Pierre Deffontaines, geographer of the «Noosphère». A reading of Géographie et religions
When Pierre Deffontaines published Géographie et religions in 1948, it was seen as a milestone marking the rising interest of geographers in physical manifestations of religions. The author characterized his book as being a meticulous and exhaustive examination of religious markers in human landscapes. In the present article, we argue that, whereas the book is mainly descriptive, the introduction and conclusion were used by Deffontaines to re-examine the theme of natural determinism, proposing an entirely different perspective from classical thinking on the subject. At a second level, he indirectly offered a personal definition of the discipline of geography, by drawing on thinkers a geographer might not be expected to refer to, like the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the philosopher Henri Bergson. Through reference to both of them, he defines geography as a humanistic discipline that reflects the impact of human thought in the physical world.