Why some scholars define geography as an imposter subject?

Answer 1

The term 'imposter subject' for geography is certainly not a common one, and if one scientist ever used it he probably had a specific argument to make; the definition makes a catchy headline for an article.

Although we have to guess what his/her argument was in that specific article you might try to make up some arguments that could have led to that headline. One might be that almost every map of the world that you see gives a false perspective of the size of continents by ignoring the curving of the globe, and that as a result Africa, South America and southern Asia are always drawn too small, and Europe and North America always too large.

Another argument may lay in its study of the relation between man and environment. For years now fierce discussions have been goin on about global warming in which the 'alarmists' repeatedly have been accused of being impostors by doctoring or ignoring figures, like downplaying the fact that over 95-97% of CO2-emissions have completely natural causes that man cannot even influence; or that global warming is a natural process we are going through in a billions-years old process of earth cooling off and warming up-periods.

I'm not even entering into the question who is right and who is wrong and to what extent, since the discussion is mostly between 'believers' and 'non-believers'. But the question was why someone on occasion might have called geography an imposter subject; and here are two possible reasons.