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<p>This text explores the significance of perspectives from the cognitive sciences for interdisciplinarity or cross-domain thinking in science, and particularly in geography.</p><p>First interdisciplinarity is examined, describing some of the central conditions that such ventures exist under. The interaction between different conceptual systems is identified as a core issue in interdisciplinarity. By focusing on our conceptual systems the dissertation aims to say something general about interdisciplinarity and science, as well as focusing on what may be considered specific to geographic ways of thought.</p><p>The conditions for scientific and cross-domain thinking are explored through an examination of the human mind. The problem of relating our mental microstructures to cultural and scientific phenomena is given particular attention. Evolution, it is argued, has given the human mind an ‘intuitive ontology,’ which has significance for science, especially since it incorporates deeply rooted boundaries between knowledge domains. While this is important, it is incomplete as a view of science or of a discipline. The thesis therefore seeks to supply this theory with as much context as possible in order to get a more complete understanding of scientific activities.</p><p>To establish some features of the geographical way of thought, the intellectual history of the discipline is explored. Three features are particularly emphasised, namely its focus on usefulness, on synthesis, and on visual analysis. These features, it is theorised, form important parts of the explanation for why geographers often have sought to transgress boundaries despite the above mentioned intuitive ontology.</p><p>The thesis is mainly a theoretical contribution, but has also an empirical component. The Department of Geography at NTNU, Trondheim is described with a dual focus on intellectual characteristics and socio-cultural characteristics. The purpose of this is to better understand the theory about human cognition and geography in light of the complexities of a concrete case. By treating the Department as a complex adaptive system, the many different factors found to be significant are sought treated within one, relatively unified conceptual system.</p>

The rationale and implications of current methodologies for assessing mortality rates among spatially diverse human populations has importance to the field of Health Geography. By comparing the death rates of Missoula County Montana, the State of Montana, and the United States by using crude and age-adjusted mortality data an effort is made to detect whether there is significant variance within comparable datasets, and whether the time-series plots follow comparative linear regression trend lines.

Missoula County, Montana, located in the western portion of the state along its border with Idaho, consists of the City of Missoula and a number of unincorporated population centers extending outward from the urban area. The former benefits from typical urban services and faces land use planning issues typical of city locales, including public transportation, brownfields and infill development, and enhancement of the urban core. The latter areas, by virtue of their rural nature, are the subject of an entirely different series of land use planning conversations. The unincorporated areas of the county, in towns such as Seeley Lake, Florence, Huson, and Frenchtown, consider land use planning issues in the context of impacts to water quality and wildlife, distance from services, and preservation of open space and agricultural land. When subdivisions of property are proposed in these areas, the proposals are evaluated by a set of criteria seeking to address these contexts, thereby addressing those qualities that for many County residents define the propertys rurality. Three case studies consisting of two subdivision proposals and a County effort to pinpoint rural residential fire protection requirements are analyzed from the point of view of the assigned case planner. The successes and failures, as well as the strengths and weaknesses, of each case are examined, and the outcomes are situated in the context of the larger surrounding area. The analysis sheds light on the often preventative role of the planner in rural subdivision planning in Missoula County and touches on the difficulties encountered in reviewing land development proposals in the area.

This paper presents the findings of a study to assess patterns in local knowledge of and response to water quality and waterborne diseases in relation to seasonal changes in the Niger River Inland Delta. The study draws on field data collected in four villages along the Niger River in the Mopti district of Mali during September 2008. The major findings suggest: (1) water use behaviors and diarrheal disease management are influenced by the tremendous seasonal fluctuations in the riverine environment; (2) local awareness of the relationship between poor water quality, oral-fecal disease transmission, and waterborne disease is low; (3) interventions to mitigate the high incidence of childhood diarrhea and degraded water quality are limited by ongoing socio-economic, cultural, and institutional factors; and (4) womens level of health knowledge is socially and culturally dependent.