Progress

The editor is to be congratulated on helping to focus such distinguished contributors on a subject of such normative significance... This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of progress in geography.

Geography is defined as the understanding of how human beings transform the world and make it habitable Transformation nearly always raises the issue of progress, and central to the essays is the idea that progress is a moral issue. The book is most relevant to advanced undergraduate teaching especially in the philosophy of geography.

This is a very original book that represents the intellectual maturing of geography as a field of study. It is timely, not only in the originality of its views, but in their universality. This is not a book written by specialists for specialists, but an open, unlimited dialogue.

The book builds upon Tuan's concern with progress toward the real and good. The possibilities to understand the world according to such a framework are great, of course, and the papers included here comment upon many of them. All the contributors charge ahead toward new frontiers in thinking about the place of geography in matters of 'progress.' In so doing, they all make significant contributions to our knowledge about the world and its natural and human affairs.