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ROBERT PARK'S HUMAN ECOLOGY AND HUMAN GEOGRPHY∗

1980; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 70; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-8306.1980.tb01296.x

1467-8306

J. Nicholas Entrikin,

American Environmental and Regional History

ABSTRACT In describing the position of human ecology within the system of sciences, Robert Park was concerned with establishing the logical independence of ecology from geography. He used arguments of neo-Kantian philosophy, and to a lesser exten Comtean positivism, to accomplish his goal. The study of the philosophical context of Park's arguments on human science suggests that his views were more compatible with those of the regional geographers of his period than with those of the urban and social geographers who rediscovered his work. Notes ∗ I would like to thank the Academic Senate Research Committee at UCLA for thier financial support of this project. Robert D. Sack and William A. V. Clark provided encouragement and critical comments. A shorter version of this paper was presented at the colloquium of the I. G. U. Commission on the History of Geographic Thought, held in conjunction with the XVth International Congress on the History of Science in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 15–16, 1977. Windelband's philosophy was mainly its history, and his history of philosophy was a history of thought. He described philosophy as a “science of sciences,” fundamentally a science of method based on a history of systematic thought. There is, in my opinion, no other way of getting an adequate conception of scientific method. At Strassburg [Heidelberg] I studied with Hettner, the geographer. Geography as Hettner conceived it, was a revelation to me, and it has led me to the conclusion that every student of sociology should have to know geography, human geography particularly for after all culture is finally a geographical phenomenon. For, however clearly it may be shown that men are actually influenced in verifying their opinions by their needs, and hold that to be true of which they can make some use, even here the utility is not identical with the truth, but merely a feature which determines the appreciation of truth. From the logical point of view Pragmatism is a grotesque confusion of means and end. From the historical point of view it is an entirely different matter, as it represents a victory of noetic individualism which, in the decay of our intellectual culture, would release the elementary force of the will and let it pour itself over the realm of pure thought. It calls into question one of the greatest achievements of civilization, the purity of the will to truth. The main thrust of the movement [pragmatism] was the determination to construct an epistemology adequate for both science and religion and one which would insure the active, constructive role of the mind while yet affording a solid basis for empirical knowledge. To do this the pragmatists drew heavily upon the heritage of Scotch realism and idealism which had served this purpose before Darwin. But, while a Berkeleyan type idealism had sufficed for [Samuel] Johnson and [Jonathan] Edwards, it was Kant who was the dominant influence upon the pragmatists. Indeed Cambridge pragmatism [he is referring to philosophers such as William James, Charles Peirce and Josiah Royce–not to John Dewey] was, and is, more indebted to Kant than to any other single philosopher. In what sense may we say that time and space belong to the individual? Time and space belong to the individul in the sense that he receives them intuitively. They are just given for him says Dr. Park. Time is the way it feels to the individual. We create out of this perceptual world, a world that cannot look the same, but that means the same. We are constantly making knowledge so that instead of having private knowledge we have public knowledge. In the field of the social sciences it is the statisticians, as one might expect from the nature of the statistical method and the preconceptions upon which the method is based, who have found the conception of society as a numerical aggregate, i.e., without essential unity, as best adapted to their purposes. On the other hand, those writers who have conceived the fundamental character of society to be concerted action insist that the conception of society as a mere population aggregate is not adequate. The nature of society “lies in its constitution more than in its parts,” and the principle which declares that “the part in the whole is no longer the same as the part in isolation” applies in the field of the social as well as the physical and biological sciences. You do not emphasize the fact that the community is itself a unit. That means that the individuals who compose the ecological unit are so related that if the one individual is affected by the environment it transmits the changes resulting from this accommodation to all other members of the community and in a typical way. I don't believe the plant ecologists have considered