The Roots of Walter Christaller about its Work
The Roots of Walter Christaller about its Work
Three sets of formative influences shaped Christaller's work: those derived from his childhood, from his career, and from the intellectual context in which he worked. One of the formative influences in his childhood was the gift of an atlas from an aunt, a gift suggested by Christaller's mother "My aunt was quite disappointed that she 'just' sent a 'useful' gift, and not something to play with, which would really make one happy" . Reflecting a view that would be echoed by many geographers, Christaller saw the atlas in a different light: "The atlas then became a plaything, not only something to look at and study. I drew in new railroad lines, put a new city somewhere or other, or changed the borders of nations, straightening them out or delineating them along mountain ranges".
The world is not a given to be captured and frozen, as is, on the map: a world is but one possible world to be depicted, as we choose to imagine it, on a map. To a geographer, human patterns are contingent possibilities, not necessities entailed and determined by environmental constraints. Christaller was visualizing and drawing hypothetical worlds, albeit worlds that had to conform to some geographical rationale. There is a logic to placing borders along the mountain ranges that separate groups of people or to dividing human systems on the basis of physical systems, in this case watersheds. The playfulness of this activity is crucial: the map was the inspiration for possible worlds. Another childhood formative influence is what Christaller called "statistics": I designed new administrative divisions and calculated their populations because I also had a passion for statistics. When I found a statistical handbook advertised for about two marks, I pleaded with my father to buy it for me. He, who was only interested in literature, tried to dissuade me. From disappointment, I broke into tears, and then, nevertheless, was given the statistical handbook. We would refer to statistics as data, although the calculation of the population of administrative divisions is close to a modem approach to statistical analysis. We can also see this as a passion for collecting and using geospatial data. The third childhood formative influence that Chrislaller reports is the deliberate fostering of an inquiring mind as a result of active field work: In school in Darmstadt I had an excellent geography teacher. Often we went with him through the woods and fields; suddenly he stood still and asked: What do you see here? We discovered, more or less, that the beech tree brandies on one side were green with lichens, and not on the other side. And we found the explanation: on the moist windward side the lichens can grow, but on the dry lee side they cannot. Our geography teacher Volsing taught us to observe and look for causes. The young Christaller exemplifies the development of a spatial thinker. he was fascinated by maps and data and patterns, emboldened to imagine and depict alternative worlds, grounded in the description and explanation of actual worlds, and prompted to ask questions about existing patterns and relationships. His career shows both the power of these childhood formative influences and the effects of persistence, constraint, and opportunity.
He began to study the idea of national economy at univer. sty, but those studies were interrupted by World War 1. Even here, the passions of his childhood came through strongly: When I was wounded in the First World War at Stralsand and put in a military hospital, and my mother asked me what I would like sent to me, I wrote: a Perth Pocket Atlas. In my bed I completely painted this atlas, and I always took it with me, when I was cured and returned to the front. World War I was followed by marriage, a family, and the need to cam money. This led to a career in city planning, particularly in Berlin, work whose connection with spatial thinking is clear. The third set of formative influences come from the intellectual context in which Christaller worked. In 1930, he returned to university at Erlangen, working on a doctorate in economics: "Due to personal interest, I went to lectures of Robert Gradmann. My old love for geography awoke in all its force and drew me, as almost a forty-year-old man, completely under its power". Christaller includes an extended passage from a seminar paper that he wrote for Gradmann, commenting on two articles. In this passage, we can see some of the intellectual roots of his thinking, views that shaped his dissertation research. Christaller wrote about the nature of spaces (abstract and concrete); about the search for "laws, causalities, and functional relations"; about location theory, and about the evolution of spatial patterns all of which underpinned his discovery of central place theory.
Learning things is not limited to the scentific area. Instead it also has relations with some other things like speaking a language or using software, including Rosetta Stone German and Rosetta Stone Hebrew. If you have a creative mind, you will make all your own differences in the end!
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