LETTING THE DATA SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES∗

∗A seminar presentation to the Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, September 23, 1980. I am deeply grateful to the philosopher Joseph Kockelmans for reading the original paper, and making a number of suggestions, improvements, and corrections.

ABSTRACT

In Science, great difficulty is sometimes experienced in giving up hypothesized structures. The inadequacies of Freudian hypotheses are highlighted, and attention is directed to Dasein-analysis, which stays close to the data. This perspective focuses attention upon the phenomenological tradition, and suggests that certain mathematical frameworks in human geography are inappropriate. The adequacy of a priori models is also questioned from a Heideggerian perspective, and more general qualitative algebras are suggested to replace the distorted functional thinking inherited from the physical sciences.

Notes

∗A seminar presentation to the Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, September 23, 1980. I am deeply grateful to the philosopher Joseph Kockelmans for reading the original paper, and making a number of suggestions, improvements, and corrections.