Oxymoron wrote:Point 4, finally, is an appeal to a subset of theories that in geography are regrouped under the label "
Environmental Determinism", which even if they form part of the basis of "Gun, Germs and Steel" (the book), have been disproved by the scientific community since the first half of the 20th century.
Oxymoron wrote:Why he is trying to explain historical, societal and cultural differences through environmental causes, instead of basing his analysis on historical, societal and cultural causes, is beyond my comprehension.
I realize environmental determinism may lend itself to a lot of questionable and dodgy ideas, and it comes off as a bit silly to try to explain
everything by environment (much like it comes off as silly to try to explain
everything by culture or Great Men), but honestly the idea that you could explain history and culture without taking into account the environment and geography as a big factor also seems pretty silly to me.
I mean, you agree that the culture of Arabia is prolly influenced by the fact it's a hot desert and the culture of Scandanavia is prolly influenced by that its cold and not a desert, right? Or consider how Britain's history might look if there was an isthmus connecting it to France so it didn't have the English Channel as a water barrier, and, just offhand, in WWII the Nazis could have just driven/walked into England. Environment and geography has impacts on the challenges ppl and societies face especially in preindustrial times when it was harder to do stuff like brute-forcing your way out of a water shortage by building a hundred mile pipeline to a giant river.
Dooey Jo wrote:something that might have a part to play in the climate thing is that "cold" countries are like 20% canada, 10% scandinavia and one million percent RUSSIA
I kind of pointed this out over there. If you look at the world map the countries above 40 N are mostly either Europe or European diaspora iow more-or-less cultural and demographic extensions of Europe, so no wonder these countries might have certain common cultural features distinct from the rest of the world (there's little inhabited land south of 40 S to make a comparison).
How similar are the US and Canada, really? (I'd trust just about anyone here for a more credible opinion than what I just read there)
