ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the influence that is common to contemporary Anglo-Saxon geography: the scientific rationalism of classical economic theory. To interpret the meaning of places therefore is to interpret the subjective meaning of persons who act to alter, use, or countervail changes in an area of the earth. The models derived by methods that identified the subjective meaning of the resource exploitation yielded better predictions of primitive behavior than could the so-called objective, externalized method of scientific rationalism. The intentions of labor and municipal government elites were twofold. To interpret the subjective meaning places hold for us is clearly not an exercise in alluding to personal experiences. Humanistic geographers have an obligation to transcend as far as possible a narrowly personal point of view that stands or falls by the mere experience of the observer. Weberian methods were not designed to solve the geographic problems of the time.
