the major philosophical school. In the early 1950s, there was a growing sense that the existing paradigm for geographical research was not adequate in explaining how physical, economic, social, and political processes are spatially organized, ecologically related, or how outcomes generated by them are evidence for a given time and place. A growing number of geographers started to express their dissatisfaction with the traditional paradigm of the discipline and its focus on regional geography, deeming the work as too descriptive, fragmented, and non-generalizable. To address these concerns, early critics such as Ackerman suggested the systematization of the discipline. Soon thereafter, a series of debates regarding methodological approaches in geography took place. One of the first illustrations of this was the Schaefer vs. Hartshorne debate. In 1953 Exceptionalism in geography: A Methodological Examination was published. In this work, Schaefer rejected Hartshorne's exceptionalist interpretations about the discipline of geography and having the region as its central object of study. Instead, Schaefer envisioned as the discipline's main objective the establishment of morphological laws through scientific inquiry, i.e. incorporating laws and methods from other disciplines in the social sciences that place a greater emphasis on processes. Hartshorne, on the other hand, addressed Schaefer's criticism in a series of publications, where he dismissed Schaefer's views as subjective and contradictory. He also stressed the importance of describing and classifying places and phenomena, yet admitted that there was room for employing laws of generic relationships in order to maximize scientific understanding. In his view, however, there should be no hierarchy between these two approaches. While debates about methods carried on, the institutionalization of systematic geography was taking place in the U.S. academy. The geography programs at the University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Washington were pioneering programs in that respect. At the University of Iowa, Harold McCarty led efforts to establish laws of association between geographical patterns. At the University of Wisconsin, Arthur H. Robinson led efforts to develop statistical methods for map comparison. And at the University of Washington, Edward Ullman and William Garrison worked on developing the field of economic and urban geography, and central place theory. These institutions engendered a generation of geographers that established spatial analysis as part of the research agenda at other institutions including University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Loyola University, Ohio State University, the University of Michigan, among others. The changes introduced during the 1950s and