ABSTRACT
The influences which have tended to inhibit quantification in geomorphology stem largely from two sources – the past historical and geographical affinities of the subject. The employment of reasoning based on measurement is not new in geomorphology, but since the 1930’s the increasing opportunity for such work in terms of facility of measurement, availability of data, and the imaginative and technical advances in treatment has given post-war studies much of their distinctive flavour. Denudation chronology did provide, however, the only important pre-Second World War stimulus for quantitative work in morphometry, which mainly took the form of altitude/frequency analysis. Precise measurement and quantitative expression of the geometry of landforms were not only irrelevant to the denudation chronologist but absolutely unnecessary for the Davisian synthesis, and, for example, A. N. Strahler has noted the lack of precisely surveyed slope profiles in William Morris Davis’ work.
