What are the main ideas of environmental determinism in ancient times?

Environmental determinism: one of the major Western views on children's psychological development from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Environmental determinists valued the role of education and the environment in children's psychological development, but they emphasized and viewed the role of the environment or education in a one-sided and mechanistic way, believing that children's psychological development was entirely determined by the environment.

The earliest representative of this school of thought was the American behaviorist J. Watson. He wrote: "Give me twelve healthy infants, a special environment at my disposal, in which to bring them up, and whatever may be the talents, hobbies, inclinations, abilities, and race of their parents, and I promise to be able to train any one of them to become any kind of character - a doctor, a lawyer , fine artist, great merchant, to beggar or robber." (Behaviorism, 1921 edition). In his article "A Study of the Infant's Psyche," published the same year, he said, "The personality of an infant before the age of five is at the mercy of our will to cause or destroy."

Before liberation, environmental determinism also had some influence in China, such as Mr. Guo Renyuan who held such a view. In his book Psychology and Heredity, published in 1929, he made it clear: "What makes an individual an individual is entirely the result of the social environment, and what society one grows up in becomes what one is."

Watson's view that the environment determines the psychological development of children is entirely a concrete expression of his basic view of behaviorism. This basic view is that people's behavior is determined by external stimuli (stimulus-response).