Geographical Thoughts of Carl Ritter – UGC NET – Notes

Carl Ritter was also known as one of the founders of modern geographical thought. He was a dedicated field worker and believed in empirical research. Ritter introduced many stimulating ideas in geography. He stressed the idea of land and water hemispheres, the distinction between the rates of heating and cooling of land and water, the difference between the northern and southern hemispheres in their proportion of land and water.

Carl Ritter was a contemporary of Alexander von Humboldt. He was a strong supporter of field work in Geography. Ritter had a vision of an ordered and harmonious universe and he was a teleologist. He got non-formal education at Gotha, the approach advocated by J.J. Rousseau. To study the physical landscape, he visited Switzerland and Italy. It was 1807 when he met Von Humboldt. In 1814, Ritter joined the University of Gottengen and studied Geography, History, Pedagogy, Physics, Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Botany. Ritter was appointed as the first Professor of Geography in Germany in the University of Berlin. According to him, Geography is not gazetteer of information, it is Erdkunde (Science of Earth). He claimed that the central principle Geography is “the relation of all phenomena and forms of nature to the human race.”

He regarded the Earth as a whole as an ‘organism’ and the continents as ‘individuals’ or as ‘organs’. He developed the concept of ‘unity in diversity’. Unity in diversity means that every naturally bounded area is a unity in respect of climate, production, culture, population and history. This is a regional approach. According to this approach, all the physical and cultural components of environment are taken into consideration and their interrelationship is established to understand the geography of an areal unity.

Ritter’s monumental work is entitled as ‘Erdkunde’ or an Earth science. It deals with local conditions and embraces the attributes of place with respect to topical, formal and material characteristics. The topographical attribute deals with natural division of Earth surface. The formal attribute includes the distribution and movement of water, sea atmosphere and base of human life. The material conditions covered the distribution of minerals, plants and animals.