Option B is supported by the passage's use of examples, such as the Inuit and Aboriginal Australians, to illustrate how environmental factors influence human behavior and cultural norms. The passage details the development of insulated fur clothing among the Inuit in response to Arctic conditions and the lack of indigenous agriculture in Aboriginal Australia due to the absence of domesticable local species. These examples highlight the impact of physical conditions on human actions and cultural adaptations. Therefore, Option B accurately reflects the central theme presented by the passage's examples.
Option D is not explicitly emphasized in the passage, which prioritizes the effect of environmental factors on behavior and cultures.
Option A: The passage does not focus on self-sufficiency, but rather on how specific environmental factors shape societal development.
Option C is partially correct but less precise than Option B in capturing the passage's emphasis on physical conditions dictating human behavior and cultures, as demonstrated by the examples.
Correct Answer: Option B: how physical circumstances can dictate human behaviour and cultures.
Option A: The author states that some geographical explanations from 100 years ago contained racial bias, causing many scholars to view all geographical theories as tainted by racism.
Option B: The author discusses Australia's current agricultural methods, noting that its main exports of food and wool come from non-native species (mostly Eurasian) brought by settlers. This implies a shift from Australia's original plants and animals.
Option C: The author explains the development of insulated fur clothing among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle, attributing it to environmental influences rather than specific historical events or individual choices in 1783.
Option D: This cannot be inferred from the text. The passage discusses the influence of geographical factors (like biogeography) and non-geographical factors (like culture, history, and individual decisions) on human phenomena, but it does not state that "most human phenomena stem from culture and individual choice."
Correct Answer: Option C
Option B is not directly stated by the author as a reason why non-geographers dismiss geographical influences. The author suggests that scholars tend to react negatively to geographical explanations by labeling them "geographic determinism." However, the concept of "dismissal" itself is not explicitly articulated in the text.
Conversely, the other options can be inferred from the text:
Option A is supported by the following statement: "Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance."
Option C can be inferred from the excerpt: "One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted."
Option D is evident from the final paragraph: "Geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship... Most historians and economists don't acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training."
Therefore, the correct option is (B): the dismissal of explanations that attribute human behavior to geographical causes.
You may laugh at a hat, but what you are making fun of, in this case, is not the piece of felt or straw, but the shape that men have given it, -- the human caprice whose mould it has assumed. It is strange that so important a fact, and such a simple one too, has not attracted to a greater degree the attention of philosophers. Several have de ned man as "an animal which laughs." They might equally well have de ned him as an animal which is laughed at; for if any other animal, or some lifeless object, produces the same effect, it is always because of some resemblance to man, of the stamp he gives it or the use he puts it to.
Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unru ed. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or evenwith affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. Try, for a moment, to become interested in everything that is being said and done; act, in imagination, with those who act, and feel with those who feel; in a word, give your sympathy its widest expansion: as though at the touch of a fairy wand you will see the imsiest of objects assume importance, and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar test? Should we not see many of them suddenly pass from grave to gay, on isolating them from the accompanying music of sentiment? To produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic demands something like a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal is to intelligence, pure and simple
This uidity and situational dependence is uniquely human. In other species, in-group/outgroup distinctions re ect degrees of biological relatedness, or what evolutionary biologists call “kin selection.” Rodents distinguish between a sibling, a cousin, and a stranger by smell—xed, genetically determined pheromonal signatures—and adapt their cooperation accordingly. Those murderous groups of chimps are largely made up of brothers or cousins who grew up together and predominantly harm outsiders. Humans are plenty capable of kin-selective violence themselves, yet human group mentality is often utterly independent of such instinctual familial bonds. Most modern human societies rely instead on cultural kin selection, a process allowing people to feel closely related to what are, in a biological sense, total strangers. Often, this requires a highly active process of inculcation, with its attendant rituals and vocabularies. Consider military drills producing “bands of brothers,” unrelated college freshmen becoming sorority “sisters,” or the bygone value of welcoming immigrants into “the American family.” This malleable, rather than genetically xed, path of identity formation also drives people to adopt arbitrary markers that enable them to spot their cultural kin in an ocean of strangers—hence the importance various communities attach to ags, dress, or facial hair. The hipster beard, the turban, and the “Make America Great Again” hat all fulfill this role by sending strong signals of tribal belonging. Moreover, these cultural communities are arbitrary when compared to the relatively axed logic of biological kin selection. Few things show this arbitrariness better than the experience of immigrant families, where the randomness of a visa lottery can radically reshu e a child’s education, career opportunities, and cultural predilections. Had my grandparents and father missed the train out of Moscow that they instead barely made, maybe I’d be a chain smoking Russian academic rather than a Birkenstock-wearing American one, moved to tears by the heroism during the Battle of Stalingrad rather than that at Pearl Harbor. Scaled up from the level of individual family histories, our big-picture group identities—the national identities and cultural principles that structure our lives— are just as arbitrary and subject to the vagaries of history.