The Revival of Climatic Determinism

EARLY in the seventeenth century Francis Bacon made his oft-quoted suggestion that meteorological events tend to recur at approximately 35-year intervals. Such tidal oscillations may well be reflected in meteorological doctrines. It was between 1915 and 1924 that the late Ellsworth Huntington was most actively promulgating the doctrine of the effects of climatic variations to which he had been led as a result of his early field studies in Central Asia. From many points of view Huntington might be described as the last of those Victorian geographers who were concerned with the response of living things, singly or in assemblage, to their environment. We may trace this interest from Darwin with his Origin of Species (1859) through De Candollel (1884) and Schimper2 (1898) and on to Koppen,3 who, starting from his biological studies, essayed in igoo the first of his numerous efforts to shape and polish a climatic classification. On the physical side the discussion of the relationship of man and his institutions to their environment bore fruit in a variety of anthropological works. That social organization and hence cultural advancement were directly related to environmental factors became an underlying theme of anthropogeography. The late-Victorian mountaineers, of whom so many were bred in the universities, were ever ready to attribute numerous virtues to the crude and angular compulsions of the Alps, and in the solemn accounts of Coolidge's mountain excursions we can sense the regard of a son of New England for the trusty stalwarts whose pride in honest effort led them to serve him so well as guides.