<span><span>Environmental determinism: the notion that the physical environment has a massive and often controlling (and perhaps never-changing and gene rationally stable) affect on human beings, in essence dictating their abilities in all realms of life and society. </span><span>Possibility or "Cultural determinism", two related notions. Cultural determinism is the stronger of the two, in essence a rejection of the environment as a controlling influence. It claims that cultures are the result of human agency and action, and that the environment is largely a non-issue. Possibility gives more credence to the environmental role, seeing it more from the position of sizable </span><span>influence Probabilistic or "cultural ecology", sometimes seen as a compromise or synthesis of Environmental Determinism and Cultural Determinism, but more rightly seen as a more open-ended treatment of the possibility that sometimes the environment is a key influence, while at other times human actions are more so. Often tied to this discussion is the notion of cost-benefit analysis of any human actions with relationship to the environment.</span></span><span />
