the scholarly journals and academic departments now under the influence of the
quantifiers rejected their research as “unscientific” and lacking intellectual rigor.
This resulted in a counter reformation in the form of new approaches to the study
of human geography, accompanied by a vigorous critique by some geographers of
what they viewed as an infatuation with numbers and methods, at the expense of
the human dimension of geographic inquiry. These scholars, who believed there
was more to geographic study thanlocational analysis, began to develop intellec-
tual linkages to disciplines in the humanities like art, history, and literature, using
the conceptual framework of thelandscapeas the basis of their analysis. Eventu-
ally this school came to be known as “humanistic geography,” which generated
new directions within human geography like behavioral and social geography,
the examination of spatial dimensions of race and gender, and other innovative
lines of investigation. A resurrection of the descriptive, qualitative tradition of
geographic research ensued, because these new areas in human geography were
based more on perception and subjective interpretation of the dynamic between
humans and space, and did not lend themselves readily to quantification or math-
ematical measurement. By the late 1970s, the humanistic school was solidly estab-
lished, led by scholars like Yi Fu Tuan and Donald Meinig.
In retrospect, the controversy brought on by the quantitative revolution in geog-
raphy engendered substantial change to the discipline that reached beyond analyti-
cal techniques. Fifty years after the new paradigm was implemented, it seems
clear that the discipline benefited from a renewed examination of its very nature
and purpose. The question of whether geography is an art or a science, exemplified
in an extended and active debate in the literature over the course of two decades,
forced geographers to reconsider their intellectual position, as well as the place
of the discipline in the academy. The emphasis on statistical methods and theoreti-
cal modeling prepared the way for a technological transformation in the field of
cartographythrough the application of computer-generatedmaps; the develop-
ment ofgeographic information systems (GIS)utilizing the comparative analy-
sis of data bases; and the evolution of new theoretical directions. Qualitative
human geography underwent its own “revolution” of sorts, finding linkages with
other intellectual fields that previously had been largely ignored by geographers,
a process that resulted in an expansion of both theory and application in human
geography. Many geographers today cultivate a familiarity with both quantitative
and qualitative methods, resulting in a greater appreciation of all manifestations
of spatial inquiry.
Quantitative Revolution 275