Final answer:
A contemporary geographer would likely reject statement E: The physical environment causes people to adopt social customs. This is because it implies a deterministic relationship between the environment and cultural development, whereas modern geographical thought supports environmental possibilism - the idea that environment sets certain constraints, but culture is largely determined by the social choices people make.
Step-by-step explanation:
The contemporary geographer is likely to reject the concept: E. The physical environment causes people to adopt social customs. This is because the influence of the physical environment on human behavior and cultural development is not as unilateral or deterministic as the statement suggests.
Modern geographers accept the idea of environmental possibilism, which suggests that environment sets certain constraints or limitations, but culture is determined by the social choices that people make within these limits. This is different from environmental determinism, the concept that the physical environment unilaterally determines culture, which is largely dismissed by contemporary geographers. This shift in perspective owes much to the recognition that people, through their cultural behavior and technological abilities, also have the capacity to change their environment.
The study of selective migration, cultural anthropology and cultural ecology all emphasize the complex relationship between culture, individual personality traits, sociocultural forces, social status and environmental adaptation, debunking the oversimplified claim that the physical environment solely causes people to adopt social customs.
Learn more about Environmental Possibilism