GEOG 1HB3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Marxism, Class Conflict, Empiricism
4 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Empiricism: a philosophy of science based on the belief that all knowledge results from experience and therefore gives priority to factual observations over theoretical statements. Positivism: a philosophy that contends that science is able to deal with only empirical questions (those with factual content), that scienti c observations are repeatable and that science progresses through the construction of theories and derivation of laws. Positivism makes the following arguments: human geography needs to be objective; the personal beliefs of the geographer should not in uence research activity there is no such thing as a separate geographic method. Humanism and marxism reject this assumption believing that it dehumanizes human geography the speci c method is called the scienti c method. Humanism: a philosophy centred on such aspects of human life as value, quality, meaning and signi cance. It focuses on humans as individual decision makers, on the way humans perceive the world, and emphasizes subjectivity.
