Synoptic subjects? The Scope and methods of philosophy, geography and anthropology

Abstract

This article identifies the recurring expression ‘scope and method/s’ in three published lectures by Henry Sidgwick, Halford Mackinder and James George Frazer between 1885 and 1921. It tracks transdisciplinary connections between the thought and practice of late nineteenth-century philosophy, economic science and geography, and early twentieth-century anthropology, thereby illuminating shifting perceptions, and applications, of historical geographical knowledge and imaginations in a broader speculative evolutionary epistemological scheme. At a time when science and humanities subjects were thought to be diverging, it shows that metaphorical uses of optical instruments helped draw synoptic spatio-temporal frames of reference which shaped transdisciplinary and trans-institutional practices.