Space-time, ‘science’ and the relationshipbetween physical geography and humangeography

Doreen Massey

This paper explores the possibility that there may be commonalities betweenphysical geography and human geography in emerging ways of conceptualizingspace, time and space-time. It argues that one of the things holding physical andhuman geography apart for so long has been their relationship to physics as anassumed model of ‘science’. It is proposed here that not only is this an inadequatemodel of science but that it has led us astray in our inherited conceptualizations ofboth time and space. The urge to think ‘historically’ is now evident in both physicaland human geography. The paper argues that this both forms the basis for apossible conversation and also obliges us to rethink our notions ofspace/space-time.

key words space-time/time-space complexity emergence physics envy

Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA

revised manuscript received 1 June 1999

Connections

This paper is a preliminary dip into deep waters. Itwill doubtless be taken to task on all sides. In asense (although I would rather not be proven toohorribly wrong), that might in itself not be toodismaying. For the argument presented herearises not only out of my theoretical interest inspace(-time) but also out of another conviction. Fora whole variety of reasons, the carving-up of theworld and of scientific endeavour between disci-plines has been experienced recently as increas-ingly untenable. One of the most well-establishedand best-fortified of these old divides withinknowledge has been that between the ‘physical’and ‘human’ sciences. Yet even that ingrainedcounterposition between so-called ‘natural’ and‘social’ is increasingly being questioned, and myconviction is that if they are now up for reinspec-tion and problematization, then geographersshould be in a good position to make a leadingcontribution. In some areas they have long done so,

Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 24 261–276 1999ISSN 0020-2754 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute

of course – one thinks of socialist environmental-ism, for instance. Moreover, there is new work: thatof Whatmore (1999) and Murdoch (1997) amongothers springs to mind. This paper takes a particu-lar tack at the issue. It stems from the idea thatthere may be some questions that both physicaland human geographers are concerned with,which we might, therefore, be able to debatetogether. There are, potentially, many such ques-tions (including those that branch off from the oneunder consideration here – questions of realistphilosophy, of the conceptualization of entities, ofreductionism, of path-dependence, of questions ofprobability and indeterminacy, etc); this paper is atentative foray in one direction, but a direction thatis at the heart of our joint enterprise – the nature ofspace, and therefore (I will argue) of space-time.

The immediate stimuli for this paper were arti-cles from geographers working in fields very dif-ferent (I had thought) from my own. They wereJonathan Raper and David Livingstone’s (1995)‘Development of a geomorphological spatial model

of British Geographers) 1999

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using object-oriented design’ and David Sugden’s(1996) ‘The East Antarctic ice sheet: unstable ice orunstable ideas?’. The latter was David Sugden’svice-presidential address at the 1996 RGS-IBGannual conference and in it he urged that hisreading of the controversy surrounding the historyof the Antarctic ice sheet carried ‘further implica-tions for geomorphology in particular and forphysical geography and geography as a whole’(451). The present paper is in part an attemptto pick up that baton and to explore the connec-tions to and implications for my neck of thegeographical woods.

Let me begin, however, with Raper andLivingstone’s paper. This is an argument for theimportance of a concept of relative space in therepresentation/modelling of environmental prob-lems. ‘[T]he way that spatio-temporal processes arestudied’, they argue, ‘is strongly influenced by themodel of space and time that is adopted’ (1995,364). Traditionally, the authors argue, while envi-ronmental representations have been somewhatunthinking about the concepts of space and timethat they imply and necessarily incorporate, theyhave in fact been dominated by ‘‘‘timeless’’ geo-metric methods focused on two dimensionalplanes’ (363). Raper and Livingstone’s aim is todisrupt this unthought assumption and to argue fora more self-conscious and ‘relative’ understanding.

In doing this, they turn to ‘theoretical develop-ments in physics’ (363) and in particular to Einsteinand Minkowski. This allows them to do a numberof things. First, it provides concepts that enable usto understand space and time as ‘dimensions thatare defined by the entities that inhabit them andnot vice versa’:

space and time must be considered relative concepts, ie,they are determined by the nature and behaviour of theentities that ‘inhabit’ them (the concept of ‘relativespace’). This is the inverse of the situation where spaceand time themselves form a rigid framework which hasan existence independent of the entities (the concept of‘absolute space’). (363)

Thus they distinguish between two approaches tothe spatial modelling of environmental problems:the geometrically indexed (absolute space) and theobject-oriented (relative space).

Using the former approach makes the coordinatesystem . . . into the primary index of the spatial repre-sentation and dictates much of the representationalstructure of the environmental problem of interest.

In the object-oriented approach the environmentalscientist must declare the nature of the real-worldentities identified first: their characteristics andbehaviour structure the spatial representation. (360)

(The implication of this is, of course, that the GISfolk have to receive the spatio-temporal frame-work from the application domain, rather than, asheretofore, themselves being in a position to decideit.) Second, this approach to space-time enables theconceptualization of entities themselves as a set of‘worlds’ (365), where each world has its ownfour-dimensional reference system. ‘Time’, theywrite, ‘is a property of the objects’ (366). Third, andimplicit in all of this, is that for the kind of workthat Raper and Livingstone are addressing, it isnecessary to think not in terms of space and timeseparately, but in terms of a four-dimensionalspace-time (364).

All of this was, for me, totally engrossing. It rangmany bells with my own work, and that of manyothers, within human geography. We, too, havebeen struggling to understand space (and space-time) as constituted through the social, rather thanas dimensions defining an arena within which thesocial takes place. We too have tried to consider theidea of local time-spaces, time-spaces specificto the entities with which they are mutually con-stitutive. Thrift’s (1996) explorations in rethinkingtheory and space together and Whatmore’s (1997)proposals for relational thinking are prominentexamples, as is much of the work that draws on thewriting of Bruno Latour. The new Open Universitycourse on Understanding cities tries to conceive ofcities as open time-space intensities of social rela-tions, themselves encompassing and interlocking avariety of sub-time-spaces of different groups andactivities. In brief, a number of human geographersare now trying to rethink space as integrally space-time and to conceptualize space-time as relative(defined in terms of the entities ‘within’ it), rela-tional (as constituted through the operation ofsocial relations, through which the ‘entities’ arealso constituted) and integral to the constitution ofthe entities themselves (the entities are local time-spaces). Sometimes it can make your head hurt tothink in this way, but as Raper and Livingstoneargue (1995, 364), ‘the way that spatio-temporalprocesses are studied is strongly influenced by themodel of space and time that is adopted.’ In otherwords, it matters; it makes a difference.

Moreover, this way of conceiving of the world iscoming onto the agenda in wider debates within

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the philosophy of social sciences. Perhaps mostevidently, there are resonances here of Deleuze andGuattari’s (1984) ‘events’ and ‘becomings’ – see thedefinition of ‘entities’ above (although I wouldargue that their formulation is a lot better on timethan it is on space). And, of course, the project ofreuniting space and time, and freeing ourselvesfrom the debilitating separation of them that wehave inherited, primarily (though not only) fromKant, is one now being taken up by many writers(see, for instance, Massey 1992 and referencestherein). Unwin (1993), in the resounding coda tohis book, argued for a reunification of geographyprecisely around a reconceptualization of time-space. Indeed, rather than arguing for a repriorit-ization of space (in a kind of competition withtime), we should perhaps be arguing for a unifiedunderstanding. As Larry Grossberg has written:‘The bifurcation of time and space, and theprivileging of time over space, was perhaps thefounding moment of modern philosophy’ (1996,178); in a footnote, he adds, ‘the crucial issue is theseparation of the two’ (187).

