JOHN K. WRIGHT AND HUMAN NATURE IN GEOGRAPHY
John K. Wright introduced the concept of geosophy into geography in 1947. By emphasizing the role of human nature, geosophy differed from the dominant geographical approaches of the time. A survey of the subsequent use of the term by geographers suggests that some geographical ideas are transmitted largely by undocumented, informal methods. Wright anticipated the rise of the subjective in geography. OHN K. Wright was one of the intellectual leaders of the American Geo- graphical Society (AGS) during the second quarter of the twentieth cen- tury. As librarian from 1920 to 1937, he designed the AGS research catalog, a bibliographical retrieval system organized exclusively for geographical purposes, and he was director of the society from 1938 to 1949. A prolific writer, he published numerous articles on a wide range of topics. His career has been described as "one of the most fruitful and illustrious in the history of American geography" (Lowenthal 1969, 598). In 1946, he served as pres- ident of the Association of American Geographers and presented the annual presidential address with its traditional focus on geographical thought and methodology. His address, "Terrae Incognitae: The Place of the Imagination in Geog- raphy" touched on several topics, including geosophy, which he proposed to be a new subfield of geography. Geosophy was to encompass "the study of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view" and to deal with "the nature and expression of geographical knowledge both past and present" (Wright 1947, 12; 1966, 83). Although Wright did not coin the term geosophy, his definition of it is the accepted one (Dunbar 1980). Wright's address is now accepted as a seminal contribution to geograph- ical thought, an important starting point for the study of the subjective in geography. Yet the concept of geosophy remains obscure at best, familiar to a few geographers but unknown to most. Only about half of the dictionaries of the discipline deem the term worthy of inclusion. There is little need for such an entry; the word has probably never been published without an accompanying definition. In this article, I trace the concept of geosophy from its inception to the present day. In doing so, I assess the importance and current influence of *I thank Alex Gibson and Lisa Kahn for their encouragement and for comments on early drafts of this article.