This paper examines Allen Carlson's influential view that knowledge from natural science offers the best (and perhaps only) framework for aesthetically appreciating nature for what it is in itself. Carlson argues that knowledge from the natural sciences can play a role analogous to the role of art-historical knowledge in our experience of art by supplying categories for properly ‘calibrating’ one's sensory experience and rendering more informed aesthetic judgments. Yet, while art history indeed functions this way, Carlson's formulation leaves out a (...) second (and often more important) role played by art-historical knowledge over the last century – namely, providing the context needed for interpretations of meaning. This paper explores whether natural science can also inform our aesthetic experience of nature in this second sense. I argue that a robust sense of meaning from our aesthetic experience of nature is indeed made possible by coupling our aesthetic experience of animals with knowledge from the natural science of animal ethology. By extending the scope of Carlson's analogy to include interpretations of meaning, my argument shows that the cognitive, scientific model can accommodate a wider range of aesthetic engagement with nature than previously recognised. (shrink)

A key dispute in environmental aesthetics concerns the role of scientific knowledge in our aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment. In this article, I will explore this debate by focusing on the aesthetic experience of forests. I intend to question reductive forms of the scientific approach and support the role of imagination and stories in nature appreciation.

Recently, several authors have defended a new version of formalism in the aesthetics of nature and attempted to refute earlier arguments against the doctrine. In this essay, we assess this new formalism by reconsidering the force of antiformalist arguments against both traditional formalism and new formalism. While we find that these arguments remain effective against traditional formalism, new formalism falls largely beyond their scope. We therefore provide a novel line of argument for the insignificance of the formal appreciation of nature. (...) This argument suggests that new formalism is inadequate as a theory of the aesthetics of nature. (shrink)

Since aesthetic experience is vital for the protection of nature, I address the relationship between environmental aesthetics and environmentalism. I first review two traditional positions, the picturesque approach and formalism. Some environmentalists fault the modes of aesthetic appreciation associated with these views, charging they are anthropocentric, scenery-obsessed, superficial, subjective, and/or morally vacuous. In light of these apparent failings of traditional aesthetics of nature, I suggest five requirements of environmentalism: that aesthetic appreciation of nature should be acentric, environment-focused, serious, objective and (...) morally engaged. I then examine two contemporary positions concerning appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature, the aesthetics of engagement and scientific cognitivism, assessing each in terms of the requirements of environmentalism. (shrink)

The aesthetic appreciation of animals in China is different from that in the West. In this paper, I identify these differences by tracing the various definitions of the word ‘animal’ in Chinese, an...

This article is a response to yuriko saito's "is there a correct aesthetic appreciation of nature?" (jae 18:4) which challenges the position on the aesthetic appreciation of nature that i develop in a series of recent articles. i here consider saito's arguments, concluding that they neither establish the correctness of a wide range of kinds of aesthetic appreciations of nature nor undercut the grounds for the prominence i grant to scientific considerations in such appreciation.

Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (eds): Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9258-2 Authors Nathaniel Barrett, Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion 1711 Massachusetts Ave NW #308 Washington DC 20036 USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

Allen Carlson's aesthetics of nature contends that a deepening in the scientific knowledge of natural objects and environments is required to achieve an appropriate aesthetic appreciation of them. This ‘scientific cognitivism’ is often presented as supporting the emergence and development of environmental awareness as well as a theory consistent with the requirements of environmentalism that have been set out by Carlson himself. But Carlson's view about the aesthetic appreciation of contemporary agricultural landscapes gives more relevance to their functional fitness for (...) human purposes than to scientific cognitivism. It will be shown here how this different treatment weakens the link between Carlson's work and his requirements of environmentalism. (shrink)

This essay is a critical notice of Malcolm Budd's _The Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford, 2002) and Emily Brady's _Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Edinburgh, 2003). I argue that, although each of the volumes makes an important contribution to our understanding of the aesthetic experience of nature, the accounts of aesthetic appreciation of nature that are developed by Budd and Brady are each somewhat defective in that neither grants an adequate role to knowledge in such appreciation, and specifically to scientific knowledge.

This essay begins with some observations on the main features and availability of the aesthetic experience of the night sky to us. In the second part, the aesthetics of the starry sky is interpreted in terms of time experience, complementing the usual approach in terms of immense space. These remarks on this broad and abundant subject can partly be linked to the intellectual historical interpretation of the birth of modern aesthetics, and partly to the vital discourse of environmental aesthetics, which (...) proves that these two approaches can work together and bring to the fore the aesthetic relevance and fruitfulness of this subject. (shrink)

Emily Brady asks us to reconsider what kinds of environmental artworks constitute ‘aesthetic affronts to nature’, and concludes that many of these works may in fact show aesthetic regard for nature...