ABSTRACT
In a book which is related to the publication of Haggett’s and Chorley’s Models in geography 20 years ago, but which is mostly not about quantitative models, it is useful to ask the question posed in the title of this section. The quantitative revolution in geography is usually formally dated from Ian Burton’s 1963 paper; radical geography can perhaps be similarly dated from the 1973 publication of David Harvey’s Social justice and the city . Fashions can change rapidly! One consequence of such change is that only a relatively small core of modellers have continued to work with the appropriate levels of technical expertise on the major research problems. Relatively few have attempted to engage in anything but knockabout debates on the relationship between modelling and radical geography. In this chapter we argue that it is important to understand what has happened to mathematical modelling, and that it does have a substantial contribution to make in the long term. Indeed, it can be argued that modelling (which also provides much of the conceptual basis of information systems) and what might be called critical (rather than radical) human geography form the two main strands of the subject for the forseeable future. Because of the differences in expertise between the two populations of practitioners, it is likely that much of this development will be separate. However, there is no intrinsic need for this subdisciplinary apartheid, and one of the arguments of this chapter is for greater mutual understanding as a basis for possibile future collaboration. It is useful to note in this context that some social theorists are arguing that analytical modelling and mathematics should have a rôle in contemporary studies which goes beyond the old arguments about positivism. What all sides have in common is a recognition that, even if the basis is heuristic rather than scientific, they have a part to play in handling complexity. For example, Turner (1987) argues that ‘analytical models provide an important supplement to abstract propositions because they map the complex causal connections – direct and indirect effects, feedback loops, reciprocal effects’; and to quote from the same volume ‘mathematical models have an essential place in our efforts to untangle the complexities of social realities’ (Wilson in Giddens & Turner 1987).
