Fashioned in the light of physics: the scope and methods of Halford Mackinder's geography

Abstract

Throughout his career the geographer, and first reader in the ‘new’ geography at the University of Oxford, Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) described his discipline as a branch of physics. This essay explores this feature of Mackinder's thought and presents the connections between him and the Royal Institution professor of natural philosophy John Tyndall (1820–1893). My reframing of Mackinder's geography demonstrates that the academic professionalization of geography owed as much to the methods and instruments of popular natural philosophy and physics as it did to theories of Darwinian natural selection. In tracing the parallels between Tyndall and Mackinder, and their shared emphasis upon the technology of the magic lantern and the imagination as tools of scientific investigation and education, the article elucidates their common pedagogical practices. Mackinder's disciplinary vision was expressed in practices of visualization, and in metaphors inspired by physics, to audiences of geographers and geography teachers in the early twentieth century. Together, these features of Mackinder's geography demonstrate his role as a popularizer of science and extend the temporal and spatial resonance of Tyndall's natural philosophy.

Wordplay, world‐play, and interdisciplinary imaginations

“…When the RGS abandoned the schools medals scheme in 1884, Galton sought to create a “Professor of Educational Geography” at the society, modelled on the Royal Institution’s (RI) Fullerian professor, a position once occupied by the chemist Michael Faraday (1791–1867) from 1833 to 1867 (Galton, 1884, pp.1–3). Such findings deepen previously established connections between the RGS and the RI (Hayes, 2019). Significantly, Galton asserted the importance of language: the appointee should be a “linguist [who] might attend geogr: congresses … be prepared to make a considerable show in that part of our society’s work that comes within his province, at all international Geogr.…”

“…Nineteenth-century natural philosophers, emergent physicists, and geographers shared imaginative knowledge-making and communicating processes (Hayes, 2019). Geographers have recently investigated elementary particles, historical geographies of chemistry, and contemporary chemical industries (Adey, 2015;Barry, 2005;Barry & Born, 2013;Engelmann, 2015).…”

“…Mackinder is often understood to have been instrumental in establishing, and gaining the recognition of, a geographical science. He was no less committed to maintaining a discipline that was humanist and literary (Hayes, 2018, 2019). Through constant conceptual and linguistic co‐evolution, Mackinder’s geography remained “new.” Both Mackinder’s better‐known geography and Heyes’ geosophy drew from common Oxford sources as well as Galton.…”

“…Portmanteau words may therefore index spatio‐temporal dynamics (Billinge, 1996, p. 453; Cresswell, 2013, pp. 10–11; Hayes, 2019; Beer, 2016, pp. 75–101; Sleigh, 2018, p. 159).…”