Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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. It
will doubtless be taken to task on all sides. In a
sense (although I would rather not be proven too
horribly wrong), that might in itself not be too
dismaying. For the argument presented here
arises not only out of my theoretical interest in
space(-time) but also out of another conviction. For
a whole variety of reasons, the carving-up of the
world and of scientific endeavour between disciplines has been experienced recently as increasingly untenable. One of the most well-established
and best-fortified of these old divides within
knowledge has been that between the physical
and human sciences. Yet even that ingrained
counterposition between so-called natural and
social is increasingly being questioned, and my
conviction is that if they are now up for reinspection and problematization, then geographers
should be in a good position to make a leading
contribution. In some areas they have long done so,
of course one thinks of socialist environmentalism, for instance. Moreover, there is new work: that
of Whatmore (1999) and Murdoch (1997) among
others springs to mind. This paper takes a particular tack at the issue. It stems from the idea that
there may be some questions that both physical
and human geographers are concerned with,
which we might, therefore, be able to debate
together. There are, potentially, many such questions (including those that branch off from the one
under consideration here questions of realist
philosophy, of the conceptualization of entities, of
reductionism, of path-dependence, of questions of
probability and indeterminacy, etc); this paper is a
tentative foray in one direction, but a direction that
is at the heart of our joint enterprise the nature of
space, and therefore (I will argue) of space-time.
The immediate stimuli for this paper were articles from geographers working in fields very different (I had thought) from my own. They were
Jonathan Raper and David Livingstones (1995)
Development of a geomorphological spatial model
262
Doreen Massey
In the object-oriented approach the environmental
scientist must declare the nature of the real-world
entities identified first: their characteristics and
behaviour structure the spatial representation. (360)
Space-time, science and the relationship between physical geography and human geography
263
264
Doreen Massey
Space-time, science and the relationship between physical geography and human geography
265
266
Doreen Massey
In other words, it has ignored the emergent phenomena: the landforms. And this in turn is related
to time-span. Sugdens paper demonstrates how an
understanding of the longer-term historical geomorphology can lead to a different interpretation
of the history of the ice sheet.
Sugdens aim (like that of Frodeman and
Simpson for geology) is to argue that geomorphology must be understood not as a discipline that is
an imperfect physics but rather as a complex and
synthetic science that combines within itself attention to timeless processes and understanding of
historical ones. Certainly what the argument as a
whole implies is that any comparisons between
physical and human geography on the basis of
scientific status need to be laid aside. Rather, we
should put in a claim for their both being sciences
of the complex and the historical, which are badly
served by looking to (an anyway now misconceived notion of) physics as a model. This does not
mean that no assumptions of timeless processes
may be made; even in the social field such assumptions may on occasions be innocuous. But both
physical and human geographers need to be
cautious about their references to so-called harder
sciences and a good deal more rigorous about the
terms on which such references are made. Being
self-critical in that way, by wrenching ourselves
away from all vestiges of that old imagination, we
might find at least a few elements of a common
ground: that both physical and human geography
at least in large measure are complex sciences
about complex systems.
Historical time
Simpson, in the quotation cited earlier, not only
makes a distinction between simple and complex
systems and sciences, but also relates it to a further
distinction between non-historical and historical.
This is a fundamental connection. One of the keys
in this debate, certainly amongst geologists and
geomorphologists, is the distinction between processes (and thus forms of explanation) that are
timeless and those that are time-bound. (Different
terms are sometimes deployed in this distinction:
Simpson (1963) uses immanent and configurational, Bernal (1951) immanent and contingent.)
There are also intermediate cases, such as equilibrium systems (see below). But the crucial point
here is that time-bound processes are historical in
Space-time, science and the relationship between physical geography and human geography
267
268
Doreen Massey
Space-time, science and the relationship between physical geography and human geography
269
This must also mean that, insofar as it was influenced as it must have been by the battle it was
waging at the time, Bergsons own formulation can
now itself be reworked. In other words, we are not
obliged to follow his conclusions about space.
Moreover and finally, and in case you were
tempted to point to an inconsistency here, my
citing of Prigogine (Nobel Prize winner in a hard
science, etc) is not done in the manner of reference
to the unimpugnable authority of science, for
there are as many fierce debates among scientists
about these matters as there are amongst philosophers and social scientists. Rather, it is simply to
demonstrate that we no longer have to battle
against a science that appears monolithically to
say the opposite.
270
Doreen Massey
Space-time, science and the relationship between physical geography and human geography
271
sequence. All the stories of Progress, of Development, of Modernization (such as the movement
from traditional to modern), of the Marxist progression through modes of production (feudalism,
capitalism, socialism, communism) and of many
formulations of the story of globalization (see
Massey 1999) share a geographical imagination
that involves this manoeuvre: it rearranges spatial
differences into temporal sequence.8 Such a move
has enormous implications: it implies that places
are not genuinely different (I shall discuss below
what 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 frequently hegemonic) imaginary geography which
ironically serves to occlude the real significance
of geography. It obliterates, or at minimum in its
muted forms reduces, the import and the full
measure of the real differences that are at issue. So
what is real difference? I want to argue that a full
recognition of difference would understand it as
more than place in a sequence, for understanding
difference as place-in-a-sequence is, after all, a kind
of temporo-spatial version of that understanding of
difference that sees others as really only a variation on myself, where myself is the one constructing the imagination. So the countries of, say,
the South of this planet (in these modernist imaginations of progress emanating on the whole from
the North) are not really different they are just
slow versions of us. In contrast to this, a fuller
recognition of difference would acknowledge that
the South might not just be following us; that it
might, rather, have its own story to tell.9 A fuller
recognition of difference would grant the other, the
different, at least a degree of autonomy in that
sense (where relative autonomy does not mean a
lack of interconnection some stories are more
overarching than others, for example but rather
the absence of a teleology of the single story). In
other words, a fuller recognition of difference
would entertain the possibility of the existence of a
multiplicity of trajectories.
