pattison-fourtraditionsgeography
THE FOUR TRADITIONS OF GEOGRAPHY* WILLIAM D. PATTISON San Fernando Valley State College In 1905, one year after professional geography in this country achieved full social identity through the founding of the Association of American Geographers, William Morris Davis responded to a familiar suspicion that geography is simply an undisciplined ?omnium-gatherum? by describing an approach that as he saw it imparts a ?geographical quality? to some knowledge and accounts for the absence of the quality elsewhere.1 Davis spoke as president of the AAG. He set an example that was followed by more than one president of that organization. An enduring official concern led the AAG to publish, in 1939 and in 1959, monographs exclusively devoted to a