Geography
History of geography Age of Discovery Environmental determinism Regional geography Quantitative revolution Critical geography

Environmental determinism, also known as climatic determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. Those who believe this view say that humans are strictly defined by stimulus-response (environment-behavior) and cannot deviate. This article explores the history of geography. ... The Age of Discovery or Age of Exploration was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which European ships traveled around the world to search for new trading routes and partners to feed burgeoning capitalism in Europe. ... Physical map of the Earth (Medium) (Large 2 MB) Geography is the scientific study of the locational and spatial variation in both physical and human phenomena on Earth. ... The quantitative revolution was one of the four major turning points in the history of geography (the other three being regional geography, environmental determinism and critical geography). ... The critical geography is one of the four major turning points in the history of geography (the other three being environmental determinism, regional geography and quantitative revolution). ... Ortelius world map 1570 File links The following pages link to this file: Abraham Ortelius Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/World Categories: NowCommons | Author died more than 100 years ago public domain images ... Climatic Determinism or Environmental determinism is an aspect of economic geography. ... The stimulus-response model describes a statistical unit as making a quantitative response to a quantitative stimulus administered by the researcher. ... For the Pet Shop Boys album of the same name see Behaviour Behavior or behaviour (see spelling differences) refers to the actions or reactions of an object or organism, usually in relation to the environment. ...

Key proponents of this notion have included; Carl Ritter, Ellen Churchill Semple, Ellsworth Huntington, and Thomas Griffith Taylor. Carl Ritter (in German: Karl Ritter) (August 7, 1779, Quedlinburg – September 28, 1859, Berlin) was, along with his fellow German Alexander von Humboldt, one of the founders of modern geography (and of the Berlin Geographical Society). ... Ellen Churchill Semple (January 8, 1863, Louisville, Kentucky – May 8, 1933, West Palm Beach, Florida). ... Ellsworth Huntington was a professor of economics at Yale University, early 20th century, known for his studies on climatic determinism, economic growth and economic geography. ...

Environmental determinism's origins go back to antiquity, when the Greek geographer Strabo wrote that climate influences the psychological disposition of different races. Similar ideas continued to be propounded up into the modern era. The Greek geographer Strabo in a 16th century engraving. ...

Environmental determinism rose to prominence in the late 1800s and early 1900s when it was taken up as a central theory by the discipline of geography (and to a lesser extent, anthropology). Clark University professor Ellen Churchill Semple is credited with introducing the theory to the United States after studying with human geographer Friedrich Ratzel in Germany. The prominence of determinism was influenced by the high profile of evolutionary biology, although it tended more to resemble the now-discredited Lamarckism rather than Darwinism. Beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1805 - 1815). ... // First flight by the Wright brothers, December 17, 1903. ... Anthropolology (from the Greek word , man or person+knowledge) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ... Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States, is a private teaching and research institution founded in 1887 by the industrialist Jonas Clark. ... Ellen Churchill Semple (January 8, 1863, Louisville, Kentucky – May 8, 1933, West Palm Beach, Florida). ... Friedrich Ratzels photograph from the University of Leipzig Friedrich Ratzel (August 30, 1844, Karlsruhe, Baden – August 9, 1904, Ammerland) was a German geographer and ethnographer, notable for coining the term Lebensraum (living space). // Ratzels Life Ratzels father was the head of the household staff of the Grand... Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change, multiplication, and diversity over time. ... Lamarckism or Lamarckian evolution is a theory put forward by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, based on heritability of acquired characteristics, the once widely accepted idea that an organism can acquire characteristics during its lifetime and pass them on to its offspring. ... Charles Darwin Darwinism is a term for the underlying theory in those ideas of Charles Darwin concerning evolution and natural selection. ...

The fundamental argument of the environmental determinists was that aspects of physical geography, particularly that of climate, influenced the psychological mind-set of individuals, which in turn defined the behaviour and culture of the society that those individuals formed. For example, tropical climates were said to cause laziness, relaxed attitudes and promiscuity, while the frequent variability in the weather of the middle latitudes led to more determined and driven work ethics. Because these environmental influences operate slowly on human biology, it was important to trace the migrations of groups to see what environmental conditions they had evolved under.

Between 1920 and 1940, environmental determinism came under repeated attacks as its claims were found to be severely faulted at best, and often dangerously wrong. Geographers reacted to this by first developing the softer notion of "environmental possibilism," and later by abandoning the search for theory and causal explanation for many decades. Later critics charged that determinism served to justify racism and imperialism. The experience of environmental determinism has left a scar on geography, with many geographers reacting negatively to any suggestion of environmental influences on human society. Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Gay bashing Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Hate groups White/Black/Latino supremacy Radical Islam · Fundamentalism · Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights · Gay rights Womens/Universal suffrage Childrens rights... Cecil Rhodes: Cape-Cairo railway project. ...

While this accurately reflects the popular belief and perception in the geographic community towards environmental determinism, the debate was overlaid with hues of gray. Rostlund pointed out in his essay in Readings in Cultural Geography "Environmentalism was not disproved, only dissaproved." He also points to the fact that the dissaproval was not based on inaccurate findings, but rather a methodological process which stands in contrast to that of science, something the geographers have arguably sought to ascribe themselves to. Carol O. Sauer followed on from this in 1924 when he criticized the premature generalizations resulting from the bias of environmentalism... He pointed out that to define geography as the study of environmental influences is to assume in advance that such influences do operate, and that a science cannot be based upon or committed to a preconception."

A variant of environmental determinism was popular among Marxists. To Marx's basic model of the ideological and cultural superstructure being determined by the economic base, they added the idea that the economic base is determined by environmental conditions. For example, Russian geographer Georgi Plekhanov argued that the reason his nation was still in the feudal era, rather than having progressed to capitalism and becoming ripe for the revolution into communism, was that the wide plains of Russia allowed class conflicts to be easily diffused. This Marxist environmental determinism was repudiated around the same time as classic environmental determinism. Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Marx is a common German surname. ... G. V. Plekhanov Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (Георгий Валентинович Плеханов) (December 11, 1856 – May 30, 1918; Old Style: November 29, 1856 – May 17, 1918) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. ... Feudalism comes from the Late Latin word feudum, itself borrowed from a Germanic root *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which means fief, or land held under certain obligations by feodati. ... This box:      Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately [1] owned and operated for profit and in which distribution, production and pricing of goods and services are determined in a largely free market. ... Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownershipmovement]]. Early forms of human social organization have been described as primitive communism by Marxists. ...

See also

• Determinism
• Linguistic determinism

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. ... Linguistic determinism is the idea that language shapes thought. ...

External link

• North Dakota State University - course notes