that aspect of the matter, but it is vital to our conception of human ecology. The individuals who compose an ecological organization do form an environment for each other, but we can speak of an environment for the ecological unit as a whole. Events are given; things are, in some sense, constructed by the human mind. This distinction is suggested by the philosophy of Kant; and it may be remarked in passing that some of the most active currents in the philosophy of science have a neo-Kantian tendency. It is emphasized that the elements which enter into a process of scientific thought, or any other type of systematic and discursive thought, are not the “raw” data of original experience, but are invariably constructed by the mind of the thinker for the purposes of the task at hand. It is fundamental to the whole line of reasoning here involved that by a thing we mean, as has been said, not necessarily something substantial or material, but simply something relatively persistent, something that maintains its identity recognizably through a period of time. The ultimate outcome of an analysis of the world of experience into such entities, if carried to its logical completion, is a foundation of a philosophy of the Platonic type, in which only the eternal, the permanent, the universal, is conceded to be real and significant. For the purposes of science, however, we do not have to make so radical a concession. Science is instrumental: that is perhaps what distinguishes it from some forms of philosophy; and accordingly, in science we assume the permanence of things only to that extent that furthers our purpose. A thing might be defined as an entity, or an item of experience, which we can describe in general terms. Description in general terms implies, however, comparison of the things in question with other things; and, further the possibility of classification. But this is exactly what a sociologist seeks to do with the things in which he is interested, such as persons, instituttions, groups, social areas, communities–in short, social objects. He regards them not simply as unique historical entities, that is, really, as events that may be caughts as it were in snapshot views, like the scenes which make a strip of moving picture film, but as entities that may be compared and classified. The region which nurtures man—his habitat—has as a result of the “cumulative effects of environment and ecological succession” become at once a natural and a cultural entity. It is the interrelationship of all these factors—physiographic, economic, and cultural which reduce themselves eventually to specific types that the new regional sociology proposes to describe classify and explain. The title suggests that the volume is an extension of recent studies in human geography. On the contrary, the point of departure is not geography, but ecology. It is a study in other words, not of man and society as parts of the changing landscape, but rather of the whole complex physical environment in which human aggregations develop a cultural life. To the studies of plant and animal communities, arising out of the characteristic conditions of a natural region, the new science of regional sociology proposes to add the study of the human community. Just as plant formations and animal communities are determined not merely by their physical environment but by their relations to one another—by their “collective cooperation,” as Mukerjee calls it–so the human community is determined not merely by physiography and climate, but by the plant and animal communities which with it constitute the regional complex. In other words, the geographical region and the web of life within that region has been made the subject of a new division of the social sciences. These norms are what the Baden school calls values: abstract, universal, a priori, having no actual existence (Wirklichkeit) but possessing validity (Geltung), they are the objects of a pure rational knowledge which is philosophy. Philosophy accordingly consists of three a priori sciences of values: logic, ethics ethics and aesthtics. makes the difference in intellectual interest between Natural Science and the Humanities. But we cannot repeat too often that we are here only speaking of ultimate aims and hence of those scinces which appear as polar opposites, between which the real work of Science moves in manifold gradations, so that in any particular case we can only speak of a preponderance of one or the other moment–as Rickert, in his penetrating analysis of this relation, has pointed out. Empirical reality becomes nature when we view it with respect to its universal characteristics; it becomes history when we view it as particular and individual. Rickert's Kantian view that knowledge can never grasp actuality without transforming it, and that such a transformation is always determined by the theoretical purpose (Erkenntniszweck) which lies behind the attempt to gain knowledge. if history is to be knowledge it must rise above the merely subjective, and relate the objects of its contemplation to generally acknowledged