ABSTRACT
The social sciences have greatly expanded in the last half century. Each domain of knowledge has reached a point at which it became unknowable by generalists and required specialization to master it. Some disciplines, such as economics, are methodological imperialists, while anthropology’s impact on other social sciences has been more important in its discoveries and in some of its theories designed to explain these discoveries. There is little real meaning to any effort to change the existing boundaries between the various social sciences. Almost all agree that there is very little scholarly interaction within their department, and this is true of all social science departments. In geography, as in other social sciences, model-builders and more traditional inductivists distort one another’s positions in their polemics. As Marvin W. Mikesell points out, “the model builder becomes a ‘mechanic’ and the champion of regional synthesis is exposed as a ‘mystic.’”
