Geographical Thinking as Action and as a Result. the Relationships Between the Production of a Specific Way of Thinking and the Generation of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract

It is presented to geographical thinking as an action and as a product or result. We maintain that all science generates in those who profess it a specific type of thoughts, understood as mental processes that influence from a specific perspective in the perception or observation, analysis, explanation of problems of the environment. If we are dealing with actions, the need arises to reflect on the ways in which the spatial influences the mental, if both dimensions are separate or interpenetrated and if such thoughts imply the production of representations, especially with regard to the apprehension of the qualities of objects. As a product or result, geographic thinking is equivalent to an accumulation of knowledge that we call geographic thinking, from which theorizations, tools, strategies and models are constituted that provide the human being with competencies to relate to the world. We apply in the determination of what it means to think geographically some inputs coming from the Philosophy of Mind, from the Representational Theory and from Neuroscience. In addition, we briefly reflect on the implications of this conception of geographic thinking in the formation of future geographers.