected with all nature."