values. These generally acknowledged individual values are identified by Rickert with cultural values (Kulturwerte.) The earth's surface, in itself simply a product of nature, acquires, as the scene of all cultural evolution, an interest beyond that of a merely natural object. If the earth's surface is regarded as the theater of cultural evolution, then the values of civilization are transferred to the geographical conditions necessary for its existence and influencing it in its development. The surface of the earth then becomes essential by virtue of its individuality as a result of the scientific interest attaching to its connection with culture. In this case general cultural values govern the formation of individual concepts, and geography fits into the frame of our system of classification at least as well as historical biology. The same objects also become important in the formation of general theories, which are not called geographic, but geological. Here general concepts occupy the foreground, and the different configurations of rivers, oceans, mountains, etc., which are essential for the history of culture by virtue of their unique peculiarities and individuality, are considered only as instances exemplifying a specific or a generic type. I picked up yesterday a book by J. Russell Smith entitled “North America—Its People and Resources, Development and Prospects of the Continent as an Agricultural. Industrial and Commercial Area. “This book goes further than anything I have yet found in the way of Human Geography and Human Ecology. I am sure you will find it interesting and valuable. We will necessarily have two starting points in those studies [human ecology]: First, study of the civic community, as you are now making it. Second, study of anthropogeography and the ecological point of view arises out of such studies. To make the book comprehensive it must of necessity cover a wide field, drawing from researches in Geography, Economics, Tranportation, etc. I agree with you that our point of departure from these other disciplines is to interpret the facts of distribution and accommodation in terms of factors or principles. I have done a lot of reading in the field of Human and Commercial Geography and am quite aware that the Geographers are the people to supply the facts on human distribution. as is true of most books of which Ellsworth Huntington is the author, one can say, at the very least, it is written in a very readable, journalistic style and, what is more, chock-full of news. This is to such an extent a fact that the volume can be recommended to anyone who wishes to keep abreast of current economic changes or to anyone who is interested in becoming an intelligent reader of newspapers. Ecology and Geography are distinguished in the same way as are history and sociology. Geography asks—what is here? or—where thigs are? There is a geography of languages, of diseases, etc. Ecology asks—what are the forces that keep things as they are? [sic] in their positions with relation to each other in space? The cooperation of a multitude of forces makes for the groupings of human beings on the earth's surface. Location interests us not as a geographical fact, but because of the processes that maintain it. It interests us, moreover, with reference not to the earth's surface, but with reference to other groups—competitive relations with other communities. There are no persons in ecology—but rather their sustenance relations, and the forces determining their location in groups. Sociology seeks to classify its facts and to describe social changes in terms of processes. But geographers will make no concession to “the mania for classification,” since to proceed in that way “would mean passing over, in most cases, anything peculiar, individual or irregular—that is to say, in short, all that is most interesting.” [The italics are not Park's.] As soon as the geographer begins to compare and classify the plants, the animals and the peoples with which he comes in contact, geography passes over into the special sciences, i.e., botany, zoology, and anthropology. Concrete sciences such as geography, archeology, history, anthropology, geology, are interested in time and place orders. Geography, for example, is interested in the actual spatial relations as they are found in the concrete, not in the abstract. That would be mathematics. 