What is the difference between enviromental determinism and possibilism?

environmental determinism

Environmental determinism, also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. Those who believe this view say that humans are strictly defined by stimulus-response (environment-behavior) and cannot deviate. The fundamental argument of the environmental determinists was that aspects of physical geography, particularly climate, influenced the psychological mind-set of individuals, which in turn defined the behaviour and culture of the society that those individuals formed. For example, tropical climates were said to cause laziness, relaxed attitudes and promiscuity, while the frequent variability in the weather of the middle latitudes led to more determined and driven work ethics. Because these environmental influences operate slowly on human Biology, it was important to trace the migrations of groups to see what environmental conditions they had evolved under. Key proponents of this notion have included Ellen Churchill Semple, Ellsworth Huntington, Thomas Griffith Taylor and possibly Jared Diamond. Although Diamond's work does make connections between environmental and climatic conditions and societal development, it is published with the stated intention of disproving racist and eurocentric theories of development.

possibilism

Possibilism in cultural geography is the theory that the environment sets certain constraints or limitations, but culture is otherwise determined by man's actions. In Cultural ecology Marshall Sahlins used this concept in order to develop alternative approaches to the environmental determinism dominant at that time in ecological studies.

The controversy between geographical possibilism and determinism might be considered as one of (at least) three dominant epistemologic controversies of contemporary geography. The other two controversies are 1) the "debate between neopositivists and neokantians about the "exceptionalism" or the specificity of geography as a science the contention between Mackinder and Kropotkin about what is - or should be - geography."