It is neither accident nor a special love for controversy in academic geographers that has made methodologic discussion a prominent component of their writings and public utterances. The prominence of such discussion is rather the result of a special position of geography among the disciplines represented in academic institutions, a position that presents methodologic problems to every one of its representatives. Each representative has to take a position with reference to these problems, a position that is determined by the influences to which he has been subjected and by his place in the institution of which he is a member. Since these factors vary from individual to individual, it is not a cause for wonder that different geographers have arrived at different and often conflicting personal solutions, nor that they have stated their solutions publicly. Debate concerning the place of geography among academic disciplines is not peculiar to the United States nor to the twentieth century: it has been in progress ever since geography appeared in the universities over a century ago. In examining older methodologic controversies we are not, therefore, merely digging up events that the past has mercifully buried; we are rather looking at the background of contemporary discussion, that has grown out of past controversy and that has an unbroken continuity with it. The chronicler does not need to apologize for directing attention specifically to controversy rather than toward undisputed methodologic utterances. It is precisely in controversy that logical tools are sharpened to their keenest edge and that participants put forth their conflicting points of view in the clearest words they can command. It is therefore precisely in controversy that we are best able to catch the tendencies of an age. Though the scene of the controversies to be recalled here may at first glance appear remote in place and time, the ideas exhibited in them are still very much alive. For it was in the nineteenth century that the conventions of academic and pedagogic geography with which we live and from which we can not easily escape were established. And it was in Germany that geog-