DSpace Repository

The concept of space is one of the fundamentals of geographical research, and yet, there does not only exist one concept of space, but a multitude, especially it has seen a proliferation of spatial concepts used by geographers during the past two decades. The paper, thus, attempts to trace the development process of spatial viewpoints in the context of “The paradigm cycle”, and to see how geographers have practiced their spatial thinking under different methodological approaches during the past fifty years. Finally, the paper concludes, as Harvey indicated, that “there is no need to take a rigid view of the spatial concept itself either for philosophical purpose or for purposes of empirical investigation”.

Traditionally, geography has always been regarded as a branch of the so-called “positive science”, and as such geography is held to abide by such rigorous scientific inference procedures as hypothesis, collection; evaluation; and analysis of data; verification, establishment of model, and consequently forecasting based on conclusion. Geography derived accordingly is referred to as ‘scientific geography’, the philosophy underlying known as ‘positivism’. The progress of natural sciences which has been advancing vehemently in our times has considerable impacts on the philosophy, since the 19th century positivism has become an emerging trend for methodology, calling for the application of natural sciencse, mathematical and physical models to the study of social phenomena with a view to find out universal law accountable for all that is seen and that which prevails in the cultural and social phenomena everywhere worlwide. Way back following World War II, especially during the 60's and the 70’s, Geography for study has been deeply influenced by theories like positivism and logical positivism, a lot of spatial scientifically oriented theses on the subject of geography came up one after the other, with strong backgrounds of math and physics, especially geometrical spirits, as reflected in the points, segments of line, and surfaces characterising geographical settings. As a matter of fact, there is an ab-positivism philosophy which has been prevailing and outstanding enough in the tradition of the evolution of history, be it ‘Romanticism", “Neo-Kantianism”, “Historicism”, they altogether run contrary to “Naturalism”, “Materialism”, “Empiricism”, and even “Positivism”, any that which favors “Mechanism”, they opposed researching, handling of cultural and social issues by means of natural science in one way or another, but instead they advocated “cultural historical sciences”, with stresses given to humanitarian value, individual meaningfulness, and as such they can hardly agree with the pursuit of the so-called “universal law”, they proposed instead that the target set for humanitarian and sociological subjects should be to uphold the meaing of “human being”. In as early as days when Ritter became prominent, for geography a branch of study, methodology, unrelated to positivism, has been established, in particular a series of geographic thoughts including those propounded by Schlüter-Carl Sauer, Paul Vidal de la Blache, Hettner-Hartshorne, were aimed at illustrating the meaning of “Regional Uniqueness” through interpretative expression the philosophy behind all these is obviously other than positivistic in nature. In short, their philosophy openly and unanimously oppose the pursuit of a universal Jaw as the goal for geography, and prefer to interprete the meaning of Regional uniqueness by means of the structure and evolution of the heritage of the culture and historical contexts. The philosophical influence of Neo-Kantianism, Historicism, and even Romanticism call be found by means of their methodology.

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