great minds in regional science: benon janowski

Great Minds in Regional Science: Social Physics in Benon Janowski’s Spatial

Economics WorksWaldemar Ratajczak

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

URBAN EMPIRES: Cities as Global Rulels in the New Urban World

Poznań, 15 August 2016

Benon Janowski: A biographic note

Benon Janowski was born on 16 June 1873 in Sambor, a poviat town in Galicia (then the Austrian sector of divided Poland, today in Ukraine). There he attended a secondary school. On graduation in 1889, he saw military service in the Austrian army.

In 1903 he received his Ph.D. degree from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Lvov.


Janowski started his scientific activity early, when still a student, and continued it in many fields. His first work, Anthropogeographical significance of the development of coasts, was published in 1896. The next, Lamprecht’s collectivism in historiography, appeared a year later. It was a study of the Leipzig historian’s method, highly appreciated even today.


His next, On the shape of settlements, discussed the effects of various factors on the formation of settlements. Janowski’s best known book is On distances as a factor of cultural development, which was published in Lvov as one of the first, and highly original, works in the field of social physics and socio-economic geography.

The date of Benon Janowski’s death is not known. According to unconfirmed sources, he died right after the Second World War in Cracow.

Fig. 1. Janowski’s works in relation to Regional Science Source: own compilation

1903On shapes of Settlements

O kształcie Osad

•Town and village from geographical perspectiveMiasto a wieś ze stanowiska gieograficznego

•Plans villages and citiesPlany wsi i miast

•On chronopones (χρονοπονος)O chronoponach

1903On shapes of Settlements

O kształcie Osad

•Plans of settlements depending on roads Plan osad w zależności od dróg

•Center of attractionŚrodek przyciągania

•Another shapes of chronopones (χρονοπονος)Inne kształty chronopon

Fig. 2. Classical Isochrone Source: Janowski (1903)

Let us make a theoretical assumption that an average work (w) corresponds with a certain time (t); therefore the product of the time and work (wt) represents weariness, labour (effort) and (in the case of using means of transport) can be exchanged for certain costs. A labour (effort) hour could therefore be adopted as a labour (effort) unit.

The lines corresponding with such labour (effort) hours could be referred to as chronopones (from the Greek chronos – time and ponos – labour (effort)). They would be a combination of isochrones and the lines of the same works and as such they would be a genuine geographic representation of the value of time and average human work. Construction-wise, they could be drawn on the condition that the hours of labour (effort) are exchanged for the cost of transport. The drawing would consist in measuring specific distances that can be covered within one or more labour (effort) hours and in combining the resulting points with lines.

Fig. 3. Chronopones Source: Janowski (1903)

The Hahn (Rohrbach) lines of equal distances (isochrones) are not of great importance to research into trade or culture in general as for a human being such distances are equal if they can be covered with equal labour (effort) involved. For this reason such a line (a chronopone), drawn around a settlement, is the limit along which this settlement should regularly extend under the influence of the morphological conditions of the ground, the roads and the means of transport.

Fig. 4. Chronopone and one road Source: Janowski (1903)

Fig. 5. Chronopones based on two roads Source: Janowski (1903)

Source: Janowski (1903)

Fig. 6. Chronopones and many roads in cities Source: Janowski (1903)

1908On distances as a factor of cultural development

A socio-natural studyO odległościach jako czynniku rozwoju kultury

Studyum społeczno-przyrodnicze

•The importance of distances in human geographyZnaczenie odległości w antropogeografii

•The methodology involvedMetodyczna strona zagadnienia

•Social energyEnergia społeczna




•Useful energy and valueEnergia użyteczna a wartość

•The price as a potentialCena potencyałem

•Price linesLinie cen




•The isolated statePaństwo izolowane

•Gravity at workPod znakiem grawitacyi

•The resistance of distanceOpór odległości

Fig. 7. A depression profile at x town with demand = 100 on xy xx: distance = 10 km ss: force-of-demand line

f = m/r2

Source: Janowski (1908)

Fig. 8. Elevation (surplus) and depression (demand) cc: price lines ss: force lines (natural trade routes) Source: Janowski (1908)

The price maps are evidence that the course of the transport lines which represent the basis for the spacial and economic systems, is mainly affected by the direction in which the difference in process is the biggest and the distance resistance the smallest. In this situation, the energy increase is the most significant and so is the power of exchange. Since the increase in utility energy tends to be the biggest here, every city or town located in its vicinity has a bigger growth potential than any other city or town.

The cartographic method of the "price lines" is (chronologically) probably the first concept of delimitating market areas. In Benon Janowski's interpretation, they do not result in any natural or political inequality. Rather, they are the effect of the coexistence of economic forces, chiefly the trends to maximise benefits.

Undoubtedly, Janowski's work is among the greatest achievements of the so-called social physics which played an important role in the development of the contemporary theory of geography. In social physics, the most perfect system of notions is the one produced by physics and one to which the entire science can be brought down to. If science is to focus on a single language, it can be the language of physics as the most perfect and most convenient language. The superiority of the language of physics consists in the fact that it comprises exclusively time and space-related facts which are a part of an intellectual experience and are strictly measurable. Physics are the model of rational cognition.

Fig. 9. Lines of wheat prices in 1902 in Austria-Hungary (per kg, in krones). I – 0.140, II – 0.150, III – 0.160, IV – 0.170, V – 0.180, VI – 0.190 Source: Janowski (1908)

Fig. 10. Lines of beef prices in Germany in 1904. In bold – number of oxen per 100 inhabitants Source: Janowski (1908)

The development of social physics was largely affected by positivism which flourished in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. It was based on a concept that nature as well as human and social realities can be studied along the same rules (Kołakowski, 1966). These rules were to be provided by the classical mechanics as it was an empirical discipline which managed to provide the most exact descriptions. What is more, it explains the characteristics and phenomena most popular in nature i.e. ones which are the prerequisites for the existence of others.

However, in its physical content, the model presented by Janowski is different from the pioneering models adopted by Carey or Ravenstein as they referred in their empirical studies to Newton's classical mechanics. In Janowski's concept which referred to the physics as interpreted by Helmholtz or Maxwell, the classical notions of physics like force and mass, have been supplemented with the notions of field, potential and energy.

The latter was interpreted by Janowski as in line with the Austrian marginal and subjective school of thought. The reference to the marginal and subjective category in economy was meant to transform the social systems concept into a strictly economic model. On the other hand, bringing down the concept to the laws of gravity was intended to add a spatial dimension to it (Jędrzejczyk 1991).

Fig. 11. Janowski’s works in relation to Social Physics and Econophysics Source: own compilation

Conclusions

Janowski was an outstanding thinker of his times. His ideas and conceptions could have provided a basis for regional science - if they were known. However, he wrote in Polish in a special geopolitical situation: Poland did not exist on the political map of Europe as a result of 18th-century events. This is yet another piece of evidence, even if a modest one, that freedom, friendship and peace are important, not only among individuals but entire communities and nations.

„I want to thank you again for the translation of Benon Janowski's book. It is fascinating and well ahead of his time. If the translation were available in 1908, perhaps geography and regional science would be quite different today.”

Arthur Getis2016-02-05

Thank you for your attention

URBAN EMPIRES: Cities as Global Rulels in the New Urban World

Poznań, 15 August 2016

great minds in regional science: benon janowski

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