Talk:Quantitative revolution

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Hi, this is my first attempt at creating a page on wikipedia. I hope it is 'a ok'. Any feedback would be useful and finally I hope that the article is useful and obviously correct.

[edit] Good start!

Damned good first effort! Suggestion: I think it's a bit black and white on behavioralism as a 'response' to quantitiative geography. Also it's worth noting that many of the technqiues were already present (gravity models being the best case in point) and ideas such as Central Place Theory (1933) were clearly 'scientific' in their approach. Might also be worth noting some key texts (David Harvey's Explanation in Geography springs to mind, if only for his own later rebutal in Social Justice and the City). Icundell 12:55, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and suggestions they are much appreciated. I'll add an additional reading section and may be a section on views and opinions of the revolution so a note can be placed about CP Theory and other models being present before the 1950s and having a scientific basis and also quotations from geographers and others on the revolution. On behavioural geography may be a revision saying that it was present before the revolution but was at its zenith after the 1960s as it presented a counter to quantitative geography would be more appropriate. AlexD

Pleasure. I think the key thing with behavioralism is that it was adopted (rather than developed) as a counter to the rather narrow positivist slant of the quants - but undid itself by ending up as little more than listing space preferences, with no proper grounding in theory. For me the key flaw in the quantitiative revolution was that it had a very narrow concept of 'science' as a toolkit, rather than a philosophical framework. Christaller (and Homer Hoyt and Burgess & Park and Alfred Weber) were scientific. The were trying to develop general laws, to understand the causes of things (rerum cognoscere causus, as us LSE grads knew it). I suspect they would have all been somewhat appalled by the quantitative revolution. But that is essay territory and I wrote those 25 sodding years ago (use four tildes and you datestamp your comments). Icundell 22:43, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay, I shall get right on it and change it to a summary of the above (bar the essay bit) and rather than create a new section I'll add a bit under post-revolution and say that there were geographers that used the scientific method and that the revolution was more of an emergence of quantitative geography that had previously been under developed and underused. AlexD 19:22, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

done a re-work of the major sections to tighten up the chronology a bit and to clarify what was meant by 'sceintific method' by most quants. It is very important not to use 'scientific' and 'quantitative' as synomyms. Icundell 16:00, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] spell check

Running a spellchecker (on the 01 Feb 2006 version here offline) finds lots.

Say what the External links are, or do we have to click each one to find out?

[edit] location theories

"This list highlights the fundamental contradiction of the quantitative revolution: Von Thunen (18th century), Weber (turn on the 20th century)and Walter Christaller (1933) had already developed theories that, on any defintion, were scientific in character."

There were scientific but only Christaller was geographer, the other two were economists. Before quantitative revolution (human) geography focused only on the study of place (description of regions or study of areal differencation). Many location theories were actually adopted from economy which was far more scientific that days.84.47.81.248 06:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes Von Thunen and Weber were economists. So what? Once they started dealing with location in space they became geographers. The were the first theories I was taught in economic geography class and I have been around the blocks a few times. Homer Hoyt, a sociologist also made a massive contribution to geography, along with Burgess and Park and what all of these have in common is that they massively pre-dated the quantitative revolution. Icundell 10:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

But this is no contradiction of the quantitative revolution. Geography simply ignored the space or location analysis before the revolution. You should know that Hartshorne (1939) defined geography as a study of areal differentiation which was criticised by Shaefer as unscientific because science should be searching for general laws or something what applies to all places on Earth not what differs them one from another. 84.47.76.78 19:37, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

