Climatic determinism and Amazon salubrity in Bates and Wallace’s perceptions.

Abstract

The interest in knowing how the environment acts on mankind becomes important nowadays. There is a renewed interest that existed already before the Darwinian paradigm, however with the characteristics of the time. The climate determinism and other issues emphasized by the Illuminism was in evidence among the naturalists when Bates and Wallace lived in the Amazon. They were known by their research, respectively, on the insects’ mimesis and the evolution of the species, but they researched also environmental issues. These issues are analyses in the present article that shows how the stay of those naturalists in the Amazonia was important to raise doubts concerningthe climate determinism and the tropical insalubrities. Therefore their ideas were very significant of a context where the old climate determinism paradigm was in crisis.