Quantitative Revolution - The Revolution

The Revolution

The Quantitative Revolution began in the universities of Europe with the support of geographers and statisticians in both Europe and the United States. First emerging in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Quantitative Revolution responded to the rising regional geography paradigm. Under the loosely defined banner of bringing 'scientific thinking' to geography, the quantitative revolution led to an increased use of computerized statistical techniques, in particular multivariate analysis, in geographical research. The newly adopted methods reflected an array of mathematical techniques that improved precision.

Some of the techniques that epitomize the quantitative revolution include:

• Descriptive statistics;
• Inferential statistics;
• Basic mathematical equations and models, such as gravity model of social physics, or the Coulomb equation;
• Stochastic models using concepts of probability, such as spatial diffusion processes;
• Deterministic models, e.g. Von Thünen's and Weber's location models.

The common factor, linking the above techniques, was a preference for numbers over words, plus a belief that numerical work had a superior scientific pedigree.

Proponents of quantitative geography tended to present it as bringing science to geography. In fact, the particular contribution of the quantitative revolution was the huge faith placed in multivariate analysis and in particular methods associated with econometrics. It was also very strongly aligned with positive science, and this would prove a major source of epistemological debate.

The overwhelming focus on statistical modelling would, eventually, be the undoing of the quantitative revolution. Many geographers became increasingly concerned that these techniques simply put a highly sophisticated technical gloss on an approach to study that was barren of fundamental theory. Other critics argued that it removed the 'human dimension' from a discipline that always prided itself on studying the human and natural world alike. As the 1970s dawned, the quantitative revolution came under direct challenge.