Now, even at this level of generality, it was clearto me, on reading Raper and Livingstone, thatthere were also differences of emphasis betweentheir approach and mine. Thus, to give one exam-ple, they focus their conceptualization on ‘entities’,while it is perhaps more usual in the debates ofwhich I am aware in human geography to focus onthe mutual constitution of relations and entities,along with space itself. Their approach is explicitly‘object-oriented’ and the objects come before thespace-times. For me it is easier and more helpful tounderstand entities and space-times as being con-stituted in the same moment and as that in itselfhappening through the relational constitution ofthem both. This kind of relational understanding ofspace and of entities/objects/identities is gainingincreasing currency within human geography. It isnow quite frequently argued that (social) spatialityand entities such as ‘places’ are products of our(social) interactions. The implications are numer-ous and range from a querying of the tendency tosee space as necessarily divided into closed andbounded regions – a querying which would aug-ment this with a focus on interconnections –through to the more general assertion that we havea responsibility for the spatialities through whichwe live and construct our lives. It is an approachthat opens up questions of the supposed ‘essences’of places, along with notions of authenticity bound

up in such ideas as ‘quintessential Englishness’and more general forms of exclusivist nationalismsand parochialisms.

But to register these points is not at all toattempt to distance myself/ourselves from what ishappening in Raper and Livingstone’s part ofgeography. Rather it is to suggest that what wehave here is the potential for debate and discus-sion, together. Maybe there are questions anddebates, and even some tentative ‘answers’, thatdifferent parts of geography have in common.

‘Science’ and physics envy

There was, moreover, another aspect of Raper andLivingstone’s paper that rang bells with me as ahuman geographer. As I said, they turn to physicsfor stimulation in the development of theirapproach. In this they are adopting a strategy – ofreferring to a ‘harder’ science – that is commonacross the subspecialisms within geography (andindeed beyond). Cultural geographers may citechaos theory, urban theorists turn to formulationsfrom quantum mechanics, anyone arguing aboutthe nature of knowledge might draw on thethinking of Heisenberg.

Two things in particular interest me about thisphenomenon: on the one hand how we do it (that is,the terms on which we make the appeal) and onthe other hand the intellectual history of why we doit. It is my opinion that, at least in some cases, thishabit of referring to physics bears witness to animplicit imagination both of a model of science andof a particular relationship between the disciplines.It is an imagination that physical and humangeographers share, even though in the latter case itis less explicitly held and would probably bedenied if openly challenged (as I am challenging ithere). Moreover, I want to argue, it is an imagina-tion which, while it may be shared by physical andhuman geographers, nonetheless serves to hold usapart.

Raper and Livingstone are careful about thenature of their reference to physics. They are awareof the need to define the limits to validity of theclaims they are making, and remain consistentwith the arguments of physics in accepting thatconcepts of absolute space may be suitable forsome spheres of geographical work (they cite land-resource management as an example). This is not,then, a general proposition about the applicability

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of concepts of relative space. Their point is that‘there are arguments for the use of a ‘‘relativespace’’ approach in the study of environmentalproblems’ (1995, 363).1 Moreover, they turn tophysics on defined terms: that it has ‘expanded therange of concepts available’ (363). In other words,it is treated as a provocation, a stimulus to thought.In this, however, they are quite different from someothers, in both physical and human geography,who turn to physics as a kind of higher authority,as a source of unimpugnable truth. It is what I callthe reverential reference: if ‘physics’ says so, who arewe to disagree?

Such an attitude is, of course, built upon implicitunderstandings that lie deep within us, as bothintellectuals and ‘ordinary citizens’. There hasdeveloped over the last few centuries (building oneven older foundations) an acceptance of a hier-archy among the sciences, between the disciplines,and between forms of knowledge. It operates bothin general and with great precision. Within thestandard disciplines, physics is at one end and(say) cultural studies and the humanities at theother. Neoclassical economics has striven to distin-guish itself from other social sciences and to giveitself as much as possible the appearance of aphysical (hard) science. Physical geographers onoccasions think they are ‘more scientific’ thanhuman geographers, where the term ‘scientific’conjures up images of the status and worth of theknowledge acquired. And yet, while the physicalgeographer might feel this way about the human,the feelings are reversed when they turn to face theother way. Thus Frodeman writes of ‘the ‘‘physicsenvy’’ that geology sometimes seems to suffer from(ie the sense of inferiority concerning the statusof geology as compared with other, ‘‘harder’’sciences) . . .’ (1995, 961). And in a differentdiscipline altogether, that of biology, Steven Rosedeploys a very similar language to argue that hisdiscipline is often ‘said to suffer from a sense ofinferiority, of ‘‘physics envy’’ (which may perhapsbe why these days many molecular biologists try tobehave as if they are physicists!)’ (1997, 9).2 This isan envy that is deeply embedded, and it pro-vides an implicit grounding for references to theauthority of physics in many a part of geography.

There are many reasons to contest this assump-tion of authority. Most evidently, the establishedstatus of physics, of its methodology and its truth-claims, is based on an image of that discipline thatis now out of date. Physics itself has moved on.

There is a particular contradiction here: many ofour appeals to physics these days are in fact to thenew views of the world coming out of quantummechanics and more recent developments. This isquite acceptable when the reference takes the formof pointing to a stimulating new idea or a potentialanalogy. But when it takes the form of a demon-stration of proof simply through appeal to a higherauthority, the irony is that that authority wasestablished in relation to, and in the days of, amuch older form of physics. We need, then, to becircumspect about the nature and status of ourreferences.

In human geography and related disciplines, forinstance, what precisely is the status of appeals toquantum mechanics or chaos theory? What, really,are the grounds for evocations of fractal space?As provocations to the imagination they may bewonderfully stimulating; as implicit assertions of asingle ontology they need justifying; as invocationsof a higher, truer science they may be deeplysuspect.3

There are, moreover, further reasons for caution.It is rare, for instance, that one can legitimately orunequivocally appeal to ‘recent developments inphysics’ in proof or demonstration of an argumentin another field, for such developments are oftenthemselves the subject of fierce debate. In my ownwork on the reconceptualization of spatiality inways adequate to face up to some of the problemsposed by modern times, I have also found myselfexploring debates about temporality. Indeed, notonly would I argue that we need to think in termsof space-time/time-space, but also I would pro-pose that any conceptualization of space has a(logically) necessary corollary in a particular‘matching’ conceptualization of time. The fact thatpeople often work with ‘unmatched pairs’ is, Imaintain, the source of a number of the difficultiesthat scientists of all sorts have frequently faced inthis matter.

