Sauer and "Geographic Influences"

Abstract

Sauer and "Geographie Influences" EarlW. Kersten* Carl sauer and his work attracted great interest throughout a long and distinguished career. This interest has not declined since his death, but, rather, is on the increase. Many feel that the life and work of this scholar should be re-examined for new insights now that his pen is stilled. In accord with this view, I will examine the early twentieth century controversy over environmental determinism (or "geographic influences" as it was then commonly known) in America, with special attention to Sauer's part in helping to overturn this as the guiding principle for American geography and in helping to steer the Americans into what he and many others considered to be the mainstream of the world movement. Though both the early career of Sauer and the geographic influences controversy have been touched on frequently in the literature, no writer, to my knowledge, has considered Sauer's involvement in the controversy in a detailed essay.: Sauer is the central participant of this essay, but, to gain perspective, I will take note of what others were thinking and saying. No major surprises have resulted from the inquiry. The role of Sauer was indeed essential, for his powerful statements came at a critical time and had a strong impact upon his contemporaries. However, the American opposition to geographic influences appears as a movement of broader base and longer duration than I had previously believed. *Dr. Kersten is a professor of geography at the University of Nevada at Reno. This is a revised version of a paper presented at the APCG meetings in Santa Barbara in 1979. 47 48ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS Another finding of some importance, heretofore little discussed, is that we cannot separate the dechne of geographic influences from the gradual breakdown of relative isolation between American geography and geography in continental Europe. As American geographers increased their contacts with European workers (especially French and German) early in the century, they perceived more and more clearly that geographic influences had long since lost what appeal it had held on the continent. Their European colleagues had interested themselves in other approaches that appeared more promising. In this respect this study is concerned also with the influence of European geographic thought upon America. Geographic Influences Environmental influences on man, first developed in Hippocrates' Airs, Waters, Places, has been identified as one of the three most important and persistent man-land themes in western thought.2 The environment 's influence on man is known today by many names, such as environmental determinism, geographic determinism, environmentalism , and Social Darwinism. Its many adherents in American geography around the turn of the century, who proclaimed it as the central theme for all geographic studies involving man, commonly referred to it as influences of geographic environment or, more briefly, "geographic influences" (Lewthwaite 1966, pp. 2-5; Herbst 1961; Hofstadter 1955). Somewhat later the term was softened to "adjustments to environment" by Harlan Barrows (1923) and others. Geographers trace the more immediate source of geographic influences to Carl Ritter's teleology and his emphasis upon rational explanation, concepts brought to America by his student and disciple , Arnold Guyot, whose theme in his book The Earth and Man, published in 1849, was "all is order, all is harmony in the universe" because all is "the thought of God."3 Thus God created man and nature and united them in harmony. Guyot, following his master, insisted that geography should not merely describe the earth, but should search for explanation. Geography "must endeavour to seize those incessant mutual actions of the different portions of physical nature upon each other, of inorganic nature upon organized beings, YEARBOOK · VOLUME 44 · 198249 upon man in particular, and upon the successive developments of human societies; in a word, studying the reciprocal action of all these forces, the perpetual plan of which constitutes what may be called the life of the globe."4 William Morris Davis wrote in 1924 about the impact of The Earth and Man: Its great merit lay, first, in the emphasis that it gave to the correlation of man and nature, and second to the importance it attacht [sic] to an explanatory method of treatment...