Environmental Aesthetics

Created: Thu Jun 19 2025 02:00:00 GMT+0200 (Central European Summer Time)

Very messy notes on Environmental Aesthetics from Stanford article.

So did terms like "picturesque" and "sublime" come from philosophers? I wonder what other words come from philosophy that describes art.

Kant

• Beauty of nature is its form, shape only. Not colour or its function.
• "dynamic sublime" refers to powerful natural objects, such as waterfalls. Dynamic implimes movement.
• "mathematical sublime" refers to experiencing vastness, such as being on top of a mountain. Not sure why Kant uses mathetmatical as term.

Wilderness

• To be conquered. Landscape and people...colonialist view.
• Emerson and Thoreau, philosophers, wanted to protect wildnerness because of its spiritual value. See nature as an entity.

"Nature's masterpieces"

Park systems derived from the idea of picteresque, to protect the visual, the beauty of landscapes.

"positive aesthetics" - John Muir. Ugliness is when human intervenes, while everything in nature is beautiful, even environmental disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes.

Motorized tourism

"One line of thought, for example, argued that because nature is not intentionally designed, it cannot be aesthetically appreciated (Mannison 1980; Elliot 1982; though see Elliot 1997)." Who thought this...robots?

"Should we aim to experience and appreciate the widest variety of environments, or should we instead cultivate our attachments to those select few places to which we feel some special, affective attachment?" - What I think about on do we actually need to travel to appreciate what we have?

Natural Environmental Model

• Viewing nature for what it is through natural history and natural sciences. Moving beyond seeing it as picteresque landscape.
• Knowing about the ecology of a place in turns makes an informed viewer, and such can be a better advocater for the place.
• To truly appreciate, it can't just be about aesthetics.

"sense of place"

cognitive vs non-cognitive / conceptual vs non-conceptual / narrative vs ambient

• cog: non-human origin, stories about nature through myths and folklore. NEM -> scientific cognitivism
• non-cog: emotional, nature's otherness, the mysterious hold it has on us, "formal qualities", in quotes maybe to relate to that nature doesn't have formal qualities because it's not art? metaphysical ideas and insights, imagination
  • Critique: still relies on our judgement and beliefs which would be considered cog
• critique of this binary: would say any conceptual binary is flawed since nothing is ever black and white. Maybe 1/0, booleans. It's saying that that there's a separation between logical and emotional. That in science there wouldn't be imagination involved or emotions. This reminds me of scientists being inspired by Picasso's cubist paintings to think about atoms and quantum mechanics differently. So if art can illicit inspiration for scientists, why wouldn't scientist be able to have imagination and be inspired by nature?

"anthropogenic climate change is creating unprecedented and unpredictable types of “mixed environments” that may not fit the aesthetic concepts of the past"

• What I think about during wildfires and the smoke. Recently, June 2025, there was a wildfire from Canada's westcoast. The smoke travelled acrossed Canada and the Atlantic Ocean and made it's way to Geneva. I noticed one morning the sun was really red and glowing. I thought it was unusual and beautiful. A couple days later, I had a conversation with a friend and they also made a similar remark. At the time, I didn't know the visual appearance was due to the smoke but when talking to my friend, I did. And we both acknowledged that it was beautiful but also daunting.
• What is this feeling called when something is beautiful but also knowing that it's caused by environmental damange?

Aesthetic Protectionism

• There's an aesthetic value of nature that motivates us to preserve, protect and restore.
• "that preserve the beauty of an environment may arguably also render it something that is no longer natural". Is it because we are now intervening on what nature should look like, by maintaining or protecting it? In that, if we didn't interact with it, then we would let nature takes it course.
• What has an aesthetic value to us, may blindside us from what should be protected or has greater value to the environment. Mountains vs wetland.

Positive Aesthetics

• Seen similiar to NEM. Nothing is ugly and all of nature has an aesthetic value. Well, then how do you choose what to protect? Is there a scale of beauty?
• Allen Carson - with scientific understanding, then we will view nature with aesthetic good (ok, but that's just NEM, which is what the article does state). Kind of confusing when people say the same thing but under a different term like PA
• Yuriko Saito - story is at the heart of what drives aesthetic interest. Instead of just looking at things factually, even if it's scientific, what's the story?
• Holmes Rolston - looking at ecology as a system and not as an isolated event. Can view the Rhône at one specific area like the confluence, but you can also start at the glaciers, how it moves from from the mountain to the lake, and how the lake "purifies" it so that it can be clear once it enters the city. But, knowing this, does it add aesthetic value? Can I not appreciate the clarity, the colour, essential the form, without knowing the journey? I think perhaps I have a deeper appreciation knowing how the water becomes clear and where it comes from. But does appreciation have to do anything with aesthetic value?

