Determinism

Let’s begin with a simple question:
Why do people in Rajasthan wear turbans?
Because of the hot and dry climate. But is it just a cultural practice? Or is there a geographical explanation behind it?

This question takes us to one of the earliest and most influential schools of thought in Geography: Determinism.

📌 What is Determinism?

In the context of Human Geography, Determinism refers to the belief that human activities, culture, history, and even decision-making are primarily governed by the physical environment.

🧭 Keyword to remember: The environment determines human life.

This idea dominated geographical thinking until the Second World War. At its core, Determinism views humans as passive agents, constantly shaped by the natural forces around them—climate, terrain, water availability, etc.

How Did Determinism Develop? A Historical Walkthrough

Let’s walk through the timeline of Deterministic thought and see how it evolved.

🏛️ Greek and Roman Thinkers

• Aristotle:
  He believed that climate determined people’s characteristics.
  • Cold regions (Northern Europe): Produced brave but unintelligent people.
  • Warm regions (Asia): Produced intelligent but passive people.
  • Greece, being in the middle, had the ideal combination—thus, more advanced.
• Strabo (Roman geographer):
  Explained how slope, climate, and relief—the gifts of God—govern the lifestyles of people.

🎯 Analogy: Just like your school timetable shapes your daily routine, Determinists believed nature sets the timetable for civilizations.

🕌 Arab Scholar Al-Masudi

• Said that abundant water in regions like Syria made people cheerful, while dry lands produced short-tempered people.
• Nomads, living in open spaces, were more resilient and strong.

🧑‍🏫 19th Century: Scientific Turn in Determinism

Now comes a turning point. In the 1800s, thinkers started using scientific methods to justify Determinism.

a. Carl Ritter (Germany)

• Adopted a human-centric approach.
• Studied how physical environments influence the body structure, health, and physique of people.

b. Alexander von Humboldt

• Pointed out that people in mountains live differently than those in plains—because terrain shapes lifestyle.

c. Charles Darwin & Scientific Determinism

• Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (1859) influenced geography too.
• Idea: If everything in nature has a cause, then human behavior must also be caused by environmental factors.
• This became Scientific Determinism—not just belief, but a cause-and-effect relationship.

🧠 The “New Determinism”: Friedrich Ratzel and Organic Theory

Ratzel added a political dimension to Determinism.
He gave us the Organic Theory under Political Geography.

🧬The Theory:

• A state is like a living organism.
• Just like a body needs food, a state needs territory to survive.
• He called this required space Lebensraum (“living space”).

🧠 Analogy: If a country stops expanding its territory, it risks starvation—just like an animal that stops hunting.

• So, nations must keep expanding, otherwise, they become vulnerable to others who are also trying to grow.

This idea would later be misused by political regimes, but that’s a different debate.

Everyday Examples of Determinism

Let’s anchor the theory in real-world observations:

• Rajasthan: People wear turbans due to heat and dust.
• Mountains: Limited agriculture means people become herders or hunters.
• Fertile plains: Support agriculture and permanent settlements.

All these examples reflect the central idea of Determinism—Environment shapes human choices.

Criticism of Determinism

Let’s begin with a small thought experiment.

Suppose a boy grows up in a poor village with no electricity.
According to Determinism, he should remain a farmer or cattle-herder, right?
But what if he studies hard, moves to the city, and becomes an IAS officer?

This ability to go beyond environmental limits is what challenges Determinism. And this forms the core of the criticism.

🧭 Overemphasis on Nature, Underestimation of Human Will

The first major critique is that Determinism sees humans as too passive.

🎯 According to Determinists:
“Man is like a puppet, and the environment pulls the strings.”

But reality shows otherwise. Humans constantly adapt, innovate, and reshape the environment to suit their needs.

Example:

• The Netherlands has built an entire system of dykes and polders to reclaim land from the sea.
• In deserts, people have developed drip irrigation and built greenhouses to grow crops.

👉 These examples show that humans are not just reacting to nature—they’re acting upon it.

📦 Determinism Promotes Environmental Stereotyping

Another critique: it generalizes human behavior based on environment.

“All mountain people are brave but backward.”
“People in hot areas are lazy.”

These are oversimplifications. Human cultures are too complex to be explained just by soil type or temperature.

Example:

• Japan is mountainous, but it has one of the most technologically advanced societies.
• Many cold countries like Russia or Canada also face developmental challenges despite a harsh climate.

Hence, cultural, economic, and political factors must be considered—not just geography.

🧠 Neglect of Human Creativity and Technology

Determinism assumes that people accept environmental limitations as fate.

But humans are problem-solvers.
🔧 “Where nature puts a full stop, man adds a comma.”

From the invention of the wheel to space travel, human history is full of stories where man has defied nature.

Example:

• Dubai has created lush green golf courses and even indoor ski resorts—in the desert!
• Israel, a water-scarce country, leads the world in water recycling and desalination.

All these show that technology enables people to overcome environmental barriers.

🌍 Eurocentric Bias in Early Determinism

Many early Determinists like Aristotle, Strabo, Ratzel came from Europe and often glorified European environments while criticizing Asia and Africa.

This introduced a bias—suggesting that some regions were naturally “superior” while others were doomed to be backward.

❗ This shaped colonial thinking:
“We must civilize them because their environment has kept them backward.”

Such reasoning was later used to justify colonial exploitation.

🧪 Failure to Provide Predictive Accuracy

A good scientific theory should be able to predict future outcomes.

Determinism fails here. If environment alone determined human behavior, we should be able to predict development levels precisely based on geography.

But we can’t.

Example:

• Two countries with similar geography—say, North Korea and South Korea—can have radically different levels of development.
• This shows that political systems, governance, education, etc., also matter—perhaps more than environment.

🔚 In Summary

Aspect	Explanation
Core Idea	Environment controls human behavior and development.
Human Role	Passive—reacting to natural surroundings.
Time Period	Dominant till WWII.
Key Thinkers	Aristotle, Strabo, Al-Masudi, Ritter, Humboldt, Ratzel.
Political View	Ratzel’s Organic Theory: States need to expand like organisms.

While Determinism helped early geographers understand the man–nature relationship, it eventually became clear that this approach was too rigid and one-sided.

Thus emerged a new school of thought—Possibilism—which we will explore next, where nature sets the stage, but man writes the script.