This paper tries to explain some attributes of modern geomorphology by means of its historical links with geography and, through this one, with social sciences as a whole. This connection implies a partial dependence of geomorphological thought with regard to the methodological controversy between naturalism and historicism, whose progression is not identical in all countries. In geomorphology, as in other sciences, this pluralism has been an active factor of change. In this context of historical explanation of landforms studies, it is emphasized the lasting influence of methodological struggles linked to the crisis o£ nineteenth-century positivism, that toke place on the eve of first emergence of geomorphology as a differenciated science. The late-positivist features of davisian synthesis are specially underlined and related with some structural feeble point traceable in current textbooks on geomorphology.