The concept of space for which I want to argue isone that holds that space is open and dynamic.That is (and given what was said above aboutspace-time), ‘space’ cannot be a closed system: it isnot stasis, it is not defined negatively as an absenceof temporality, it is not the classic ‘slice throughtime’. Indeed, the closed-system/slice-through-time imagination of space denies the possibility ofa real temporality – for there is no mechanism formoving from one slice to the next (Massey 1997).Rather the spatiality that I envisage would be open,

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would be constantly in the process of being made(the relations yet to be established, or not) andwould have elements of both order and accident(the latter deriving from the happenstance juxta-positions and separations which – I argue – areintrinsic to space). It would be integral to space-time. That kind of understanding of space, how-ever, ‘matches’ with a particular view of time: asirreversible and the vehicle of novelty. Now, Icould appeal to ‘physics’ for corroborating witnessto this argument; but I could also – being honest –find a physics that proposed quite the oppositepoint of view. And, within physics, I am notcompetent to judge. We must not, then, resort totactics that in reality amount to picking out forquotation – and as ‘proof’ – one’s favourite, ormost compatible, ‘harder’ scientist.

I will not belabour any further all these argu-ments against the supposed scientific superiority ofphysics, save to make two brief points and onemore extended one. First that, however ‘hard’ ascience is, it is still the product of a process con-ducted within and influenced by a wider socialcontext and the conditions and character of its ownperformance. The work of sociologists of knowl-edge, actor-network theorists and others is now toowell known for this point to need further elabora-tion. Second that, wherever one finds oneself onthis supposed ‘spectrum’ from physics to culturalstudies, certain debates in which one is engagedseem to be shared with at least some of those bothupstream and downstream. The work of IsabelleStengers and of Marilyn Strathern comes to mind:neither of them geographers but both widely readby geographers. As a social scientist much preoc-cupied with essentialism, I find the debates withinbiology about the existence or not of ‘natural kinds’(and, if they exist, debates about their conceptual-ization) to be both fascinating and unsettling(see, for instance, Goodwin 1995; Rose 1997).Arguments in number theory about the status of‘natural numbers’ keep me equally riveted. Is therehere a return to a Platonism which I, in my part ofthe forest, am struggling to be free from?

The final and more extended point stems fromthe fact that there is a considerable literature deny-ing the view of ‘physics’ (in classical mechanicalguise) as the one true method of doing science andas the purest form of scientific knowledge. BothFrodeman and Rose argue this position, as do ahost of authors in both geology and geomorphol-ogy. Thus Simpson (1963, 46), in a classic statement

on the nature of geology as a science, argued thefollowing:

Historical science . . . cuts across the traditional linesbetween the various sciences: physics, chemistry,astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, psychology,sociology, and the rest. Each of these has both historicaland nonhistorical aspects, although the proportions ofthe two differ greatly. Among the sciences named, thehistorical element plays the smallest role in physics,where it is frequently ignored, and the greatest insociology, where the existence of nonhistorical aspectsis sometimes denied – one of the reasons that sociologyhas not always been ranked as a science. It is not acoincidence that there is a correlation with complexityand levels of integration, physics being the simplestand sociology the most complex science in this partiallist. Unfortunately philosophers of science have tendedto concentrate on one end of this spectrum, and that thesimplest, so much as to give a distorted, and in someinstances quite false, idea of the philosophy of scienceas a whole.

A whole host of issues clamour for attention in thatquotation. To begin with, Simpson makes the veryimportant point that the move along the spectrumfrom physics (nineteenth-century model) to sociol-ogy involves an increase in complexity. Physics’focus on relatively simple systems, therefore, andespecially the initial focus on the simple, timelesssystems of classical mechanics, has been problem-atical for the development of other forms of knowl-edge. The assumption that non-simple aspects ofthe world were in principle reducible to simplesystems (or, in terms of knowledge-production,would need to be if ‘scientific’ knowledge were tobe gained from them), that they were really simplesystems with too much ‘noise’ in them, preventedthem from being addressed in their own right ascomplex systems. As is now being ever more fre-quently argued in a range of fields, the move froman assumption of simplicity to a recognition ofcomplexity (with openness, feedback, non-linearityand a move away from simple equilibrium) canchange the picture entirely, to the point ofthoroughly undermining many of the conclusionsarrived at through the analysis of simple systemsalone. Prigogine and Stengers (1984) and Prigogine(1997) argue this point at some length, expanding itto make the wider observation that an overconcen-tration on simple systems might, at least on occa-sions, have led us thoroughly astray. With sucharguments gaining an ever-wider hearing, it wouldseem that, at least within academe if not in more

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popular understandings, the higher status ofbranches of science that restricted themselves tosimple systems might come in for further question-ing. Perhaps disciplines that study ‘complex sys-tems’ (from meteorology to sociology) can nowlead the way. Certainly it is now increasinglyargued that a number of different approachescan be taken to the analysis of any individualobject of study. Richards (1990; 1994, for example)makes a strong and detailed case for this in geo-morphology, enabling a move away from reduc-tionism and a greater recognition of complex opensystems and feedback effects. And Spedding (1997)proposes a new kind of question for geomorphol-ogy, one that gives priority to compositionalrelationships rather than to detailed processstudies. Crucial to this is another implication ofcomplexity – emergence:

The phenomenon of emergence enables us to describeemergent forms sui generis. We don’t have to under-stand brain chemistry to understand language, eventhough the latter would not be possible without theformer. (Sayer personal communication)

Similarly, in David Sugden’s analysis of the historyof the east Antarctic ice sheet, two approaches arepresented: the biostratigraphical and the geomor-phological. The two approaches lead to very differ-ent understandings of the history of the ice sheet.The biostratigraphical approach appears to favoura history of dynamic change, while the geomor-phological points to a more stable past. It is adifference in the analysis of history that has signifi-cant contemporary implications: each view impliesa different prognostication of the potential resultsof global warming.

In recent years, the biostratigraphical approachhas had the wider currency. Sugden’s challenge isthat interpretation of its data has ignored thebroader geomorphological setting. This, he argues,is typical of a more general phenomenon: thatgeomorphology has, in recent decades ‘stressedshort-term process studies and retreated fromstudies of landscape evolution’ (1996, 451). This,in turn, he relates to the traditional view thatgeology and geomorphology are a kind of physicsmanque:

Viewed in this light and driven by the aspiration to bescientific, it is perhaps understandable that geomor-phology has stressed reductionism, short-term processstudies and experimentation as the optimum route toknowledge. (451–2)

In other words, it has ignored the emergent phe-nomena: the landforms. And this in turn is relatedto time-span. Sugden’s paper demonstrates how anunderstanding of the longer-term historical geo-morphology can lead to a different interpretationof the history of the ice sheet.

Sugden’s aim (like that of Frodeman andSimpson for geology) is to argue that geomorphol-ogy must be understood not as a discipline that isan imperfect physics but rather as a complex andsynthetic science that combines within itself atten-tion to ‘timeless’ processes and understanding ofhistorical ones. Certainly what the argument as awhole implies is that any comparisons betweenphysical and human geography on the basis of‘scientific status’ need to be laid aside. Rather, weshould put in a claim for their both being sciencesof the complex and the historical, which are badlyserved by looking to (an anyway now miscon-ceived notion of) physics as a model. This does notmean that no assumptions of timeless processesmay be made; even in the social field such assump-tions may on occasions be innocuous. But bothphysical and human geographers need to becautious about their references to so-called hardersciences and a good deal more rigorous about theterms on which such references are made. Beingself-critical in that way, by wrenching ourselvesaway from all vestiges of that old imagination, wemight find at least a few elements of a commonground: that both physical and human geography– at least in large measure – are complex sciencesabout complex systems.

