Some of that formative rethinking is reflected in the piece included here, which Harvey begins with the question
“How and why would we bring about a revolution in geographic thought?” In answering this rhetorical query over
the next 13 pages of the recently inaugurated (1969) radical geographic journal Antipode, Harvey takes up three
key, intertwined issues. First he critiques a prevalent argument offered by Kuhn (1962) regarding the ways in
which the nature of knowledge production goes through periodic reformulations (or revolutions, as Kuhn argued)
within and across disciplines. Second he offers an assessment that places changes within geography over the
previous decade (the period of the so-called “quantitative revolution”) within this framework, and concludes that
that “revolution” had now run its course, and was itself ripe for overthrow. And finally, Harvey presents both a critique
of the ways in which positivism had become irrelevant within geography specifically, and in the academy more
generally, as well as pointing a way forward that would allow such a positivist orientation to be both recuperated
and made pertinent. In sum, then, this piece articulates the incipient concerns of the “normative” turn, formulates
a cogent critique of the then-current state of geographic scholarship from this normative perspective, and describes
(by means of both argument and an abbreviated case study) what Harvey is then groping toward as a more
engaged, productive and progressive form of such scholarship.