Definition of 'possibilism'. Quantifiers are used to indicate the amount or quantity of something referred to by a noun. They are different from numbers because they indicate an approximate amount rather than an exact amount.

ADVERTISEMENTS: There are no necessities, but everywhere possibilities. The natural data (factors) are much more the material than the cause of human development. The ‘essential cause’ is less nature, with its resources and its obstacles, than man himself and his own nature.” The possibility saw in the physical environment a series of possi­bilities for human development, but argued that the actual ways in which development took place were related to the culture of the people concerned, except perhaps in regions of extremes like deserts, tundra, equatorial and high mountains. There are distinct zones which are distributed symmetrically on each side of the equator, great climate-botanic frames, unequally rich in possi­bilities, unequally favourable to the different human races, and unequally fitted for human development; but the impossibility is never absolute even for the races least ‘adapted’ to them and all probabilities are often found to be upset by the persistent and supple will of man. ADVERTISEMENTS: The ‘determinist’ thesis has it that these frames constitute “a group of forces which act directly on man with sovereign and decisive power,” and which govern “every manifestation of his activity from the simplest to the most important and most complicated”. What really happens in all these frames, especially in those which are the richest in possibilities, is that these possibilities are awakened one after the other, then lie dormant, to reawaken suddenly according to the nature and initiative of the occupier.

“These possibilities of action do not constitute any sort of connected system; they do not represent in each region an inseparable whole; if they are graspable, they are not grasped by men all at once, with the same force, and at the same time.” The same regions, through the changes in value of their elements, have the most varied destinies. And it is human activity which “governs the game”.

ADVERTISEMENTS: There are no doubts among human group’s similarities—or, at least, analogies—of life which are the result of the exploitation of similar possi­bilities. But there is nothing fixed or rigid about them. We must avoid confusing once more necessity with possibility.

The possibility show with great precision that society interposes practices, beliefs, and rule of life between nature and man; that man’s utili­zation of possibilities and his exploitation of his environment are thereby hampered, so as, for example, to render his food singularly monotonous. Nowhere is food eaten by savages without care in the choice. There are prohibitions, restrictions, taboos on sides. But this social constraint was, no doubt, not exercised at first in its full vigour. There was great homoge­neity in primitive human groups, but there were necessarily differences (age and sex) and individual contingencies, however slight. In small societies the organization was not rigid enough at the beginning to stifle initiative. It is thanks to differentiation, to the individual alone, that life has been ameliorated and that society itself has been organized.

The possibilists also argued that it is impossible to explain the difference in human society and the history of that society with reference to the influence of physical environment. They hold that man himself brings his influence to bear on that environment and changes it.

The philosophy of possibilism the belief that people are not just the products of their environment of just pawns of natural environment became very much popular after the First World War. For the possibilists, the works of man, not the earth and its influence, are the starting points, the most important is the freedom of man to choose. Although the philosophy of possibilism became very much popular after the First World War, it was Vidal de Lablache who advocated and preached the philosophy of possibilism. Lablache was such a staunch supporter of this philosophy that he developed the ‘school of possibilism’.

Vidal in his studies minimized the influence of environment on the activ­ities of man. Central to Vidal’s work were the lifestyles (genres device) that develop in different geographical environments. In his opinion, lifestyles (genres device) are the products and reflections of a civilization, repre­senting the integrated result of physical, historical and social influences surrounding man’s relation to milieu in a particular place. He tried to explain differences between groups in the same or similar environment, and pointed out that these differences are not due to the dictates of physical environment but are the outcome of variations in attitudes, values and habits. Variations in attitudes and habits create numerous possibilities for human communities. It is this concept which became the basic philosophy of the school of possibilism. The possibilists emphasize that it is impossible to explain the difference in human society and the history of that society with reference to the influence of environment; and they hold that man himself brings his influence to bear on that environment and changes it.