Environmental Aesthetics: Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground

Notes

201 Introduction Martin Drenthen and Jozef Keulartz 1. See, Daniel E. Berlyne, Studies in the New Experimental Aesthetics: Steps Toward an Objective Psychology of Aesthetic Appreciation (Washington: Hemisphere Pub. Corp., 1974). This behavioristic theory is essentially concerned with the hedonic effects of fluctuations in arousal level induced by exposure to stimuli varying along so-called “collative” dimensions such as familiar- novel, simple-complex, expected-surprising, or ambiguous-clear. These collative variables also play an important role in the sociobiological theory of Jay Appleton. See Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape (London: Wiley, 1975). According to this theory, our aesthetic perception of landscapes has its roots in human biology—we appreciate most those landscapes which display the characteristics most favorable to our survival. From related evolutionary arguments, Stephen and Rachel Kaplan have developed the so-called “Preference Matrix,” which roots aesthetic preference in the adaptive value of landscape characteristics. The matrix consists of four collative variables that together have proven to be reliable predictors of public landscape preference: “coherence,” “complexity ,” “legibility,” and “mystery.” See Stephen Kaplan and Rachel Kaplan, Cognition and Environment: Functioning in an Uncertain World (New York: Praeger, 1982). 2. Gerald C. Cupchik, “A Decade after Berlyne: New Directions in Experimental Aesthetics,” Poetics 15 (1986): 361. 3. Douglas J. Porteous, Environmental Aesthetics: Ideas, Politics and Planning (London: Routledge, 1996), 22. 4. Porteous, Environmental Aesthetics, 23. 5. See Elwood L. Shafer et al., “Natural Landscape Preference: A Predictive Model,” Journal of Leisure Research 1 (1969): 1–19; Elwood L. Shafer and James Mietz, “It Seems Possible to Quantify Scenic Beauty in Notes 202 Notes to pages 1–6 Photographs,” Research Paper NE-162 (Upper Darby, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, 1970). 6. Allen Carlson, “On the Possibility of Quantifying Scenic Beauty,” Landscape Planning 4 (1977): 131–172. See also Allen Carlson, “Formal Qualities in the Natural Environment,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 13, no. 3 (1979): 99–114. 7. Allen Carlson, “Appreciation and the Natural Environment,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37, no. 3 (1979): 267–275. 8. See Ronald W. Hepburn, “Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics 3, no. 3 (1963): 195–209; Ronald W. Hepburn, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty,” in British Analytical Philosophy, ed. B. Williams and A. Montefiore (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul Ltd., 1966), 285–310. 9. Hepburn, “Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” 197. 10. Ibid., 199. 11. J. Baird Callicott, “The Land Aesthetic,” in Ecological Prospects: Scientific, Religious, and Aesthetic Perspectives, ed. Christopher K. Chapple (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 170. For an extensive discussion of the relation between environmental aesthetics and environmental protection, see Ned Hettinger, “Allen Carlson’s Environmental Aesthetics and the Protection of the Environment,” Environmental Ethics 27, no. 1 (2005): 57–76; Ned Hettinger, “Objectivity in Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment,” in Nature, Aesthetics, and Environment: From Beauty to Duty, ed. Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 413–437. 12. Emily Brady, “Environmental Aesthetics,” in Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, ed. J. Baird Callicott and Robert Frodeman, vol. 2 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2009), 313–321. 13. Recently, Marta Tafalla has compared two texts that she considers the two foundational texts for a new age of the aesthetics of nature: Ronald Hepburn’s essay “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty” from 1966 and Theodor W. Adorno’s chapter “Natural Beauty” from his book Aesthetic Theory, published in 1970. The analytic and the continental discourse that emerged from these texts have remained two parallel worlds without much communication between them. Tafalla shows that, despite clear differences, there are also sufficient affinities and shared ideas to make a dialogue between analytic and continental aesthetics of nature possible. See Marta Tafalla, “Rehabilitating the Aesthetics of Nature: Hepburn and Adorno,” Environmental Ethics 33 (2011): 45–56. 14. His participatory model, which collapses the dichotomy between subject and object and stresses sensory immersion and embodied appreciation , is probably the longest-standing noncognitivist approach in environmental aesthetics. See Emily Brady, “Environmental Aesthetics,” 318. 15. The discussion about their relationship has been especially vivid in Germany philosophy, one of Dumas’ most important research interests. Notes to pages 6–16 203 A case in point is Martin Seel, who has examined the ethical relevance and significance of aesthetics in general and of environmental aesthetics in particular (see Maskit in this volume...