Possibilism and environmental determinism

The other two controversies are:ДЎ) the 'debate between neopositivists and neokantians about the 'exceptionalism' or the specificity of geography as a science.Дў) the contention between Mackinder and Kropotkin about what is-or should be-geography'. The controversy between geographical possibilism and determinism might be considered one of (at least) three dominant epistemologic controversies of contemporary geography. He observed that humans were the active elements in a human-environmental partnership and partnering. Cultural Ecology - geographic study of human-environment relationships. Strabo cautioned against the assumption that nature and actions of humans were determined by the physical environment they inhabited. Strabo posited in 64 BC that humans can make things happen by their own intelligence over time. In cultural ecology, Marshall Sahlins used this concept in order to develop alternative approaches to the environmental determinism dominant at that time in ecological studies. Examples of Environmental Determinism could be tropical viruses that cannot flourish outside tropical zones, bananas and their inability to thrive naturally in. Possibilism in cultural geography is the theory that the environment sets certain constraints or limitations, but culture is otherwise determined by social conditions.

Possibilism and environmental determinism