IN THE FIRST HALF of the twentieth century geographers sought to establish universal laws such as those found in physics or chemistry in their science. Environmentalism was earlier rejected because it was regarded as insufficiently scientific.[i]

Eminent geographer Denis Cosgrove points out that early geographers and teachers like Freidrich Ratzel (1844-1904), William Morris Davis (1850-1934) and Andrew John Herbertson (1865-1915), as well as methodologists who followed them such as Alfred Hettner (1859-1941), Richard Hartshorne (1899-1992) and Carl Sauer (1889-1975), all regarded geography primarily as a positive science.[ii]

[i] Denis E. Cosgrove, Social and Symbolic Landscape (Croom Helm, London & Sydney, 1984), 261.

[ii] Ibid, 260-261.