THEORIES, PARADIGMS, MAPPING, AND GEOMORPHOLOGY

A past-president's address is a unique opportunity to reflect on one's experience in a discipline or to examine that discipline with a critical eye. This is best done during the brashness of youth or from the comfortable position of maturity. Obviously it is from the latter vantage point that I wish to probe this branch of science, geomorphology, which for twenty years has given me renewed intellectual challenges, beauty that only a field scientist has the privilege to behold, physical difficulties which result in a minimum of middle-age bulge, and lessons in humility which keep proposed explanations honest.