Astronomical Geography: An Examination of the Early American Literature

Judging from textbooks in geography, there must be educational value in starting with the general and proceeding to the specific, an application of the deductive approach. It is not uncommon today for introductory physical geography and earth science textbooks to precede the examination of the planet's interior, land-water surface, and atmosphere with a brief survey of the fundamentals of astronomy. Not only is this true today, it has been true from the beginnings of American geography, as this study documents. Specifically, this paper examines the information on astronomy in geography school books published before 1850 for the purposes of determining the kinds of information presented and the degree to which teleology played a role in the presentation of that information.