Historical time

Simpson, in the quotation cited earlier, not onlymakes a distinction between simple and complexsystems and sciences, but also relates it to a furtherdistinction – between non-historical and historical.This is a fundamental connection. One of the keysin this debate, certainly amongst geologists andgeomorphologists, is the distinction between pro-cesses (and thus forms of explanation) that aretimeless and those that are time-bound. (Differentterms are sometimes deployed in this distinction:Simpson (1963) uses immanent and configura-tional, Bernal (1951) immanent and contingent.)There are also intermediate cases, such as equilib-rium systems (see below). But the crucial pointhere is that time-bound processes are historical in

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the full sense that they develop a future that isopen.

Now, I want to argue that there are implicationshere for the way in which we understand timeitself. Moreover, given my earlier proposition thatany conceptualization of the nature of time willhave implications for the conceptualization ofspace, I want to propose that there are also, hiddenwithin this debate, implications for how we thinkabout space and spatiality. In other words, ourrelationship to nineteenth-century physics has mis-led us not only about simplicity/complexity butalso about our concepts of time. This has hadeffects in both natural and social sciences. It hasalso had reverberations for how we conceptualizespace. So, if we could overthrow some of our(shared, if different) fascinations with nineteenth-century physics we might also be free to reimaginespace/space-time.

Frodeman provides a good place from which tobegin. As David Sugden does for geomorphology,Frodeman proposes for geology that it be acceptedas an historical science.4 Although he does notspell this out, what is at issue here is the nature oftime: timeless processes do not generate a notion ofopen historical time. In other words, behind thelong-established status of ‘physics’ (largely inthe guise of classical mechanics) as the scientificdiscipline par excellence has been an implicitassumption about time that deprives it of itsopenness; reduces its possibility of beinghistorical.

This has been reflected in the complex relation-ship between ‘science’ and philosophy. Frodemanargues that, in the case of geology, this relationshiphas been distant (geologists being impatient withphilosophizing and philosophers not seeing any-thing of serious import within geology). However,he argues that this lack of dialogue has been setagainst a mutual commitment (and admiration)between science-as-physics and philosophy-as-positivism.5 Such philosophy, especially in its earlydays and in the writings of people such as Carnap(1937), maintained that science was the only roadto knowledge and that there was only one truescientific method; it committed itself to (its under-standings of) objectivity, the empirical methodand epistemological monism (which essentiallyincorporated a reductionism-to-physics). Such anapproach can not admit ‘the fully historical’ intothe realm of the scientific. In spite of subsequentdebates, and later writings such as those of Kuhn,

this relationship of mutual admiration, Frodemanargues, remained long undisturbed. It was littlewonder that so many disciplines developed a formof physics envy.

Other philosophers and branches of philosophyhave, however, long struggled against these formu-lations, largely developing in opposition to areduction of ‘knowledge’ to a narrow interpreta-tion of science. The impulse for much of this latterinvestigation was the double argument that, on theone hand, ‘science’ was not the only – nor evennecessarily the best – way to gain knowledge ofreality and, on the other hand, that there is no onebest scientific method.

Frodeman wishes to inject more of this stream ofphilosophy into geology: to abandon the search forgeneral timeless laws for everything (see alsoSimpson 1963) and to turn to the development of aspecifically historical approach.

This issue of history is crucial. Frodeman pointsout that time has been absolutely central to thedevelopment of these critical strands of philoso-phy, but he does not develop the point further. Infact, consideration of time was central to suchphilosophies precisely because the classical scienceof the day evoked timelessness. This was the casenot only in the concept of fully timeless processes,but also in closed equilibrium systems, where thefuture is given, contained within the initial condi-tions – it is closed. This flew in the face of whatthese critical philosophers knew of the world. Along history of the development of ideas abouttime was set in train. Prigogine and Stengers (1984)analyse this history in detail. They point to a wholestring of philosophers, from Hegel throughHeidegger to Whitehead, struggling against whatthey feared were the wider implications of theepistemological and ontological claims of the thencurrently dominant forms of science. Diderot,Kant, Hegel, Whitehead and Bergson all‘attempted to analyse and limit the scope ofmodern science as well as to open new perspec-tives seen as radically alien to that science’(Prigogine and Stengers 1984, 79–80). Central totheir struggle was the argument that time must befully open-futured. Bergson was crucial here: forhim, time was about the continuous emergence ofnovelty, ‘To him the future is becoming in a way thatcan never be a mere rearrangement of what hasbeen’ (Adam 1990, 24).

The ‘hard sciences’ were obdurate, however.Prigogine and Stengers (1984, 16) argue that this

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difficulty of getting ‘science’ to recognize a fullyhistorical temporality ‘led to discouragement’. Asthey put it, at that historical moment the choiceseemed to be either to accept the pronouncementsof classical science or to resort to a metaphysicalphilosophy. Bergson (along with Whitehead andothers) took the latter route.

One result of this, which I believe to have beenboth utterly devastating and at the same timefoundational for much subsequent philosophicaland social thought, was that as a consequence ofthese philosophers laying claim to the essentialcreativity of time, space – postulated as the intuitiveopposite – came to be seen as the realm of the dead.For Bergson, ‘space’ became associated with thescience with which he was embattled. If suchscience ignored time (the open temporality that hewas struggling to assert) it must therefore be‘space’ (a leap of ‘logic’ that I find totally unten-able, but you can see why it happens). Further, heinterpreted the very process of scientific produc-tion as one of ‘spatialization’ (ie of taking ‘time’ outof things). Indeed, representation as a genericactivity became associated with the spatial, anassociation that lives on strongly to this day. ForBergson, ‘the rational mind merely spatializes’; hethought in terms of ‘the immobilizing (spatial)categories of the intellect’ (Gross 1981–82, 62, 66):

For Bergson, the mind is by definition spatially ori-ented. But everything creative, expansive and teemingwith energy is not. Hence, the intellect can never helpus reach what is essential because it kills and fragmentsall that it touches . . . We must, Bergson concluded,break out of the spatialization imposed by mind inorder to regain contact with the core of the truly living,which subsists only in the time dimension . . .6

I want to propose that this engagement between‘science’ and different branches of philosophy (andthereby also social sciences) both has been genu-inely two-sided and has had deep implications forhow we think about space. In the era of classicalscience – and on the issue of time – social scienceand philosophy were clearly reaching for questionsthat the dominant natural scientists of their daysimply did not grasp. These early so-called harderscientists could with benefit have listened to andlearned from philosophers and social scientists.Moreover, the reasons that they did not learn, or insome cases that they resisted so fiercely the ques-tions and arguments of certain critical philoso-phers, were both scientific (according to the lights

of their day) and social (see Prigogine and Stengers1984; see also a number of other accounts, such asToulmin 1990).

