According to which of the following schools of thought do human beings move from a state of necessity to a state of freedom, and man is no longer a slave of nature?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Possibilism
Option (1) Environmental Determinism — Incorrect. Environmental determinism says that nature controls human life. Early societies with little technology lived as nature dictated, which is the state of necessity itself, not a move away from it.
Option (2) Post Modernism — Incorrect. Post-modernism came up in human geography in the 1990s. It questioned grand generalisations and universal theories and stressed understanding each local context; it says nothing about necessity and freedom.
Option (3) Possibilism — Correct. As societies develop better technology, people move from a state of necessity to a state of freedom. They create possibilities with the resources the environment offers; this view is possibilism. Nature provides opportunities and humans make use of them, so man is no longer a slave of nature.
Option (4) Behaviouralism — Incorrect. The behavioural school of the 1970s laid stress on lived experience and on how social groups perceive space, on the basis of ethnicity, race and religion. It is not about humans breaking free of nature.
Note: A similar question was also asked in CUET (UG) 2026 on 13-05-2026 (Slot 1).
NCERT (2025-26): “Naturalisation of Humans and Humanisation of Nature … The people begin to understand their environment and the forces of nature with the passage of time. With social and cultural development, humans develop better and more efficient technology. They move from a state of necessity to a state of freedom. They create possibilities with the resources obtained from the environment. The human activities create cultural landscape. The imprints of human activities are created everywhere; health resorts on highlands, huge urban sprawls, fields, orchards and pastures in plains and rolling hills, ports on the coasts, oceanic routes on the oceanic surface and satellites in the space. The earlier scholars termed this as possibilism. Nature provides opportunities and human being make use of these and slowly nature gets humanised and starts bearing the imprints of human endeavour.” |