1 The following quotations illustrate this point: “This tradition [the Chicago school of sociology] has had an extraordinarily powerful influence over geographic thinking and, although the techniques of description have changed somewhat (factorial ecology essentially replacing descriptive human ecology), the essential direction of the work has not changed greatly. The Chicago school of urban geographers is firmly derivative of the Chicago school of sociologists,” David Harvey, Social Justice and The City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 131. “The social geographer has borrowed most frequently–and with most success perhaps–from human ecology as it was developed by the urban sociologists in the United States.” Emrys Jones, “Introduction,” in Emrys Jones, ed., Readings in Social Geography (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 1–12, reference on p. 3. “L'ecole d' écologie humaine de Chicago a eu une influence très considérable sur le développement de la géographie, de ses concepts et de ses méthodes,” Paul Claval, Principes de Géographie Sociale (Paris: Libraries Techniques, 1973), p. 38. For further references see Brian Berry and John Kasarda, Contemporary Urban Ecology (New York: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 3–18; Max Sorre, Rencontres de la géographie et la sociologie (Paris: Librairie Marcel Rivière et Crie, 1957), pp. 83–84, 115–16; Eckhard Thomale, “Sozialgeographie: eine disziplingeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Entwicklung der Anthropogeographie,”Marburger Geographische Schriften, Vol. 53 (1972), pp. 183 191: and Peter Goheen, Victorian Toronto (Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago Research Paper no. 127, 1970), pp. 21–43. 2 The little contact between the disciplines was especially surprising in that geographer Harlan Barrows was on the faculty at the University of Chicago when he gave his presidential address to the Association of American Geographers entitled,“Geography as Human Ecology,”Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 13 (1923), pp. 1 14. For a discussion of Barrows' ecology see William Koelsch, “The Historical Geography of Harlan Barrows,”Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 59 (1969), pp. pp. 632 51. Park cited Barrows' address in Robert Park, “Human Ecology,” in Ralph Turner, ed., On Social Control and Collective Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 69–84, reference on pp. 79–80; (originally published in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 42 (1936), pp. 1–15). Fuchs has argued that Barrows' address was part of a general trend toward an ecological perspective in geography from 1900 to 1930, and thus was not an isolated statement; Gerhard Fuchs, “Das Konzept der ökologie in der amerikanischen Geographie,”Erdkunde, Vol. 21 (1967), pp. 81 93. A few geographers did refer to Park's work, for example, Robert Dickinson, “The Metropolitan Regions of the United States,”Geographical Review, Vol. 24 (1934), pp. 278 91, reference on p. 282n.; Chauncy Harris, “A Functional Classification of Cities in the United States,”Geographical Review, Vol. 33 (1943), pp. 86 99, reference on p. 98; and Robert Dickinson, City, Region and Regionalism: A Geographical Contribution to Human Ecology (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1947), pp. XIII-XIV and 112–14. 3 For example, Park stated: “The intimate, not to say illicit, relations between geography, history and sociology have long been a source of confusion and even scandal to students of the social sciences …. The relations between human geography and human ecology, or social morphology, as Durkheim chose to call it, are so obscure that it is important, in the interest of clear thinking, to determine boundaries—and not merely boundaries, but points of view and methods,” R. Park, “Review of A Geographical Introduction to History by Lucien Febvre, Principles of Human Geography by P. Vidal de la Blache, The Environmental Basis of Society by Franklin Thomas and Regional Sociology by Radhamakamal Mukerjee,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XXXII (1926), pp. 486–90, reference on p. 487. 4 The materials for this study include both published and unpublished Park papers. The unpublished materials were derived from two sources, Special Collections, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois and the private collection of Drs. Everett and Helen MacGill Hughes, Cambridge, Mass. These two collections represent two of the larger holdings of Park's papers from the period in which he developed human ecology while at the University of Chicago, but they are far from being complete. 5 There have been many attempts to distinguish ecology and geography according to their content. One of the most detailed studies is Leo Schonore, “Geography and Human Ecology,”Economic Geography, Vol. 37 (1961), pp. 207 17. 6 For a discussion of the neo-Kantian heritage of Hartshorne and Hettner see J. A. May, Kant's Concept of Geography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), pp. 23, 45–50 and 238–48; Vidal de la Blache's neo-Kantian roots are discussed in Vincent Berdoulay, “The Vidal-Durkheim Debate,” in David Ley and Marwyn Samuels, eds., Humanistic Geography (Chicago: Maaroifa Press, 1978), pp. 77–90. 7 For example, Martindale placed Park's work within the neo-Kantian tradition of sociology, yet acknowledged the variety of viewpoints found in Park's writings; Don Martindale, The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Miffin Co., 1960), pp. 252–56. Mellor suggested that American pragmatism was the most significant influence on Park; J. R. Mellor, Urban Sociology in an Urbanized Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 226. The naturalistic orientation of Park and other early ecologists has been frequently noted, for example, Berry and Kasarda, op. cit., footnote 1, p. 3–7. Coser has remarked upon Park's ability to put many different, often conflicting, ideas to his own use; Lewis Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1971), pp. 357–84, reference on p. 373. 