How did Hippolyte Taine influence the literary movement of naturalism?

Hippolyte Taine was a foundational influence on the literary movement of naturalism, providing the theoretical framework that allowed writers to treat literature as a scientific discipline.12

Taine’s primary contribution was his insistence that human behavior and cultural artifacts are products of specific, observable causes. In his History of English Literature, he famously argued that "vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar," asserting that human actions are determined by physiological and psychological factors. He codified this approach through his theory of race, milieu, and moment, which posited that a writer’s work is shaped by their inherited temperament, social and geographical environment, and historical context.324

Naturalist writers, most notably Émile Zola, adopted Taine’s positivist philosophy to transform the novel into a tool for scientific inquiry. By viewing characters as subjects to be analyzed within their environments, naturalists sought to demonstrate the deterministic relationship between a person and their surroundings, effectively rejecting idealism in favor of a mechanistic, analytical study of human nature.123