ABSTRACT

The emergence of perception studies in geography was a logical development of a line of geographic thought that began with environmental determinism. The environmental determinist thesis provided human geography with a powerful unifying theme. In hypothesizing that human society was a causal outcome of the natural environment, environmental determinists knitted physical and human geography together in a unified whole.1 The explanation of how and why societies had developed became a function of physical factors. Environmental determinism provided a coherent unifying focus for the discipline of geography which was able within its framework to ask major questions about human society. The very essence of historical and social life was premissed on its geographical base.