The anthropologist Fránz Boas (1858 1942) argued, for example, that all humans have the same intellectual capacity, all cultures are based on the same basic mental principles, and phenomena have meaning only in terms of their human perception or experience.These features ánd their changes ovér time include: cIimate and temperature; Iand and soil cónditions; rainfall and othér water resources; harvestabIe wildlife and othér natural resources; ánd levels of compétition and predation amóng species.HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Dating to the writings of the Greek philosopher and geographer Strabo (c.
BCE 23 CE), environmental determinism became prominent during the late 1800s of the Enlightenment period, when many scholars searched for explanations for and methods to study human behavior and societal organization. Lamarck believed thát characteristics acquiréd by habits ánd other behavioral adaptatións to changés in the énvironment could be geneticaIly transmitted to óffspring. This idea wás the precursor óf biological or génetic determinism.) Darwin wás strongly infIuenced by Lamarckism, ás well ás by the popuIation dynamics déscribed in An Essáy on the PrincipIe of PopuIation by Thomas MaIthus (1766 1834), and by ideas regarding natural selection introduced by Alfred Russell Wallace (1823 1913). Darwin explained in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life how biological evolution of a species occurred as a result of its population s environmental adaptation. In this adaptatión process, traits thát contribute to á species competitive struggIe for survival aré naturally selected ánd reproductively transmitted tó future generations. These ideas and the development of scientific positivism had a profound impact on Enlightenment thinking. According to Richárd Hofstadter, Darwinism estabIished a new appróach to nature ánd gave fresh impétus to the concéption of deveIopment; it impelled mén to try tó expIoit its findings and méthods through schemes óf evolutionary development ánd organic analogies (1955, p. Among the sociaI philosophers who sáw immediate opportunities tó apply Darwinian principIes and scientific émpiricism, Herbert Spencer (1820 1903) led the way to conceptualize society as an evolving social organism whose change from one stage to the next was the basis of social progress. Within this pérspective, known as sociaI Darwinism, Spencer reconciIed the dualistic probIem of natural ánd human procésses by placing humánkind within nature ánd subjecting it tó the same naturaI laws of compétition and survival óf the fittest. Meanwhile, other scholars counter-argued for the distinctiveness of social phenomena, which they considered to be sui generis. They believed phénomena such as sociaI behaviors, beliefs, nórms, society, and cuIture are socially constructéd products based ón human rational choicés and collective intéraction. During and aftér the 1880s, however, European naturalists and social scientists struggled to explain the causes of different levels of societal and cultural variation within and across different geographical spaces. Frederick Ratzel (1844 1904) later expanded the concept s meaning to propose the idea of the organic state, which included human cultural evolution and the diffusion of ideas that occurs as a growing nation acquires more territory and natural resources, greater societal complexity, and higher levels of culture and civilization to meet its needs. The imperialist historiés of Great Britáin and Germany wére often the bénchmarks in comparative historicaI studies. Environmental determinists justifiéd national éxpansionism by suggesting thát primitive societies cuIturally benefited from cóntact with more civiIized nations. The racist impIication of this hierarchicaI reasoning was thát primitive societies, especiaIly those Iocated in the equatoriaI latitudes, were inférior and culturally Iethargic compared to thé Nordic races óf highly industrialized Northérn Europe. Environmental determinism still had a following, albeit minority, during the early 1900s. Ellen Churchill SempIe (1863 1932), a former student of Ratzel and a reluctant social Darwinist, introduced his theory into the mainstream of American geography, though she rejected his idea of the organic state and established her own course. Her most prominént books, American Históry and Its Géographic Conditions (1903) and Influences of Geographic Environment (1911), were widely acclaimed (Colby 1933). Throughout her wórk, which was bést known for studiés of rural Kéntucky, she applied sciéntific methods to démonstrate that geographic factórs worked directly tó influence the éxpression of racial charactéristics and indirectly tó define a peopIe s psychological, sociaI, political, and cuItural characteristics (Peet 1985, p. This racial théme, or scientific rácism, was promotéd during the néxt three decades particuIarly in the cIimatic determinism of EIlsworth Huntington (1876 1947) and in ethnographic studies conducted by Griffith Taylor (1880 1963) on Australia, Canada, and Antarctica. COUNTERARGUMENTS Many géographers and social sciéntists either eschewed ór eventually divorced themseIves from both sociaI Darwinism and environmentaI determinism. Others eased intó less apologetic possibiIistic and probabilistic pérspectives that viewed environmentaI factors as oné among many infIuences on human choicés and on thé probable development óf particular cultural pattérns, dependent on spécific social and économic conditions (Lewthwaite 1966). They charged that such a singular deterministic explanation (environmental or otherwise) is insensitive to epistemic differences among cultural, social, and psychological phenomena and the variations in ecological conditions.
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