Geografie 1974, 79, 132-140
Some Views on Quantification in Geography
The application of new formal methods in geography involves animated discussion. The quantification itself has a long tradition in geography especially in borderline disciplines as cartography, climatology, hydrology, geophysics etc. Quantitative results of these disciplines are largely used in global geographic considerations. However, the new methods deal with the geographic subject itself which is more complex. This trend corresponds generally to the development of methodology in empirical sciences, to the progress of formal disciplines and to the deeper qualitative knowledge. But why does this situation involve so many discussions in geography while this trend has been succesfully accepted e. g in economy, sociology, demography and psychology? The aim of this paper is to theow light on these guestions. There are surely many reasons for this situation; among the main of them I accept the fact that geographical knowledge has not been present up to now in the development of formal sciences as has e. g. demography or economy, and consequently, the new formal methods have been accepted in geography as extraneous elements; moreover these methods in spite of their universality, do not always fit well the complex and "different" structures of geographic totilty. I see another reason in insufficiently developed geographic concepts: no method can substitute for them, it can only disclose this situation. Under these conditions, the application of exact methods "for every price" may have even negative consequences; it leads away from the investigation of more substantial theoretical problems and it "makes scientific" obscure concepts by formal procedure. These were "objective" reasons; the "subjective" one is the traditional educational system in geography with the minimal formal training; however, this reason seems to be of less importance. A critical approach to the quantification has a rational essential point. Every formalization is always a simplification and gives a schematic view; the more complex the reality is, the more important it is to take these facts into consideration. No application of formal methods on reality can be logically controlled. The overestimation of e. g. mathematics in geography can change the geography into a methodological space science without its own subject. Statistics could be an example of such a development. It was formely a science about the state and only lately it has become the universal method and a part of mathematics (mathematical statistics). Different social sciences originated in its place. If something similar happens to geography, new complex social-natural science has to be found instead of it. The quantification itself is not the application of mathematical methods, but only the first step towards it which involves qualitatively logical analysis of used conceptions in the frame of an accepted theory. Geography badly needs the philosophy of applied exact methods (a metageography); it has to abendon exclusively empirical approaches and to develop a theory with specification of geographical regularities and laws; it has to develop not only quantification, but other formal methods, too, which will take more into consideration the special geographical heterogeneous structures (in the place of homogeneous structures of other uncomplex sciences). The foundation stones have been already put down for this development in geography.
