Quantitative Methods

The sudden rise of quantitative methods in geography in the 1950s and 1960s is often regarded as one of the greatest achievements in the discipline. Quantitative methods can be traced as far back as Thales and Eratosthenes, who were in their own right mathematical geographers in ancient Greece. However, the 1950s are thought to be the origin of modern quantitative methods in the discipline. The closing of Harvard's geography department in 1948 was an early indication of a crisis in the discipline concerning its inability to meaningfully explain processes or phenomena; this limitation included a lack of quantitative analysis that relegated the discipline to a classroom setting and inhibited its growth and utility in both private and public sectors. This entry describes the evolution of quantitative methods in geography during the 1950s and 1960s, reviews the use of descriptive and inferential statistics in the field, and examines the place of quantitative methods in the discipline of philosophy today.

The crisis of the 1950s confronted geographers with the task of deciding in which direction to take the discipline. Richard Hartshorne advocated a descriptive, traditional geography, while Fred Schaefer pushed for a quantitative analytical approach. Schaefer attacked Hartshorne's emphasis on idiographic regional distinctions in favor of nomothetic, lawlike statements to explain spatial patterns. This critique encouraged geographers to rethink the direction of the discipline in a way that would make it more quantitative, a reconsideration that led to the quantitative revolution. Some observers suggest that the quantitative revolution was logical positivist in nature, as positivism is an epistemology that privileges scientific methods, general explanatory laws, and quantitative data and methods as the highest and best form of knowledge. However, it is now acknowledged that quantitative geography and positivism are not synonymous, that is, positivists do not have a monopoly on the use of quantitative techniques (e.g., quantitative Marxists also use these methods).