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ENVIRONMENTALISM AND DETERMINISM: A SEARCH FOR CLARIFICATION

1966; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 56; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-8306.1966.tb00540.x

1467-8306

Gordon R. Lewthwaite,

Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond

ABSTRACT "Environmentalism" and "determinism" are terms covering varied concepts. Environmentalism included both environmental determinism and the environmentalist definition of geography as the study of man-environment relationships. These were not identical: most who accepted the environmentalist definition preferred possibilism to geographical determinism. These two positions were not consistent extensions of the metaphysical concepts of free will and determinism: possibilism denied environmental control but not necessarily other determinants, whereas geographic determinism conflicted both with possibilism and all other particular single-factor determinisms. But since environmentalists never completely excluded cultural factors, they differed from possibilists and especially probabilists only in degree. Nor has any challenge to general determinism eliminated deterministic systems, methodological constructs expressing lawful processes, frequently finding mathematical expression, and intersecting with other deterministic systems or contingencies. Thus environmental determinism may be included with other analogous systems in a broader framework including both lawfulness and choice. Allegedly antithetical constructs may play complementary roles in objective geographical analysis.