Now, to anticipate somewhat the argument of
the final section, it is also the case that for there to
be multiple trajectories for there to be coexisting
differences there must be space, and for there to
be space there must be multiple trajectories. Thus,
I want to argue, a more adequate understanding of
spatiality for our times would entail the recognition that there is more than one story going on in
272
Doreen Massey
Space-time, science and the relationship between physical geography and human geography
273
274
Doreen Massey
Acknowledgements
The first person I would like to thank is Roger Lee,
whose concern during his editorship to see this
journal as a forum for debate in both human and
physical geography provided an early encouragement to try my hand at developing an argument
that might link them. I would also like to thank the
participants in a seminar at Birkbeck College,
where I first presented some of these ideas.
Conversations with colleagues, and comments on
Space-time, science and the relationship between physical geography and human geography
Notes
1
275
References
Adam B 1990 Time and social theory Polity Press, Oxford
Allen J Massey D and Sarre P eds 1998 Rethinking the
region Routledge, London
Bernal J D 1951 The physical basis of life Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London
Carnap R 1937 The logical syntax of language Routledge
and Kegan Paul, London
Chorley R J 1962 Geomorphology and general systems theory
Prof Paper 500B, US Geological Survey
de Certeau M 1984 The practice of everyday life University
of California Press, Berkeley
276
de Landa M 1997 A thousand years of non-linear history
Swerve Editions, New York
Deleuze G 1995 Negotiations: interviews 19721990
Columbia University Press, New York (original
interview published in Liberation, 23 October 1980)
Deleuze G and Guattari F 1984 A thousand plateaus
(translated by B Massumi) Athlone Press, London
Frodeman R 1995 Geological reasoning: geology as an
interpretive and historical science Bulletin of the
Geological Society of America 107 8 96068
Gleick J 1987 Chaos: making a new science Heinemann,
London
Golding S ed 1997 The eight technologies of otherness
Routledge, London
Goodwin B 1995 How the leopard changed its spots: the
evoultion of complexity Phoenix Books, London
Gross D 198182 Space, time and modern culture Telos 50
5978
Grossberg L 1996 The space of culture, the power of
space in Chambers I and Curti L eds The post-colonial
question Routledge, London 16988
Harvey D 1989 The condition of postmodernity Blackwell,
Oxford
Ho M-W 1993 The rainbow and the worm: the physics of
organisms World Scientific, Singapore
Kennedy B A 1992 Hutton to Horton: views of sequence,
progression and equilibrium in geomorphology Geomorphology 5 23150
Laclau E 1990 Reflections on the revolution of our time Verso,
London
Martin R 1999 The new geographical turn in economics:
some critical reflections Cambridge Journal of Economics
23 1 6591
Massey D 1992 Politics and space-time New Left Review
196 6584
1997 Spatial disruptions in Golding S ed The eight
technologies of otherness Routledge, London 21825
1999 Imagining globalisation: power-geometries of
time-space in Brah A Hickmann M and MacanGhaill
M eds Future worlds: migration, environment and
globalization Macmillan, Basingstoke 2744
Mouffe C 1993 The return of the political Verso, London
Murdoch J 1997 Towards a geography of heterogeneous
associations Progress in Human Geography 21 3 32137
Doreen Massey
Prigogine I 1997 The end of certainty: time, chaos and the new
laws of nature Free Press, London
Prigogine I and Stengers I 1984 Order out of chaos
Heinemann, London
Raper J and Livingstone D 1995 Development of a
geomorphological spatial model using object-oriented
design International Journal of Geographical Information
Systems 9 35983
Richards K 1990 Real geomorphology Earth Surface
Processes and Landforms 15 1957
1994 Real geomorphology revisited Earth Surface
Processes and Landforms 19 27781
Rose S 1997 Lifelines: biology, freedom, determinism
Penguin, Harmondsworth
Simpson G G 1963 Historical science in Albritton C C ed
The fabric of geology Addison-Wesley, Reading MA
2448
Sokal A and Bricmont J 1998 Intellectual imposters Profile
Books, London
Spedding N 1997 On growth and form in geomorphology
Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 22 2615
Strahler A N 1952 Dynamic basis of geomorphology
Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 62 92338
Sugden D 1996 The East Antarctic ice sheet: unstable ice
or unstable ideas? Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers 21 44354
Thorn C E 1982 Space and time in geomorphology International Series 12, Binghampton Symposium in Geomorphology Allen and Unwin, London
Thornes J B 1983 Evolutionary geomorphology Geography
68 22535
Thornes J B and Brunsden D 1977 Geomorphology and time
Methuen, London
Thrift N 1996 Spatial formations Sage, London
Toulmin S 1990 Cosmopolis: the hidden agenda of modernity
Free Press, New York
Unwin T 1993 The place of geography Longman, Harlow
Whatmore S 1997 Dissecting the autonomous self: hybrid
cartographies for a relational ethics Society and Space 15
1 3753
1999 Hybrid geographies: rethinking the human in
human geography in Massey D Allen J and Sarre P
eds Human geography today Polity Press, London 2239