Abstract

Anuchin. whose recent campaign for new attitudes in Soviet geog- GEOGRAPHERS raphy has centered on unifying physical and human geography FORUM (which in turn would allow for more accurate recognition of all kinds of man-land relationship^):^ “Anuchin dwells on the past,” said party-line scholar Gerasimov, “on mere philosophy; my ap- proach is oriented to the future, and to practical problems.” How THE INCOMPLETE CHAIN OF CAUSATION: often have we not heard the same BARRIER TO PROBLEM-SOLVING sort of complaint against the Semples and Huntingtons of the Few geographers would deny In my view, the greatest hin- Western tradition? This only em- that the problem-solving approach drance to effective thinking about phasizes that Karl Marx himself geographical problems today is an to their field has attained con- was very much in step with the siderable popularity;’ but how excessive emphasis on man and main hyper-skeptical currents in many of the pressing problems of his culture as the supposed point Western thought when he wrote the world around us have been of origination, if not also the such sarcastic diatribes as “The solved or even ameliorated by the cause, of nearly all that is good Poverty of Philosophy,” which in methods