Perception in Four Keys: A Commentary

The invitation to comment on these papers offers a welcome challenge. Many people here remember the enthusiasm and pioneering elan of that session on “Environmental Perception and Behaviour” at Columbus in 1965. It was my first experience of a national meeting of the Association of American Geographers and I distinctly remember how thrilling it was to find senior members of the profession on a wavelength similar to the one I had come to in my own dissertation work on French geography. There was a puzzle on my mind that day, but I was far too timid to raise it publicly: why, way back in the 1930s, was Hardy’s initiative in La géographie psychologique so harshly squelched? In this land of boundless opportunity, I told myself, maybe the idea will be judged on its own merits.