You mean like Halford Mackinder? "The science of distribution. The science, that is, which traces the arrangement of things in general on the Earth's surface." Or Dudley Stamps's attempts to define cities based on function (deeply flawed in many ways, but clearly scientific in intent). Both massively pre-dating the quantitative revolution. In North America Regionalism held sway, but not in Europe. But anyway, the point of the original article text (and the current version is barely comprehensible) is that the quantitative revolutions failing was its narrow, positivist conception of science. It is a statement of fact, not POV, that theoretically based geographical analysis existed before the quantitiative revolution claimed to discover it. And the Quant's narrow conception in turn prompted the development or rediscovery of behavioralism and Marxist/ structuralism. Icundell 14:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Quantitative revolution was a reaction to regional geography paradigm and it moved geography as a science a step further. The article was and still is (in my eyes) heavily biased against quantitative revolution. It should be balanced (from a neutral point of view) not attempting to claim that quantitative revolution failed in something. Revolution was a turning point and (in a long run) it achieved its goals: to make geography a scientifical discipline, to make geography applicable and to keep of the threat to geography’s position as an academic subject. The structure of current version of article is better: 1. Background 2. Crisis 3. Revolution 4. Critic and 5. Post-revolution. Though I think that the post-revolution period should be written to an article about Critical geography. And it really doesn't matter if something was before or not, it is about prevailing paradigms. Behavioral geography was before 1970's and so on, it is a dead end.87.197.118.17 23:12, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Try to see the world from a less north American perspective. The Regional Paradigm never held sway in Europe. The article does not claimed the quantitative revolution failed in anything, it says that it provoked a strong reaction. It also makes the point that many of its specific claims were peculiar to a time (the late 50s/ early 60s) and place (North America). Indeed, that some of its strongest proponents (like Peter Haggett or David Harvey and David Smith) were British should hammer this home. Icundell 11:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

But you must see the quantitative revolution from a north American perspective to understand that there was no contradiction. I don't know what you mean exactly by quantitative revolution - a spread of positivism, a reaction to 1950s crisis (or regional geography paradigm) or only an increased use of quantitative techniques without any other connection. I made some changes and I hope it's better now. Some text was moved to critical geography article. If you don't agree with something please edit the text.GeoW 07:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The QR was a reaction to the 1950s crisis in (predominantly) north American Geography. It's principle c,aim was that it introduced "scientific method" to the discipline. In fact, it strongly favoured a very specific approach to science, positivism, ignoring other long-standing scientific analysis of geographical matters. One major consequence of this was an overwhelming emphasis placed on numerical analysis and in particlur multi-variate statistics (borrowing heavily from econometrics). This eventually led to sharp criticism of the QR as devoid of content and (ironically) theoretically barren.

That is what the article said and it was perfectly clear.

What on Earth does "Geography became more applicable in planning process " mean? Again, outside the US geogrpahers have always been closely associated with planning.

I will be re-instating some of the stuff you have removed to make the article a little less fanboyish, but it will havce to wait. Icundell 02:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I unintentionally removed two paragraphs about critic in editing, they are back now (but it needs improvement to be consistent - geography is certainly not study barren of any theory). And to planning there is a word "more" because of spatial analysis which was underdeveloped in geography in general and don't say that in Britain before Hagget, Lloyd or Dicken it was not. Or what about work of Garrison in trasportation problems during revolution.

Anyway the article should be consistent with the history of geography. Regional geography was prevailing paradigm also in Western Europe: you certainly know the names like Hettner (1859-1941) or Passarge from Germany or Vidal de la Blache and others from France (note that I don't say it was the only approach, there were debates after the critic (or misuse) of environmental determinism if geography is a valid science which was probably the cause of the turn to regional geography or descriptive approach in general).GeoW 10:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Just one remark: Positivism (or post-positivism) is a valid scientifical approach also in social sciences (In my country I was thaught that geography is an interdisciplinary science between natural, human and technical sciences - such as cartography, remote senzing or geoinformatics and very close to it is also spatial planning. And I believe that the only universal theoretical approach to every geographical science is systems theory which is clearly expressed in Waldo Toblers first law of geography which was published in 1970). It is also claimed that every science develops from descriptive to nomothetic by formalization (mathematical or other) of the thoughts. That's my point of view. Have in mind when rewriting this article. GeoW 17:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)