Determinism and Indeterminism in Foreign Geography. Part II

Abstract

The controversy between the environmentalists and the possibilists and the schools of cultural determinism, social determinism and indeterminism in West European and American geography are reviewed. The shift away from geographical determinism is viewed as not being necessarily a positive development in geography because it has led to a gradual strengthening of indeterminist tendencies with their associated disregard for physical geographical factors. When viewed in the historical context, geographical determinism is found to have shifted significantly from the extreme views of Ellen Semple and Ellsworth Huntington to a more pragmatically oriented view of the environmental impact on problems of economic development, i.e. from historical-sociological explanations to problems in applied geography. Even if the modern determinists tend to exaggerate the significance of the physical environment in some cases, this is still viewed as the lesser evil compared with an underestimation of environmental factors.