Transactions of Ideas: A Subjective Survey of the Transactions during the First Fifty Years of the Institute

Abstract

A subjective, and necessarily highly selective, survey of the Transactions since 1935 is presented, and ideas in the journal's papers are discussed in relation to eleven themes, many interrelated. One of these is no longer with us, but is discussed under the title: 'The slow British death of mild environmental determinism'. An attempt is made, by a non-physical geographer, to do justice to the enduring important role of physical geography within Britain. Idiographic versus nomothetic stances seem to involve questions of scale, time, and the rise of combinatorial thinking. The ways in which authors have approached problems of perception and quantification are briefly discussed, followed by mention of the new dimensions added by behavioural studies in the last decade. Finally, the recent, and possibly future, debate about alternation or combination between positivism and subjectivity in the discipline is concluded by a quotation from a non-geographer guest of the Institute. The review is illustrated throughout by quotations from the Transactions, necessarily over-brief, but, it is hoped, evidential and evocative rather than misrepresentative through that unavoidable brevity. The conclusion re-stresses the subjective nature of the attempted survey. The very size of the literary field in which to search will always present the geographer with a peculiar sampling problem, such that any 'use' of this source will reflect to a degree the researcher's own bibliographical history. (Pocock, 1981a, pp. 345-6)