Nature and scope of agricultural geography
Answers
What is the nature and scope of the agricultural geography? What are its temporal and spatial aspects? What is the Universal Integrated Cubical Temporal - Spatial - Applicability Scope model of the agricultural geography?
(2) The Exposition:
The Nature:
Different leading authorities in the field of the agricultural geography have defined the nature and scope of this subject in the different terms. There is no unanimity of the opinion in the matter. However, the students of an introductory course in the subject need not be bogged down by this multiplicity of the views. Following discussion is enough to understand the basic nature and scope of this discipline.
Agricultural geography personified has a nature, just as any human being has a peculiar nature or the psychological tendency. As says H.J. Mackinder, the geography is a science, arts and philosophy by nature. So, it follows that the agricultural geography is a science, arts and philosophy, too.
It is a science because it follows the scientific methods of the observation, the collection of the data, the hypothesis, the theory and the model building ever open to the scientific scrutiny in terms of the relationship among variables under the study and the validity of such a relationship.
It is an art, since it involves quite a subjective approach, too in terms of the skilful organization of the field studies, the collection of the data, the map drawing and the interpretation of the results.
It's a philosophy, too, in terms of ever trying to philosophize the questions of the human beings and the environment relationship in the agricultural terms. It tries to frame the postulations as to what, why, how and where an agricultural activity takes place in a particular corner or the spatial point of the globe or the universe?
Finally, it of course inter alia is interdisciplinary, flexible, dynamic, friendly and far-reaching, too.
The Scope:
The scope, the ambit or the area of the agricultural geography is quite vast both in the temporal and the spatial terms, besides the applicability. The Universal Integrated Cubical Temporal - Spatial - Applicability Scope model of the scope illustrates it aptly. The given cube can easily be sliced into 90pieces (3 Temporal faces x 6 Spatial faces x 5 Applicability faces).
Each slice represents one face each of the Temporal - Spatial - Applicability Scope. Thus, we may elaborate the scope of the subject in the 90 different ways. For example, let us cut the slice with the 3 following faces: the Future, the Philosophical and the Asthenospheric. This slice means that the agricultural geography can be studied from the point of view of the philosophical questions related to the use of the asthenospheric resources at any given point of the time in the future.
Although Hartshorne and Alexander opine that "the geographer is concerned primarily with variations from place to place rather than from time to time" yet a geographer can't escape studying the temporal aspects, too in terms of studying the varied geographical patterns of the phenomena prevailing at any given point of the time on the Earth.
A complete and detailed exposition of all the above mentioned 90 integrated slices is beyond the scope of this article. So, I have attempted the following brief description of the various facets of the scope of this challenging dynamic subject:
Different scholars and geographers the field of agricultural geography have tried to explain the nature and scope of agricultural geography in many ways and hence there is no clear and well defined agreed and accepted but from the different thought one can atleast get an idea of the nature and scope of geography .geography has its nature ,it is an art and scsience while at the same time a philosophical discipline