However, this troubled relationship also influ-enced the course that was taken by (some) philo-sophical and social theorizing. One example is theassumption mentioned above: that there is a rela-tionship between space and representation. To‘represent’ was (and still often is) understood asbeing to ‘spatialize’. This assumption runs as aguiding thread through Laclau’s (1990) later workon the philosophy of radical democracy; it isasserted without further explanation by de Certeau(1984); it reverberates throughout much of struc-turalism. Even one of the strongest protagonistswithin our own discipline of the importance of thespatial takes this view:

Any system of representation, in fact, is a spatializationof sorts which automatically freezes the flow ofexperience and in so doing distorts what it strives torepresent . . . (Harvey 1989, 206)

There are two things going on here: first theargument that representation necessarily fixes, andtherefore deadens and detracts from, the flow oflife; and second that this process of deadening isequivalent to ‘spatialization’. The first proposition Iwould not entirely dispute, though I shall go on tomodify the form in which it is customarilycouched. However, it seems to me that there is nocase at all for the second proposition: that there isan equivalence between space and representation.It is one of those accepted things that are by nowso deeply embedded that they are rarely if everquestioned.

I would argue three things and pose one ques-tion. First argument: that this now-hegemonicequation of space and representation in fact derivesfrom nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century battles over the meaning of time (as arguedabove). This may be why, historically, representa-tion has come to be equated with spatialization,but in fact such terminology is both mistaken andactively harmful. Second argument: that represen-tation may indeed ‘fix’ and ‘stabilize’ (though seebelow), but that what it so stabilizes is not simplytime but space-time. And third argument: that thishistorically significant way of imagining space/spatialization not only derives from an assumptionthat space is to be defined simply as a lack oftemporality (holding time still) but also has con-tributed substantially to its continuing to be

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thought of in that way. It is, however, a totallyinadequate conception of space.

The question is this: given this association ofspace with representation, and the characterizationof space as immobility, what options are there forrepresenting space itself for cartography, for GIS, todevelop a form of mapping that – although repre-sentation – does not reduce space to a dead surface.How can it be brought alive? This is an issueinfluenced both by the techniques available and byconceptual stance, and it is addressed by Raperand Livingstone (1995, 362): the problem ‘concernsthe representation of a continuous reality usingdiscrete entities’; the issue, in other words and inmy terms, is not the spatialization of the temporal(the dominant view of what representation is allabout) but the representation of space-time. Andthe representation of space-time is itself an emer-gent product of the conceptualization of the space-time entities themselves. Deleuze and Guattariaddress this by challenging the notion of represen-tation. For them, a concept should express an eventrather than an essence. In Allen et al (1998), wewere aiming to reconceptualize the region in thisway – our object of study was ‘the-south-east-in-the-1980s’ – what Deleuze and Guattari might callan event, and what we would call a time-space.Deleuze and Guattari (1984, 23) go further, how-ever, and argue against any notion of a tripartitedivision between reality, representation and subjec-tivity: ‘Rather, an assemblage establishes connec-tions between certain multiplicities drawn fromeach of these orders.’ Here representation is nolonger stasis, but an element in a continuous pro-duction; a part of it all, and constantly ‘becoming’.In geography, Thrift’s (1996) explorations in non-representational theory are pushing in a similardirection.

But to return to the main argument: all thismisreading of space, I would argue, came aboutbecause of social scientists’ and philosophers’reactions to natural science’s intransigence on thematter of time. It was as a result of science’sintransigence that some philosophers sought a wayaround its propositions.

The argument here is that these lines of devel-opment can now be rethought. As I have argued,the culture of reverence for physics is being (orneeds to be) undermined. Not only is the (classicalmechanics) image of physics an outdated one,but the validity of historical sciences, in theirown right, is being more properly recognized.

Moreover, there is a further point: that debateswithin physics itself are now challenging thearguments about temporality even there. WhatPrigogine argued in much of his early work inchemistry and physics, and now Prigogine andStengers argue more broadly, is that natural scienceitself is changing (must now change) its own viewof time – that the new reconceptualizations ofphysics lead towards the recognition of an openand fully historical notion of time. So naturalscience must change, and is indeed beginningto do so:

The results of non-equilibrium thermodynamics areclose to the views expressed by Bergson andWhitehead. Nature is indeed related to the creation ofunpredictable novelty, where the possible is richer thanthe real. (Prigogine 1997, 72)

But what this in turn means, of course, is that thescience against which Bergson and othersconstructed their ideas no longer has to becombated . . .

the limitations Bergson criticized are beginning to beovercome, not by abandoning the scientific approach orabstract thinking but by perceiving the limitations ofthe concepts of classical dynamics and by discoveringnew formulations valid in more general situations.(Prigogine and Stengers 1984, 93)

This must also mean that, insofar as it was influ-enced – as it must have been – by the battle it waswaging at the time, Bergson’s own formulation cannow itself be reworked. In other words, we are notobliged to follow his conclusions about space.Moreover and finally, and in case you weretempted to point to an inconsistency here, myciting of Prigogine (Nobel Prize winner in a hardscience, etc) is not done in the manner of referenceto the unimpugnable authority of ‘science’, forthere are as many fierce debates among scientistsabout these matters as there are amongst philoso-phers and social scientists. Rather, it is simply todemonstrate that we no longer have to battleagainst a ‘science’ that appears monolithically tosay the opposite.

Imagining ‘history’ in physical and humangeography

Some of this thinking is already well establishedwithin physical geography. Barbara Kennedy(1992), for instance, has reflected on the history ofgeomorphology in this light. She argues that

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the influence of Strahler’s (1952) and, moreparticularly, Chorley’s (1962) advocacy of adynamic as opposed to a historical approach togeomorphology (that is, in the terms previouslyused here, their emphasis on immanent processes,equilibrium and timelessness) has had a number ofeffects that should now be questioned. Thus, sheargues, it has encouraged the emergence of ahistory of the discipline as the gradual coming-to-dominance of that ‘scientific’ (as opposed tohistorical) approach to analysis. She argues:

All this has led, as is almost inevitable, to a ‘folk’ viewof the history of the subject emerging, in which thetriumph of the ‘dynamic’ approach is shown to beforeshadowed by the prescience of selected forerun-ners: at its worst, this vision leads to a simple succes-sion of triumphant, dynamic ‘goodies’ and Huttonbegets Playfair, begets Lyell, and so forth. (Kennedy1992, 232–3, emphasis in original)

The first thing Kennedy does is question thatteleological interpretation of geomorphology’s his-tory.7 Her second argument is even more central tothe concerns of this paper. Chorley took the prin-ciples of mechanics as the blueprint for the scien-tific development of the discipline, opposed theseprinciples to those of historical analysis, andneglected the latter. Kennedy’s argument (whichdraws on Prigogine and also more widely on chaostheory and the study of non-linear systems – iepost-mechanical physics and chemistry) is that theseparation between these approaches is, perhaps,more fluid than has often been supposed.

The complexities – and indeed sometimes theirony of the complexities – of this evolving debateare brought home by John Thornes’ proposals foran evolutionary geomorphology (Thornes 1983).He takes up the challenge of the ‘renewed interestin the long-term behaviour of land forms’ (225) andargues that interest and emphasis in geomorphol-ogy are shifting from the observation of equilib-rium states (that is, in the terminology of thispaper, closed systems with no true historical time);his aim is to gain new insights into ‘historicalproblems’ (234). The approach he adopts, however,is rather different from that advocated by Sugdenfor geomorphology, or by Frodeman for geology;his proposal is to shift,

from the observation of equilibrium states per se to therecognition of the existence of multiple stable andunstable equilibria, the bifurcations between them andthe trajectories connecting them. (234)

In other words, his aim is to draw on recentdevelopments in theories of dynamical systemsthat open up temporality in a more genuinelyhistorical way. And, indeed, he draws on the workof, among others, Ilya Prigogine.

