Harrison (2002) Geoforum 33, 4 considers the way certain presuppositions and idealizations over the nature of understanding and meaning are or have been built into our (social scientific) modes and methods of explanation. For Brown (2004) TIBG 29, 3 the key questions are: what are the motivations behind chosen research topics and questions? What are the reasons for favouring one particular methodology in tackling a given research question?

Lane (2001) TIBG 26 stresses the need to achieve the closure required to make things amenable to study; B. L. Rhoads and C. E. Thorn (1966) wonder how place shapes our understanding. Couper (2007) TIBG 32, 3, drawing on Wittgenstein, observes that parallel ideas may be expressed in different ways in disciplines in geography: for example see hysteresis; contingency. See also Rose (1997) PHG 21, 3 on situating knowledges. Vallance (2007) Geog. Compass, 4 detects the emergence of multiple economic geographies of knowledge, the diversity of learning processes in different types of organizational and spatial setting, and the circulation of mobile forms of knowledge across geographical space.