8 Robert Park, “Methods of Teaching: Impressions and a Verdict,”Social Forces, Vol. 20 (1941), pp. 36–46, reference on p. 40n. The ambiguous and unsystematic character of Park's work has been noted often. For example, see Edward Shils, The Present State of American Sociology (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1948), p. 10; and Leon Bramson The Political Context of Sociology (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 60. 9 Two recently published biographies of Park provide interesting insights into both the man and his work: Winifred Raushenbush, Robert E. Park: Biography of a Sociologist (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1979); and Fred Matthews, Quest for an American Sociology: Robert E. Park and the Chicago School (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, (1977). More detailed discussion of points raised in this section can be found in these two sources. 10 Robert Park, “Life History, 1929,” Park papers, Hughes collection, Cambridge, Mass. Park's “Life History” has been reprinted with corrections in Paul Baker's, “The Life Histories of W. I. Thomas and Robert Park,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 79 (1973), pp. 243 60. 11 Matthews, op. cit., footnote 9, pp. 20–30, 146. 12 Bruce Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860–1930 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 127–401. 13 Park, op. cit., footnote 10, p. 7. 14 Park's dissertation, originally written in German and completed in 1904, was translated and published in English; Robert Park, The Crowd and the Public, and Other Essays, translated by Charlotte Elsner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). 15 Helen MacGill Hughes, “Robert Park,” in D. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 11 (New York: MacMillan and the Free Press, 1967), pp. 416–19; and Everett Hughes, “Robert E. Park,” in Everett Hughes, ed., The Sociological Eye (Chicago: Aldine Atherton, 1971), pp. 543–49, reference on p. 544. 16 Martindale, op. cit., footnote 7; Matthews, op. cit., footnote 9, pp. 41–50; Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, translated by Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950). 17 Nicholas Spykman, The Social Theory of Georg Simmel (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), pp. 144–62 (originally published in 1925). In a letter to Ellsworth Faris dated Aug. 9, 1924, Park noted the importance of Spykman's work on Simmel; box 6, folder 9, Park papers, Special Collections, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. 18 Spykman, op. cit., footnote 17, p. 148. 19 Park, op. cit., footnote 10, p. 9. 20 Wilhelm Windelband, A History of Philosophy, translated by James Tufts (New York: Macmilla, 1893); and idem, “Geschichte und Naturwissenshaft,”Präludien, Vol. 2 (Tübingen: J. Mohr, 1907), pp. 355–79. 21 Park, op. cit., footnote 14, p. 3; and Park, op. cit., footnote 10, p. 9. 22 Park, op. cit., footnote 10, p. 9. 23 Other students of Windelband also had Hettner on their examining committees. For example, a friend and correspondent of Park's Wilhelm Heuer, wrote to Park: “My oral examination was on June 17t, Windelband was very friendly and made it easily [sic] for me; then Prof. Mareks asked me some crude questions which I could not answer. Prof. Hettner again was very nice and I came out safely.” Wilhelm Heuer, letter dated 14 October, 1907, to Robert Park, box 3, folder 4, Park papers, Special Collections, University of Chicago. Heuer, like Park, was quite enthralled with Hettner's geography: “I was in Hettner's lectures and seminary and here the growing emptiness of philosophy was equalled by the richness of the interesting science of geography.” Wilhelm Heuer, letter dated 21 October, 1905, to Robert Park, box 3, folder 4, Park papers, Special Collections, University of Chicago. 24 E. Hughes, op. cit., footnote 15, pp. 344–45. 25 Matthews, op. cit., footnote 9, p. 31. 26 Wilhelm Windelband, An Introduction to Philosophy, translated by Joseph McCabe (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1921), p. 175. 27 Bruce Kuklick, Josiah Royce, An Intellectual Biography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972). 28 Murray Murphey, “Kant's Children: The Cambridge Pragmatists,”Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 4 (1968), pp. 3 33, reference on pp. 8–9. 29 Park, op. cit., footnote 8, p. 45. 30 Robert Park, “News as a Form of Knowledge,” in E. Hughes, C. Johnson, K. Masuoka, R. Redfield, and L. Wirth, eds., Society (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955), pp. 71–88, reference on p. 73 (originally published in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 45 (1940), pp. 669–86). For a discussion of cognitive Darwinism see Nicholas Rescher, Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 126–66. 