Constructive comments on D Massey - 'Space-time, "science" and the relationship between physical geography and human geography'

This paper provides a discussion of Massey's (1999) account of the role of space-time in human and physical geography. Recognizing the relative (but not absolute) paucity of comment from physical geographers on questions of approach and method, the paper seeks to demonstrate three things. First, it casts a history of a narrow part of geomorphology in a similar vein to a part of human geography to demonstrate that it is possible to find strong shared characteristics in the ways in which the two subjects are being approached. This emphasizes the importance of analyses that recognize both space and time in seeking explanation in physical geography and which has important implications for: (i) the nature of laws and processes in geomorphology; and hence (ii) the interpretation of specific landforms and their histories. Second, the paper argues that much of what Massey addresses relates to the closure required to make things amenable to study, something that is characteristic of almost every type of research. This has long been acknowledged in science in general and in physical geography in particular, but is often forgotten. Third, the paper uses this consideration of closure to address the issue of the relational nature of different sorts of space-time models. Following Massey's argument that the sort of space-time model that we adopt needs to be informed by the entities that we study, the paper concludes that some of the space-time models that Massey critiques (e.g. classical Newtonian mechanics) may still be fundamental to what we do, and in no sense necessarily ahistorical.