The determinists generally consider man a passive agent on which the physical factors are constantly acting and thus determining his attitude and process of decision making. The essence of the deterministic school of thought is that the history, culture, living style and stage of development of a social group or nation are exclusively or largely governed by the physical factors of environment. In other words, the belief that variation in human behaviour around the world can be explained by the differences in the natural environment. The point of view is that the physical environment controls the course of human action.
Their major initial source for explanations was the physical environment, and that theoretical position was established around the belief that the nature of human activity was controlled by the parameters of the physical world within which it was set.ĭeterminism is one of the most important philosophies which persisted up to the Second World War in one shape or the other. The first approach adopted by the geographers to generalize the patterns of human occupations of the earth surface was deterministic.
