Whatever our views, the environment is always with us: driven out the door, it comes back through the window. In such situations ‘geographical controls’ are real enough, and at the abstract conceptual level (presumably in conjunction with other and alternative concepts) environmental determinism has its analytical value.
Buttimer ( 1993) affirms that ‘the most demanding challenge for the geographer today is how to incorporate nature and the biophysical environment in descriptions of context while avoiding the resuscitation of environmental determinism.’ Of course, with mind as well as matter involved in all human thought and action, a robotic response to environment is automatically excluded, but nevertheless ‘physical causation’ is an unavoidable fact, evident when an earthquake or hurricane strikes. However, if ideas be judged on their own merits, not pronounced ‘guilty by association’ but evaluated for potential insights, then ‘ environmental determinism’ cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Lewthwaite, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 8 Environment Remainsĭoubtless many a component-eurocentricity, imperialism, nationalism, racism, class, and other interests-have been involved in origin and expression.