What Thornes is doing, in other words, is againdrawing on a supposedly ‘harder’ science forinsight into the complexities of his own. What wehave here is physics and maths (or, in general, arange of ‘harder’ sciences) as themselves historical.As we have seen, there is nothing wrong withdrawing on such disciplines so long as the termsof the relationship (analogy? provocation/stimulation? direct translation? simple reverence?)are made clear and adhered to. Taking upPrigogine and others’ work on far-from-equilibrium systems, and the potential for theproduction of ‘order out of chaos’, Thornes candraw important conclusions about potentialinstabilities and landscape sensitivity:

when a system is close to a stable equilibrium (such aspediplain), random fluctuations in the environmentmay have little consequence, whereas if the system is ator close to a bifurcation point, then small fluctuationscan have dramatic effects. This is what is meant bylandscape sensitivity. (231)

However, the wider propositions about knowledgewithin which Thornes is working are also interest-ing. In the abstract to his paper, he writes that therenewed interest in the long-term behaviour oflandforms ‘should be soundly based in theoryrather than inferentially based on historicalstudies’ (225). And later he writes of ‘the lack ofany accepted theoretical (as opposed to historic-inferential) model of long-term geomorphologicalbehaviour’ (225). Now, there are certainly particu-lar issues of historical inference in geomorphology,given the very long-term nature of the processes itstudies. Nonetheless, it needs to be acknowledgedthat ‘theories’ also involve inference. Newton‘interpreted’, and in his interpretations wasinfluenced by the wider social movements and con-ditions of his day. On the wider canvas, both‘immanent’ and ‘configurational’ processes arestudied in historical contexts. Here, then, is a fur-ther blurring of the distinction to add to that al-ready drawn out by Kennedy. Moreover, Thornes’notion of ‘theory’ seems to be confined to theabstract/formal and mathematical. But ‘theories’can apply to the historical too. Finally, it must benoted that what we have here in Thornes’ work is

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history as in non-linear dynamical systems. I shallreturn to this point in a moment.

What is particularly interesting, however, aboutthese developments in geomorphology is that inone way or another they are all rethinking theconcept of time and their relationship to it.Whether it be through an emphasis on a morequalitative historical science, or via an analysis ofthe potential bifurcations in the paths of complexdynamical systems, the implication is that time istruly open-ended.

One of the reasons I personally find this sointeresting is that I believe a similar shift has beenunderway in the social/human sciences, or at leastin parts of them. And this is in spite of the fact thatthese sciences – or most of them – would haveplanted themselves firmly in the camp of thehistorical. For there is, of course, history andhistory. There are different ways of imagininghistory which imply distinct conceptualizations oftime and temporality (and, as I shall go on toargue in the final section of this paper, space andspatiality).

First of all, of course, it is necessary to note themany attempts by human geographers to modelthemselves on Newtonian physics. Notions oftimeless processes were integral to much of themodelling work of the 1970s. And the closed timesof closed equilibrium systems have also figuredprominently. In the human sciences more widely,it has been the development of neoclassical eco-nomics from the 1870s to the 1900s (and still goingstrong today) that has provided the iconic exampleof an explicit physics envy that referred (andrefers) itself to the physics that was dominant inthe nineteenth century.

There have, however, been ways in which‘history’ has been imagined in the social sciences,which have themselves been problematical. Thus,many of the great ‘modernist’ understandings ofthe world implicitly drew upon, and thereby estab-lished as unthought assumptions, a highly particu-lar conceptualization of time, of space, and of therelationship between them. The aspect of this thatis most significant for the present argument is theirhabit of convening space in temporal terms. When,in economic geography for instance, we use termssuch as ‘advanced’ and ‘backward’, ‘developed’and ‘developing’, we are effectively imaginingspatial differences (differences between places,regions, countries, etc) as temporal. We are arrang-ing differences between places into historical

sequence. All the stories of Progress, of Develop-ment, of Modernization (such as the movementfrom traditional to modern), of the Marxist pro-gression through modes of production (feudalism,capitalism, socialism, communism) and of manyformulations of the story of ‘globalization’ (seeMassey 1999) share a geographical imaginationthat involves this manoeuvre: it rearranges spatialdifferences into temporal sequence.8 Such a movehas enormous implications: it implies that placesare not genuinely different (I shall discuss belowwhat I mean by this) but simply ‘behind’ or‘advanced’ within the same story; their ‘difference’consists only of their place in the queue.

This, then, is a powerful (in the sense of fre-quently hegemonic) imaginary geography which –ironically – serves to occlude the real significanceof geography. It obliterates, or at minimum in itsmuted forms reduces, the import and the fullmeasure of the real differences that are at issue. Sowhat is ‘real difference’? I want to argue that a fullrecognition of difference would understand it asmore than place in a sequence, for understandingdifference as place-in-a-sequence is, after all, a kindof temporo-spatial version of that understanding ofdifference that sees others as really only ‘a varia-tion on myself’, where ‘myself’ is the one con-structing the imagination. So the countries of, say,the South of this planet (in these modernist imagi-nations of progress emanating on the whole fromthe North) are not really different – they are justslow versions of us. In contrast to this, a fullerrecognition of difference would acknowledge thatthe South might not just be following us; that itmight, rather, have its own story to tell.9 A fullerrecognition of difference would grant the other, thedifferent, at least a degree of autonomy in thatsense (where relative autonomy does not mean alack of interconnection – some stories are moreoverarching than others, for example – but ratherthe absence of a teleology of the single story). Inother words, a fuller recognition of differencewould entertain the possibility of the existence of amultiplicity of trajectories.

Now, to anticipate somewhat the argument ofthe final section, it is also the case that for there tobe multiple trajectories – for there to be coexistingdifferences – there must be space, and for there tobe space there must be multiple trajectories. Thus,I want to argue, a more adequate understanding ofspatiality for our times would entail the recogni-tion that there is more than one story going on in

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the world and that these stories have, at least, arelative autonomy.

The important point for the moment, however,is that not only do these modernist narrativessuppress the full import of the spatial but theyalso have a very ambiguous relationship to time.They are tales of progress and change, and of theirreversibility of time; they are historical in thatsense. And yet they are also stories in which thefuture is already foretold (progress, development,modernization, socialism, globalization). This iswhat Ernesto Laclau has dubbed a grand closedsystem where everything that happens can beexplained internally to it ‘and everything acquiresan absolute intelligibility within the grandiosescheme’ (Laclau 1990, 75). This is not the ‘time asthe continuous emergence of novelty’ proposed bythe likes of Bergson; the way of becoming that isnever a mere rearrangement of what already is.

