ABSTRACT
There has been a tendency, both historically and currently, to try to set the working practices of physical geography as a separate type of scientific explanation: as a historical science (e.g. Gilbert, 1896; Chamberlin, 1890; Johnson, 1933; Mackin, 1963; Leopold and Langbein, 1963; Frodeman, 1995; Cleland, 2001). Some practitioners have assumed the inferior status of a historical science. Andersson (1996), for example, in relation to explanation in historical biogeography, stated that the explanatory structure of mathematics, physics and chemistry was clearly the most prestigious model of explanation with the greatest explanatory power, but one hardly applicable to historical biogeography.
