Environmental determinism is the doctrine that human growth, development and activities are controlled by the physical environment (Lethwaite, 1966). Hence, factors of culture, race and intelligence are supposed to derive from the benign or malign influences of climate, and other aspects of human habitat. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the concept briefly enjoyed the status of a dominant paradigm in western geographical thought, especially as it provided some ideological motives for colonialism.
The concept appears to have originated with Hippocrates and Aristotle. It was taken up again in Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws(1748), which argued that legislative regulation should be framed within the constraints of the social and environmental conditions (especially climate) to which it applies. Such ideas gathered force in the wake of Darwin. It may seem strange that a concept as rigid as environmental determinism should have derived its impetus, however indirectly, from the...
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Alexander, D.E. (1999). Environmental determinism. In: Environmental Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_112
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