Now, what has been emerging in recent years insome parts of political philosophy and the socialsciences is an attempt to recapture that notion ofthe genuine openness of temporality. In differentways, this attempt to think a radical openness isintegral to the projects of Deleuze and Guattari(see, for example, 1984) – their imagination ofnomadism, for instance – to thinking around queertheory (see, for instance, Golding 1997) and to thereworkings of Marxism through a groundedGramscianism and through radical democracy (seeLaclau 1990; Mouffe 1993). There are fascinatingsimilarities here to what Barbara Kennedy is argu-ing within geomorphology with her distinctionbetween ‘sequence’ and ‘progression’. The latter –the progressionists (Lyell, Dana, Horton) – sheargues, studied the past not to see ‘how we gothere from there’ but to see how ‘we must get herefrom there’ (Kennedy 1992, 247, emphasis in origi-nal). In contrast, Hutton, Darwin and Gilbertviewed the present as merely one of all possibleworlds. These latter, she argues, saw ‘history assequence’ (247–8). There are connections here, ifonly distant and tentative, with some of thearguments of radical democracy. In heterodox eco-nomics, the development of institutional and evo-lutionary approaches also entails a shift towards ahistorical concept of time. And in a different vein,but in a direct parallel with the arguments ofgeomorphologists such as Thornes, economistssuch as Krugman and Lawson are drawing in parton the new theoretical mathematics and physics ofcomplexity. Many of these projects are integrally

conceptual and political. Imagining time as trulyhistorical not only influences how we analyse thepast; it also implies, when we turn to look the otherway, that the future (though inevitably influencedby the histories that have led to today) is alsoradically open.

But if an open historicity is once again on theagenda in both physical and social sciences, thereare still questions as to quite what this means. JohnThornes’ non-linear dynamical systems open up tohistory in a very different way from Frodeman andSugden’s stress on more narrative approaches. And– the big question – is the political openness of thefuture held up to us by radical democracy andqueer theory (a societal level of ‘free will’, makingour own histories though not, of course, in circum-stances . . . ) . . . is this element of ‘free will’ in someway equivalent to (or ultimately subverted by?) theontological indeterminacy postulated by someversions (eg Prigogine and Stengers’) of far-from-equilibrium systems thinking?

There are two major questions here. The firstconcerns both the way we think about knowledgeand questions of ontology. Some authors seem tobe proposing that we can now all meet in a new,single (and necessarily ‘mathematical’?) ontologythat has validity across inorganic, biological andsociocultural fields. Prigogine’s arguments, which Ihave cited earlier, could be used to support such anaturalist position. Anti-naturalists would take adifferent view and assert most strongly that humanand natural sciences are dealing with fundamen-tally different spheres: that the possibility of inten-tionality, meaningfulness and self-reflexivity isrestricted to the human.

There is a more complex position, which wouldargue that there may well at some level be onto-logical commonalities, but that these are articu-lated in distinctive manners in different spheresand, moreover, that this distinctiveness is a phe-nomenon of emergence. Thus, although humanlymeaningful phenomena may not be reducible tothe phenomena studied by the natural sciences,they may be emergent from them. There may bereal similarities in the abstract pattern of function-ing of the inorganic, the biological and the socio-cultural, but in each sphere it is necessary thatwe specify the actual, particular, ‘mechanisms’through which this functioning occurs. This‘qualified naturalism’ is, it seems to me, somethinglike the position of Deleuze and Guattari withtheir ‘bodies-without-organs’ and their ‘abstract

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machines’, and of Manuel de Landa’s A thousandyears of non-linear history (1997).

The issues are enormous and I make no attemptto address them fully here (at the moment ofwriting this final draft I think I am a qualifiednaturalist!), but the distinctions are important for amajor theme of this paper: our relationship to eachother as physical and human geographers (and –what I have argued earlier has been one of theissues previously holding us apart – the relation-ship of these two parts of our discipline to ‘harder’sciences such as physics).

Earlier in this paper, I argued that we must beboth self-aware and precise about the terms bywhich we refer to other sciences such as physics.We may turn to them as a stimulation for newideas, or for a direct translation of their models intoours, or out of simple reverence. The anti-naturalistmight legitimately do the first; the full-blown natu-ralist is entirely justified in doing the second; thequalified naturalist must be careful to distinguishbetween the generalities and the specifics, andmust present an account of the latter.10 What noneof these positions warrants, however, is a turningto ‘a harder science’ out of simple admiration forits ‘hardness’ – the reverential reference. It wouldbe ironic if we were to escape from ritual obeisanceto Newtonian mechanics as a model for all knowl-edge, only to adopt precisely the same genuflectingattitude towards the ‘new’ physics of the twentiethcentury. Rather, we should be pleased that physicshas in some of its parts become more like thecomplex and social sciences in other areas ofknowledge.11 Ideas in philosophy can feed throughto physics as well as vice versa, insights from thesocial sciences can be helpful in biology . . . Per-haps we should all have more confidence in ourown fields of endeavour, as well as in the linksbetween them.

And so again to space

What I want to argue finally, however, is that allthese movements towards a reconsideration of thenature of time/temporality/historicity necessarilycarry with them a requirement to reconsider howwe think about space. I can spell out the argumenthere in the abstract, but it is nonetheless an argu-ment drawn from my thinking within my ownfield of human geography. My question is how thismight relate to reconceptualizations of spatiality

going on in other parts of geography: geology,geomorphology, GIS and so forth.

In contrast to the prominence of time andhistoricity in the debates that I have explored sofar, space has had a very low profile. It is deni-grated as a simple absence of history and/or notaccorded the same depth of intellectual treatmentas time. The arguments about opening upNewtonian-science models focus overwhelminglyon historicity. Most of the developments docu-mented above call for more explicitly historicalsciences. Yet ‘initial conditions’ are geographical aswell as historical. We must be spatial, as well ashistorical, sciences: indeed, this must be an implica-tion of thinking in terms of space-time (see alsoSpedding 1997). Yet the widespread developmentof evolutionary approaches in a number of fieldsconcentrates on thinking history, but not geogra-phy (see Martin’s (1999) very pertinent critique ofthis in economics): ‘what economists have failed torecognize is that the notion of ‘‘path-dependence’’that they now emphasize is itself place-dependent’(Martin personal communication) (Sugden’s analy-sis of the ice sheet seems to me to imply preciselythis point). And in philosophy, both Bergson andLaclau, while rigorously retheorizing time, relegatespace to a kind of residual category of stasis. Theyend up with an incompatible pairing of space andtime. What I want to argue is that all these re-theorizations of time, and all this insistence on theopenness of true historicity, in fact require (forphilosophical compatibility) a parallel retheoriz-ation of space. For history to be open, space mustbe rethought too.

Let us go back for a moment to Bergson, whoseposition that temporality must embody open crea-tivity has so much in common with many of thearguments being put forward today by philoso-phers and social scientists (and, as we have seen,also natural scientists). Indeed, Bergson is animportant source for a number of these theorists –see Ho (1993) and Deleuze and Guattari (1984). ForBergson, as we have seen, temporality is essentiallyopen-ended: this is time as the continuous emer-gence of novelty; time as a way of becoming that isnever a mere rearrangement of what already is.Without emergence, urges Bergson (and others),there is no time.

Sensu lato, I would agree with this proposition. Itdoes, however, in turn raise further questions. Whyis there this ceaseless emergence? How does ithappen? One source that would seem not to be

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compatible with notions of the openness of historywould be that things somehow change in them-selves (through the immanent unfolding of someunitary undifferentiated identity), for in that casethe terms of change would already be specified inthe initial conditions. The future would not beopen. Rather, in order to retain an openness of thefuture, temporality/time has to be conceived (justas I am suggesting space should be) as the productof interaction, of interrelations. Adam (1990) con-tains extended discussion of this way of thinkingabout time, and of the many theorists who arguefor such an approach to its conceptualization.

