this fits in somewhere:
...Geospatial thinking is an interdisciplinary descendant of geography. Classic geography focused on understanding the shape of the earth and the location of things. As geography evolved over centuries from a purely descriptive and cartographic endeavor to a research-focused field, it became more concerned with complex spatial relationships. However, it's the applied interdisciplinarity which emerged in the mid-twentieth century that really helped the concept of geospatial thinking to take shape.
(see the whole book (via Stephen Downes))