Biodiversity

• A reason to protect, the endangered species at risk of being extinct. They become rare, therefore more valuable. Not part of our everyday life.
• National Monuments - natural entities being protected by law

"rewild" as a term

• aquariums
• zooms
• digital recreations? not quite...what term could be applied to simulated nature. e-wild?

"Tourist Traffic"

• Places made famous by tv & film. This would go along the "scenic aesthetic", viewing nature as a picteresque landscape, as a backdrop for humans in films but also selifes. Although, when it comes to tv & film, is the aesthetic value of the location is what's driving people's interest? Maybe part of it, but it's no in isolation from the media itself.
• https://www.trtworld.com/arts-and-culture/asian-tourists-crash-land-on-swiss-village-made-famous-by-netflix-series-13551463
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khao_Phing_Kan

“new aesthetics of strangeness and uncertainty”

• Smoke from Canada arriving in Geneva, which reminds me of a volcano eruption happening in maybe 1700s (?) that affected the entire world. Large scale environmental events can now be experienced as a collective due to technology.

"the role of sound in environmental appreciation (J. Fisher 1998, 1999; Dyck 2016; Prior 2017)" Would like to know more about this since it can relate to giving a voice to rivers. But one thing I keep on thinking about is our projection on non-human things. Can we truly do understand and do justice to non-human entities?

Ecological Aesthetics

• land management and landscape architects: suppose these professions are interested in this concept because they have to understand the environment beyond just aesthetics, but how they also function.
• ecological operation and ecological value: how the landscape works and what value does it offer to the system of non-humans and humans
• "organmisms" are not separate from their environment. Is this similar to the German word/concept umwelt?
• Cheng, Chiense philosopher on ecoaesthetics. There are four keystones (look into more). Rejects the binary narrative of human vs nature.

Global Perspectives

• Globalization of aesthetics: how does incorporating other worldviews into a Western framework change our perception and relationship to environmental aesthetics? I wonder what Vietnamese philosophers have contributed to this dialogue.
• Indigenious and local knowledge - In Canada, there is an effort for reconicilation. One initiative is to have land acknowledgements. These are a reminder of the land that we are on, but it could also give appreciation that's beyond just the NEM or ecological aesthetic. It's giving appreciation to those that took care of the land before colonialism.

Back to Sublime and Picturesque

• Isis Brook says picturesque is great for gardens and rural landscapes, to appreciate the wild nature. That was from 2008. I would also say the picturesque is also even more important as humans have moved from rural to urban. Our need to reconnect with nature. And now, even more so with technological societies. Think of retreats where people disconnect from technology to be in nature, or tech companies having nature based names (Mac OS names), or having desktop screensavers of landscapes.
• Why do people have beef with the sublime?
• On sublime, like all sensations and feelings, would we overcome or get use to sublime if our environment was living in the mountains?

The Aesthetics of Animals

• Cuteness
• Attractiveness -> leads to protectionism
• "animation" of animals, the movement of animals. reminds me of locomotive studies, eg. Muybridge or the animated film Turning Red and how animators studied red pandas and their movement
• Ugliness of animals. Their features but if a postivist POV, then no animal is ugly. What about animal behaviour that is predatory? Since animals do not have morals, we cannot impose their actions as being ugly.

Mediated Appreciation

• "new technologies have radically expanded the possibilities for aesthetic engagement with the natural world by providing new ways of seeing (Lopes 2003)"
  • Time lapsed photography
  • Infrared photography
  • What about VR? Digital experiences.

Climate Change and Aesthteics

• Moral emotions that come up due to us damaging the environment. Some emotions, guilt, shame, sadness
• awe and wonder in conjunction with "strangeness and uncertainity"
• "Would ignoring the moral taint of the degraded environments of the Anthropocene be a similar sort of error?" Question about separating appreciation of a work or an environment, from its flaws. For example, if it's music. Can we separate Kayne West from his music? Can we appreciate the music while ignoring who he is? In similar fashion, what the article is asking is, can we appreciate the damaged environment while ignoring the cause of the damage?
  • If we find beauty in environmental damage, then we are also encouraging these practices. At least this is what the artcile is saying. I don't think I agree. I think you can acknowledge that there's something beautiful, even if it's strange, while also saying, this is beautiful only because of this damage.

PARSONS, Glenn and CARLSON, Allen, 2024. Environmental Aesthetics. In : ZALTA, Edward N. and NODELMAN, Uri (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online]. Fall 2024. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved from : https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/environmental-aesthetics/ [accessed 15 June 2025].

To Read Possibly

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/digital-vision-and-the-ecological-aesthetic-1968--2018-9781350051836/