Bergson once asked himself the following:

What is the role of time? . . . Time prevents everythingfrom being given at once . . . Is it not the vehicle ofcreativity and choice? Is not the existence of time theproof of indeterminism in nature?

‘Indeterminism’, here, stands precisely forcreativity and the possibility of ‘free will’ and, inmore recent parlance, politics.

How are we to think of this statement? Well, it iscertainly possible to allow that time may be thevehicle of change. However, the fact that timemay be the medium within which change occurs(or, more radically, that change-through-inter-relationality is one of the mechanisms in the crea-tion of temporality) does not mean that it is itscause. Time cannot somehow, unaided, bootstrapitself into existence. Nietzsche once mused that‘only difference . . . can produce results that arealso differences’. In other words, there mustalready be multiplicity – to enable the possibility ofinteraction – for change to be produced as a result.And for there to be multiplicity there must bespace. In other words, we must, as was indicatedearlier, rework Bergson’s logic, and rewrite himthus: for there to be difference, for there to be time. . . at least a few things must be given at once. Topick up an earlier argument of this paper, the leapthat Bergson seems to have made is to go from theproposition that not everything is given all at onceto an assumption that therefore only one thing isgiven at once. Moreover, he would seem to havedone this in consequence of his engagement with aparticular notion of ‘science’.

But the real result of this argument is that timeneeds space to get itself going; time and space areborn together, along with the relations that pro-duce them both. Time and space must be thoughttogether, therefore, for they are inextricably inter-

mixed. A first implication, then, of this impetus toenvisage temporality/history as genuinely open isthat spatiality must be integrated as an essentialpart of that process of ‘the continuous creation ofnovelty’.

Such an effectively creative spatiality cannot,however, be just any kind of (way of thinking of)space. This cannot be ‘space’ as a static cross-section through time, for, as we have seen above,this disables history itself. Nor can it be ‘space’ asrepresentation conceived of as stasis, for this pre-cisely immobilizes things. Nor can it be ‘space’ as aclosed equilibrium system, for this would be aspatiality that goes nowhere, that always returns tothe same. This cannot be ‘space’, either, as any kindof comforting closure (the closures of bounded,‘authentic’ places), for these would also run downinto inertia. Nor can it be space convened astemporal sequence, for here space is in factoccluded and the future is closed.

None of these ways of imagining space areconformable with the desire to hold time open.Rather, for time genuinely to be held open, spacecould be imagined as the sphere of the existence ofmultiplicity, of the possibility of the existence ofdifference. Such a space is the sphere in whichdistinct stories coexist, meet up, affect each other,come into conflict or cooperate. This space is notstatic, not a cross-section through time; it is dis-rupted, active and generative. It is not a closedsystem; it is constantly, as space-time, being made.

Now, I can see what all this means in my neck ofthe woods. I have an idea of how it means we mustrethink globalization, reimagine regions/places/nation states, reconceptualize cities. Thosethoughts are emerging in other books and papers,by myself but also by many others besides. Butdoes it bear any relation to ways of thinking aboutspace in other parts of the geographical forest? Doyou have similar debates? Can we talk?

Acknowledgements

The first person I would like to thank is Roger Lee,whose concern during his editorship to see thisjournal as a forum for debate in both human andphysical geography provided an early encourage-ment to try my hand at developing an argumentthat might link them. I would also like to thank theparticipants in a seminar at Birkbeck College,where I first presented some of these ideas.Conversations with colleagues, and comments on

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earlier drafts, have been extremely generous. Ishould particularly like to thank David Sugden,Andrew Sayer, Keith Richards, Stephan Harrison,John Allen, Steve Pile, Barbara Kennedy, NickSpedding, Rob Inkpen and Ron Martin. Theirpositions did not by any means coincide, but it is –perhaps – interesting to note that in all the manyand multifarious comments made and opinionsexpressed there was no simple divide betweenthose who might be thought of as human geogra-phers and those who might be thought of asphysical.

Notes

1 Thus they write that:Whilst much of the work of mathematicians andphysicists such as Minkowski and Einstein is rel-evant only at extreme scales or velocities, notionssuch as relative concepts of space and time arepertinent to environmental science. (364)

I have to say that at least one of the geomorphologistswith whom I have discussed the present paper quitedisagrees with this point!

2 Incidentally, but not coincidentally, the concern ofRose’s book is not only to deny this customarysubordination of complex sciences (or sciences of thecomplex) such as biology, but also to understandorganisms and – crucially – their trajectories in andconstitution through time and space. Here is detect-able the crucial link – picked up again later in thispaper – between complexity and emergence.

3 The book Intellectual imposters by Alan Sokal and JeanBricmont (1998) appeared while I was writing thispaper. Although their own epistemological position isthoroughly naive, it has to be said that many of thesocial scientists whom they quote (and mock) doseem to have been not only flaunting a half-knowledge of natural science, but also indulging inan implicit ‘reverential referencing’ that stands intotal contradiction to their wider positions.

4 Frodeman’s most general aim, like David Sugden’sand my own, is that intellectual communities shouldtalk to each other. He says of his article,

Its overall goal is political, in the sense that I hopeit encourages conversation between intellectualcommunities who have much to say to one another,but who too often are estranged. (1995, 961)

5 Frodeman actually uses the term ‘Analytical Philoso-phy’ here, and distinguishes it from a philosophycritical of this tradition that he calls ‘ContinentalPhilosophy’. I have dropped these terms because, aswas evident from a number of comments on an earlydraft of this paper, they generate more confusion thanclarity.

6 Gross is here compressing the arguments of Bergson’sTime and free will and Matter and memory.

7 As Kennedy remarks, such a process is ‘almost inevi-table’. This is not a process peculiar to geomorphol-ogy or physical geography. The production of suchhistories, the need to be aware of the tendency and toquestion it, is again something that we all share.

8 It might be interesting to investigate whether there isany relationship between this manoeuvre andBergson’s (and others’) interpretation of difference astemporal change. Also, I have wondered a lot, thoughinconclusively, about whether there are any connec-tions between this temporalization of space in socialsciences and the ergodic hypothesis in geomorphol-ogy, where an attempt is made to explain distribu-tions in time by recourse to distributions in space(Thornes and Brunsden 1977, 23; Thorn 1982). Myfeeling is that there is probably no ‘connection’ in ahistorical or theoretical sense, though it is tempting tosee one.

9 The work of some post-colonial theorists, such asSpivak and McClintock, has been important inestablishing this argument.

10 Deleuze (1995) was asked in interview about his ownuse of concepts from contemporary physics. His replyis too long to quote here, but is interesting for tryingto negotiate a relation of connection without a ‘spe-cious unity’ (30). Interestingly, too, he takes up thecases of both Prigogine and Bergson. On the formerhe points out that the concept of bifurcation (used inour field both in formal modelling and in morephilosophical and empirical enquiry) is ‘a good exam-ple of a concept that’s irreducibly philosophical, sci-entific, and artistic too’ (29–30). He also argues thatphilosophers may create concepts that are useful inscience: ‘Bergson profoundly influenced psychiatry’.And, most importantly, ‘no special status should beassigned to any particular field, whether philosophy,science, art, or literature’ (30).

11 And anyway – a point which gives me pleasure andillustrates the wider argument – some of chaos theoryhad its earliest beginnings in meteorology; physicistswere quite slow to take it up (Gleick 1987).

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