31 John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1929), p. 165. 32 Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921), p. 16. The first chapter of this book, pp. 1–63, was originally published under the sole authorship of Park as “Sociology and the Social Sciences,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26 (1920–21), pp. 401–24, and Vol. 27 (1921–22), pp. 1–21, 169–83. 33 Park, op. cit., footnote 8, p. 45. 34 “Notes on Method: April 11, 1927,” box 5, folder 5, Park papers, Special Collections, University of Chicago. These notes were taken by an unidentified student enrolled in Park's 1927 methods class. The notes indicate that Park was the principal teacher, but that other members of the sociology department were involved in class presentations. I have used material from these notes only when the notetaker associated Park's name with the ideas or if supporting statements can be found in other Park materials. For further discussion of Park's idea of reality see R. Park, “The Sociological Method: Facts,” unpublished manuscript, dated 1934, pp. 3–4, park papers, Hughes Collection, Cambridge, Mass. 35 “Notes on Method: May 20, 1927,” op. cit., footnote 34. 36 Park and Burgess, op. cit., footnote 32, p. 11. 37 Park and Burgess, op. cit., footnote 32, p. 11. 38 It is interesting to note, however, that ecology was a youthful natural science at the time Park was discussing human ecology. McIntosh cited the first publication of the journal Ecology in 1920 as one of the signs of the emergence of a “self conscious” and “reasonably established” academic discipline of ecology; Robert McIntosh, “Ecology since 1900,” in B. Taylor and T. White, eds., Issues and Ideas in America (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), pp. 353–72, reference on p. 356. 39 Dewey, op. cit., footnote 31, pp. 151–55; Josiah Royce, “Introduction,” in Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science, translated by George Halsted (Lancaster, Pa.: Science Press, 1921), pp. 9–25; Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science …. La Science et l'Hypothése (Paris: Ernest Flammarian 1909); and Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of ‘As If,' translated by C. K. Ogden (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1925), pp. 10–177; also, Gavin has argued that William James viewed “scientific concepts as mental instruments” William Gavin, “William James' Philosophy of Science,”The New Scholasticism, Vol. 52 (1978), pp. 413–20, reference on p. 417. For a discussion of the philosophy and geography of Josiah Royce, see J. Nicholas Entrikin, “Royce's ‘Provincialism”': A Metaphysician's Social Geography,” in David Stoddart, ed., Geography, Science and Social Concern (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, forthcoming). 40 Robert Park, “Review of The Interpretation of Development and Heredity: A Study in Biological Method by E. S. Russell,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 37 (1932), pp. 796 801, reference on p. 798. 41 Milla Alihan, Social Ecology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), pp. 70–80. 42 Robert Park, letter dated June 14, 1924, to R. D. McKenzie, Park papers, Hughes collection, Cambridge, Mass. 43 Matthews stated that Park's model of normal society can be “seen as an effort to blend the individualistic liberalism of traditional American social thought with the organicism of early European sociology by using the ideas of Simmel as the foundation of a system that stressed process, conflict, and the limitations upon human will imposed by external conditions” Matthews, op. cit., footnote 9, p. 182. 44 Richard Hartshorne, The Nature of Geography (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Association of American Geographers, 1939, reprinted with corrections in 1961), p. 311. 45 Hartshorne, op. cit., footnote 44, p. 275. He contradicts himself on this point in a later work, however, when he refers to functional regions as areal features in reality: R. Hartshorne, Perspective on the Nature of Geography, (Chicago: Association of American Geographers, 1959), p. 137. 46 For example, Park stated: “Urban areas are not mere events; they are things, and the regions of one city are comparable with those of another” Robert Park, “Sociology, Community and Society,” in E. Hughes, C. Johnson, K. Masuoka, R. Redfield and L. Wirth, eds., Human Communities (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952), pp. 178–209, reference on p. 196 (originally published in Wilson Gee, ed., Research in the Social Sciences (New York: MacMillan Co., 1929), pp. 3–49. 47 Park, op. cit., footnote 46, p. 178. 48 Park, op. cit., footnote 46, p. 178. 49 Robert Park, “The Sociological Method: Things and Events,” unpublished manuscript, dated 1934, Park papers, Hughes collection, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 5–6. 50 Park, op. cit., footnote 49, p. 9. 51 Park, op. cit., footnote 49, p. 4. 52 Park, op. cit., footnote 3, pp. 489–90. 53 Park, op.