Scientific knowledge and the aesthetic appreciation of nature

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 37-48

  Matthews, Patricia ^a  

^a FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0012540816     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6245.00050     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1979): 267-275
2. reprinted in The Philosophy of the Visual Arts, ed. Philip Alperson (New York: Oxford, 1992), pp. 592-599, esp. p. 597
3. See also Kendall Walton, "Categories of Art," Philosophical Review 79 (1970): 334-367
4. reprinted in The Philosophy of the Visual Arts, pp. 490-503
5. See "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (1981): 21-25 for several formulations of this claim
6. So, for example, we survey a prairie, look at subtle contours in the land, etc. Ronald Hepburn discusses this general idea earlier in "Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty," 'Wonder' and Other Essays: Eight Studies in Aesthetics and Neighboring Fields (Edinburgh University Press, 1984), pp. 9-35
7. The cognitive model is often contrasted with the position that we appreciate the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of nature immediately, and with views in which imaginative associations are made when appreciating nature, but these associations need not be based in, and may conflict with, scientific knowledge of nature. For a discussion of the latter type of account and its difficulties, see Emily Brady, "Imagination and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 139-148
8. and Marcia Muelder Eaton, "Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 149-156
9. Noël Carroll makes this point in "On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History," in Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, ed. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 245
10. Robert Stecker, "The Correct and the Appropriate in the Appreciation of Nature," The British Journal of Aesthetics 37 (1997): 400
11. Carroll, "On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History," p. 258
12. Stecker, "The Correct and the Appropriate in the Appreciation of Nature," p. 398
13. Donald Crawford, "Comparing Natural and Artistic Beauty," Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, p. 191
14. "Nature, Aesthetic Appreciation and Knowledge," p. 398
15. Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 7
16. Walton, "Categories of Art," p. 492
17. Bernd Heinrich, "The Color of a Bird's Egg," The Nature of Nature, ed. William H. Shore (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), pp. 204-205
18. Hepburn claims that the stopping point of relevant knowledge is that point at which one loses track of sights, sounds, etc. Such knowledge would impoverish, not enhance, appreciation (p. 31). The perceptual model suggests a further limit, namely, that the knowledge must be active in the perception of the object
19. Hepburn, "Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty," p. 19
20. "The Beauty that Requires Health," Placing Nature, ed. Joan Iverson Nassauer (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997), p. 91
21. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for this objection
22. Quoted in Carlson, "Nature, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Knowledge, "The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995): 399
23. "Nature and Positive Aesthetics," Environmental Ethics 6 (1984): 26
24. Malcom Budd also makes the point that if you misexperience an item as being a certain kind of thing and there is no change in your perception, it is not of aesthetic significance. "The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," The British Journal of Aesthetics 36 (1996): 218
25. "Nature and Positive Aesthetics," p. 28
26. "Aesthetic Appreciation of the Natural Environment," in Aesthetics, ed. Susan Faegin and Patrick Maynard, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 39
27. The details are worked out more fully in "Nature and Positive Aesthetics." Elsewhere, Carlson claims that positive aesthetics holds because scientific stories "illuminate nature as ordered and give it meaning, significance and beauty" ("Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, p. 221). It is not clear how this view of the relationship of science to appreciation relates to his earlier perceptual model
28. Carlson takes a position similar to this in "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," p. 221. The view is based on the idea that it is appropriate to appreciate only order in nature, and all nature is equally ordered. Crawford also attributes the view to contemporary environmentalists (p. 191)
29. Crawford, "Comparing Natural and Artistic Beauty," p. 191
30. Shulman, "The Last Supper: Worth the Wait," Art News 94 (1995): 113
31. As quoted in Rossella Lorenzi, "Restoration Drama," Art News 98 (1999): 64
32. A more radical worry is that scientific theories are never fixed and always revisable, so that there is no fixed scientific truth, and, hence, no hope for correct aesthetic judgments. I shall set this skeptical worry aside for the purposes of this paper. Thanks to Stephanie Ross for emphasizing the importance of this problem
33. This would be true on the sort of view of aesthetic value that Walton defends in "How Marvelous! Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993): 499-510
34. I am grateful to Sam Rickless, Stephanie Ross, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for their helpful criticisms and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper