Quantitative Revolution - Post-revolution Geography

Post-revolution Geography

The greatest impact of the quantitative revolution was not the revolution itself but the effects that came afterwards in a form of the spread of positivist (post-positivist) thinking and counter-positivist responses.

The rising interest in the study of distance as a critical factor in understanding the spatial arrangement of phenomena during the revolution led to formulation of the first law of geography by Waldo Tobler. The development of spatial analysis in geography led to more applications in planning process and the further development of theoretical geography offered to geographical research a necessary theoretical background.

The greater use of computers in geography also led to many new developments in geomatics, such as the creation and application of GIS and remote sensing. These new developments allowed geographers for the first time to assess complex models on a full-scale model and over space and time. The development of geomatics led to geography being reunited, as the complexities of the human and natural environments could be assessed on new computable models. Further advances also led to a greater role of spatial statistics and modelling within geography. Eventually the quantitative revolution had its greatest impacts on the fields of physical, economic and urban geography.

The counter-positivist response from human geography was created in a form of behavioral, radical and humanistic geography (see the article: Critical geography).

The quantitative revolution also changed the structure of geography departments in the USA, with many physical geographers being merged with geology departments or environmental science departments, leaving the geography departments to become solely human-geography oriented. Within the UK, there was a different response to the revolution, with an increase of specialisation within the subject, and ultimately the development of systematic geography with many subfields and branches.