Positivism/Positivist Geography

Abstract

Over the last 60 years Anglo-American human geography has engaged with questions of what there is for us to know about (ontological issues), how it may be conceptualized (metaphysical issues), where our knowledge comes from, how it is produced, and how confident we can be in claiming that it is knowledge and not just belief or opinion (epistemological issues). The central question has been: ‘can’ human geography be a science, and if so, ‘should’ it seek to be a science? What would being a science entail? This article examines the relationship between philosophy, science, and human geography in the context of the production of geographic knowledge. Philosophical and methodological debates in geography invariably center on the alleged shortcomings of positivist science, which in turn is allegedly conceptualized in and informed by positivist philosophy. Critiques generate alternative positions, postpositivist, nonpositivist, or antipositivist, which are more or less convincing inasmuch as they improve on or avoid the alleged failings of positivism. But connections between positivist geography and positivist philosophy are actually few, implicit, indirect, and weak. Geographers have largely failed to engage with the essential ideas of logical positivism, allowing superficial and taken-for-granted caricatures to persist. In this article, positivist philosophy gets far more attention than does positivist geography. Positivism comes in two flavors, Comtean and logical. Comtean positivism's impact on contemporary philosophy or science is negligible; so it is given relatively little attention, in proportion to its being discussed by Johnston and Gregory who misleadingly conflate it with logical positivism. Logical positivism has had a major impact on philosophy, especially the philosophy of scientific validation, on analysis, and on ordinary language philosophy, but virtually no impact on how science is practiced. This is not surprising as science and scientists seldom take any notice of what philosophy or philosophers say about what they do and how they do it, and when they do take notice, it is usually Popper's critical rationalism that they have in mind. We start with logical positivism in philosophy. The major ideas and problems of logical positivism are elaborated as part of both empiricism's long-running battle with rationalism, and the anti-idealist goal of bringing clarity to philosophy's questions. This article frames logical positivism as an intentionally constructed, radically oppositional project situated in a distinctive intellectual, social, and political context. Then positivist geography is briefly described, suggesting that while ‘positivist geography’ may be a useful piece of intellectual shorthand, it is something of a misnomer. Positivist geography was really just quantitative spatial science. Finally, positivism per se in geography is described. Readers are left to find congruences between positivism in philosophy, and positivism in geography.