ABSTRACT
Thinking about how and why we think is not easy. It is perhaps the most difficult task we face as human beings, yet at the same time perhaps the task that ultimately distinguishes us as human. In all conscience, I cannot lead you on like a Judas goat, and tell you that the three chapters in this section of the book will be easy. I find thinking about the way geographers think a terribly difficult business, so these poor pages can only be a reflection of my own struggles. Some professional geographers may even say they should never have been written, that the ideas are too difficult, and still too nebulous, to present to a general audience as part of the recent story of geography. They may well be right. But the thinking by geographers about geographic thinking is such an important and vital part of modern geography that I feel a deep compulsion to try to lay out some of the main threads.
