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This article addresses the geographical scope through the concept of nature and, it aims to analyze the relation between the epistemological concepts and cosmovision, instituted by the man, in ancient and medieval ages. This task refers to a scientific, philosophical and artistic itinerary, strictly connected to the progress of the Western civilization. The main characteristic of the Ancient and Medieval knowledge are to be emphasized, thus defending that the invisible, immaterial and sacred semblants, qualitative attributes of those eras, result from the elaboration of the metaphysical mythical and allegorical sets elaborated by the thinkers who lived and dedicated themselves, intellectually, on those historical moments. The main philosophical systems in Antiquity, from Aristotle to Plato, as the sets of thoughts from Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, meaningful thinkers of the Medieval era, will be briefly analyzed in order to defend the qualitative, metaphysics and immaterial aspects of the cosmos. This work will present some important artistic representations to demonstrate some of the main aspects of the intrinsic nature to these historical periods. That is where the power of the human intellect lies. Through the interdisciplinary analysis, implicated by Geography, Philosophy and the History of Science, the work aims to bind very important themes of the Geographical Science to broader parameters, conforming an analysis and an efficient and necessary discourse for the promoted debate on the university environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article is about the history of Geography Epistemology – despite the interdisciplinary of its content – more specifically the meaning of its empirical cognition through the times for the geographical knowledge. For this purpose, it will be structured the text in three moments, which are compared and tangled. The first includes the medieval period and its predilection for the textual and apologetic element, based on fundamental premises of Christianity. In here, textual contents of different times are overwritten to the empirical element, aiming to equate the writing of the world to religious elements. The second moment is about the knowledge period known as Great navigations. New people and lands are unveil through Europe on it – mainly by the Spaniards and Portuguese discoverers – which by the empirical evidences of the new places, was obligated to question some trues from the medieval tradition strongly present in the fifteen and sixteen Century. At last it will be discussed about the trip of Alexander von Humboldt to the Spaniard America (1969 – 1832). Here, the wise Prussian will (re) signify the empirical upon a complex symbiosis between conventional scientific procedures, elements of German Romanticism, as well as the scientific input of Johann Wolgang von Goethe (1749- 1832). It is important to mention that the article has as a fundamental premise the inherent relation between the kind of relevance given to the empirical and the historical moment in which such relevance gains its owns treats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]