SBR-9515319 Colin E. Thorn Bruce L. Rhoads U. Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) This award provides funds to support travel and accommodation expenses for invited participants in a symposium on "The Scientific Nature of Geomorphology," part of the Binghamton Symposium Series (no connection with the university or the city), to be held in September 1996 in Champaign, Illinois. The symposium will address the current absence of a strong, unifying, intellectual framework for the field of geomorphology. At stake are issues such as the field's origin and self-identification as an earth science, while ascendant methods are those of physics and chemistry; the division between "field" and "process" researchers; the general disdain for philosophy of science within the field; and the extent to which philosophies of science underlying ecological studies can also inform geomorphology. The symposium will gather people who have written and researched on these matters, and will result in a volume to be published by Wiley (production of the volume is not part of the budget request). The symposium and volume could be a landmark in the self-conceptualization of a central component of physical geography.
