Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Ph.D. Student of Geography and Rural Planning
Abstract
Undoubtedly, geography is one of the most applied sciences in today's world, yet it is still isolated and somewhat unknown in our country. The mentality and knowledge of the majority of people toward this science is limited to the definitions of purely descriptive nature related to the 17th Century and before.
Many people do not even understand the most obvious and most basic definition of geography, while geography is associated with lives of people, is as old as human being, and in a sense is the knowledge of living.
The term geography is, in the minds of many people in our country, mistakenly synonymous with the names of mountains, rivers, capitals, races, etc., and has been associated with a higher level of knowledge of climatic status.
This is such that, once encountered with any person educated in the field, they seem to have encountered a massive database or encyclopedia that has a high capacity for storing names of natural and human habitations. Therefore, answering such questions is the scientific task and outcome of any graduate or student studying in the field.
According to the author, in the emergence and development of such a wrong attitude toward geography, not only the experts and specialists of this field are guilty of not providing public awareness, but also the media which, despite diverse programs including some shows of geographic nature concerning one of the branches of this discipline, nevertheless avoids speaking of such mistakes consciously or unknowingly. In this paper, it is attempted to briefly describe the historical developments in the definition and content of geography from beginning to the present day, and to clarify the importance and current status of applied geography in natural and human sciences by mentioning the various branches of the aforementioned fields in the European and American countries as well as in our country, Iran.
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