It is the task of the geographer to describe the region, establish the relations that do exist between the environmental facts and the economic, show how and to what extent other factors have modified the geographic, or the geographic modified the other factors that are also at work in shaping the life of the region. Particularly it is of great practical importance, having established principles of relationships, to point out how far the economic life of the region is failing to take full advantage of the natural opportunities; or to show, for an undeveloped region, what the probable or possible opportunities are for future development.

G.R. Roorbach (1926) "Economics and Geography" Round Table Discussions in the American Economic Review, 26(1) supplement: 121-124.

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Conservation seeks to insure to society the maximum benefit from the use of our natural resources. It involves the making of inventories, efforts at preservation, the discovery and prompt employment of methods of more efficient use, and the renewal and even restoration of resources. As a local, state or national program, it is predicated on the assumption that earth-resources, and the materials prepared from them, are vital elements in man's well-being, contributing both to the satisfaction of his material wants and his so-called 'higher needs'; on the fact that, in occupying any region, man tends to destroy the natural resources on which his very existence depends; and on the conviction that man has it within his power to retard or to stop the destruction of resources, or to even restore certain of them, provided that he wills to do so. (p. ix)

A.E. Parkins and J.R. Whitaker (eds.) (1939) "Preface to the First Edition" Our Natural Resources and Their Conservation, John Wiley, NY. Pp. ix-xii.

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Virtually every pollutant that has been measured as a function of time appears to be increasing exponentially.

D.H. Meadows et al. (1972) The Limits to Growth, Earth Island Ltd., London. P. 71.

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19: "a fear that we will be unable to sustain the trend of economic growth very much longer." There is a ceiling on industrial production, due to the energy crisis and diminishing returns of the natural resources that are being mined to a greater extent each year. There are side-effects to our own economic growth which manifest in "man-made disasters of ecological imbalance". 

127: Population equilibrium has to be achieved and equity in distribution of wealth.

131: Advanced nations must confront issues of limiting industrial growth.

139: Heilbroner heralds a future where "resource consuming and heat generating processes [heat as a negative byproduct of industrial production was something he thought important] must be regarded as a necessary evil, not as social triumphs, to be relegated to as small a portion of economic life as possible." This will involve "reoganizing of modes of production...and an end to a giant factory, the huge offices, perhaps of the urban complex."

R.L. Heilbroner (1974) An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, WW Norton & Co.

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185: Bacon was aware of natural magic - observation of nature, really - and the power to control it. He described natural magic as the science that applies knowledge of hidden forms to the production of wonderful operations, and by uniting the activities with passivs(?), displays the wonderful works of nature. 

185: There is also the other side that embraces the supersticious and observations concerning synthesis and antipathes(?).

195: Bacon complained about Gildert William (? 1540-1603) ideas, which were anti-Aristotlianism, about magnetic forms controlling rotation, gravity and interplanetary vacuums as  making philosophy out of a loadstone" - Gildert's work was non-experimental and tended towards the magic.

194: Gildert  also points out, contrary to Aristotle, that the "whole universe is animated and has been governed so since the beginning by their own appointed sails and have motives of self construction."

238: Science in the 16th century would be more concerned with the organisation of the scientific method. Far more people began to wonder about science.

240: There was a general disgust for the Aristotelianism of learning. No real science: math and natural philosophy was practiced in universities. The void of scientific content left people stagnating, especially when new ideas came up people did not have the language to comprehend.

247: There was a self-confidence of scientists: they could meet together for exchange of ideas. A benefit of this was that they had a way of understanding nature. Bacon said that all leaning was his province, yet he was not a scientist as such but had the same confidence. He felt that a new method of reasoning should come about by introducing a new logic. He said that only science could provide the way to truth and only empiricism could provide the way to science (a Faustian belief that knowledge was power).

248: Bacon aid that reform of the scientific method lay in the possibility of improving all learning - he wanted to create a new learning. The experiment which resulted in the ending of his life in 1629 was stuffing a clock with snow to see how it would preserve (he caught pneumonia). But his experiment is characteristic - a good idea of its time, investigated spontaniously, unsystematicly, inconslusively but ardently. 

249: Interested in appraising knowledge in all fields and proposing steps to improve it. Careful to balance praise and blame. Human tendency to system-build, influence of custom and improperly used words were hates of Bacon and he sought to address them by reconciliation and vigilance. Bacon saw that knowledge was sought for the wrong reasons not for the benefit and use of men.

250: His greatest criticism was that men sought to know for the private and trivial reasons. Science has advanced the littlest of all human endeavors because it lacked any coherent method of procedure - it did not even build on past experience. The 17th century knew little more than what Aristotle had known. Science should copy the advancing mechanical arts in they are to be founded in nature and should be cumulative.

251: Need for organising of the scientific method - classify major areas of learning (history, philosophy). These required the use of thee faculties: memory, imagination, reason. Imagination was all too much stimulated and had no role in the advancement of learning. History and philosophy has been inappropriately cultivated, beside, natural history and philosophy must be separated.

252: Bacon has a pyramidal belief structure: natural history at the base, so as such emphasis was placed on it. Experimentation was one truly important ingredient of scientific endeavour.

253: Experimental evidence as the one true way. The man who collected the facts could feel as though he had made a genuine contribution to the advancement of knowledge. Facts could be used by all people in different endeavours, so therefore were useful.

254: Science experiments should have guiding principles; no use for random experiments. The method of induction was Bacon's bid for a new logic to replace Artistotles. 

255: Demonstrate how to proceed from fact to theory because induction is that method of reasoning which "derives axions from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the [?] way, [?] as yet untied." Induction is based on experiment, and is a method whereby reason and sense experience can lean to support one another. 

256: Bacon feared abstract reasoning not based on experiment - mistrustful of Copernican astronomy. 

258: Bacon believed that science should be concerned with cause and effect. 

Karl R. Popper (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, NY.

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