<P> By the 18th century, geography had become recognized as a discrete discipline and became part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially Paris and Berlin), although not in the United Kingdom where geography was generally taught as a sub-discipline of other subjects . </P> <P> A holistic view of geography and nature can be seen in the work by the 19th century polymath Alexander von Humboldt . One of the great works of this time was Humboldt's Kosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the Universe, the first volume of which was published in German in 1845 . Such was the power of this work that Dr Mary Somerville, of Cambridge University intended to scrap publication of her own Physical Geography on reading Kosmos . Von Humboldt himself persuaded her to publish (after the publisher sent him a copy). </P> <P> In 1877, Thomas Henry Huxley published his Physiography with the philosophy of universality presented as an integrated approach in the study of the natural environment . The philosophy of universality in geography was not a new one but can be seen as evolving from the works of Alexander von Humboldt and Immanuel Kant . The publication of Huxley physiography presented a new form of geography that analysed and classified cause and effect at the micro-level and then applied these to the macro-scale (due to the view that the micro was part of the macro and thus an understanding of all the micro-scales was need to understand the macro level). This approach emphasized the empirical collection of data over the theoretical . The same approach was also used by Halford John Mackinder in 1887 . However, the integration of the Geosphere, Atmosphere and Biosphere under physiography was soon over taken by Davisian geomorphology . </P> <P> Over the past two centuries the quantity of knowledge and the number of tools has exploded . There are strong links between geography and the sciences of geology and botany, as well as economics, sociology and demographics . </P>

When were some of the earliest observations of human environmental impact recorded in writing