Epistemological continuities of the French school of Geography in the work of Eric Dardel

Abstract

Geographic knowledge is built from continuities and ruptures. Visiting the history of Geography, as a scientific discipline, or of a specific author is always a pendulum movement between novelty and continuity. This is true for Eric Dardel, 20th century french geographer. With regard to dardelian geography, there are countless works investigating the philosophical postulates of Phenomenology and Existentialism that guide his thinking, pointing out the rupture of his work with the Geography produced at the time. The continuities present in Eric Dardel's work, however, do not have the same attention. This article, then, attempts to investigate and understand the continuities of the French School of Geography present in Eric Dardel's geography. For that, we built a bibliographic review, both of the Dardelian work and of the French School of Geography. Thus, both Dardel's geographical work, Man and Earth, and commentators on that work were analyzed. We conclude that Dardel has the vidalians in his scientific community, in his circle of affinity. Among the influences of the French School of Geography on Eric Dardel's geographical project are the use of literary aspects in writing, the option of the human-nature relationship as an epistemological core, dialogue with other sciences as well as observation and description as part of the methodological procedures.