Quantitative revolution
The quantitative revolution (QR) was a paradigm shift that sought to develop a more rigorous and systematic methodology for the discipline of geography. It came as a response to the inadequacy of regional geography to explain general spatial dynamics. The main claim for the quantitative revolution is that it led to a shift from a descriptive (idiographic) geography to an empirical law-making (nomothetic) geography. The quantitative revolution occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and marked a rapid change in the method behind geographical research, from regional geography into a spatial science.
| History of geography |
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In the history of geography, the quantitative revolution was one of the four major turning points of modern geography – the other three being environmental determinism, regional geography and critical geography. It contributed to the technical geography branch of the discipline, culminating in the emergence of quantitative geography, which includes geographic information science, geoinformatics, and spatial analysis.
The quantitative revolution had occurred earlier in economics and psychology and contemporaneously in political science and other social sciences and to a lesser extent in history.