Landschaphilia: A Western Perspective of the Origins of Human Delight in Landscape Beauty| Chapter 2 | New Horizons of Science, Technology and Culture Vol. 7

 

Landscape preferences provide a means for quantifying a person’s judgement of the aesthetic qualities and are based primarily on the landscape as perceived by sight, although this may be supplemented by sounds and even smells detected by one’s olfactory system. Landscape preference is undoubtedly not simply a function of some innate preference. Experience clearly has a profound influence on human perception and preference. Only a few studies have commented on the multifaceted origins of landscape preferences. This chapter identifies the various influences of Western aesthetic preferences of landscapes in answer to the question, why do humans find landscapes attractive? A four-level model of influences is proposed, based on the innate or evolutionary influences applicable to all humanity, through the cultural and the societal, to the individual. The study is confined to Western perspectives of landscape aesthetics. At the innate level are landscape theories that postulate the reasons why humans find landscapes attractive, the philosophical underpinnings of human delight in landscapes, and the Gestalt influence on preferences. The cultural influence comprises the legend of Arcadia and the Golden Age, classicism, teleology, landscape painting, and the emergence of the sublime, the beautiful, the picturesque, and Romanticism. At the societal level are the artistic pursuits of landscape painting and the development of parks and gardens. Also at the societal level is Western society’s attitude to mountains, which changed radically in the 17th century. Individuals are influenced by psychoanalytical pressures on the subconscious, by unconscious experiences in infancy, such as a human’s preference for water, for which the paper offers a novel explanation (prenatal amniotic fluid imprint), and by the influence of neuroaesthetics, which analyses how the brain responds to aesthetic objects. Finally, research on landscape preferences over 50 years provides insights into the influence of landscape components, reflecting the influence of the innate, cultural, and societal factors. The combined realms of influence of each of these factors are hypothesised to explain human responses to landscapes. These offer potentially fruitful areas for research.

 

 

Author(s) Details

Andrew Lothian
Independent Researcher, Adelaide 5061, Australia.

 

Please see the book here :- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/nhstc/v7/6870

The Perception of Civilization and Savageness: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World | Chapter 5 | Research Highlights in Language, Literature and Education Vol. 9

 The objective concerning this article is to survey Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) in terms of the nature of the rules – that are presumably civilized – by which the World State citizens in the story should abide. Those rules are, characteristically, contradictory the usual human ways of history that are referred to as “savage”. The main debate raised here is politically and culturally oriented; the humankind of this World State seemingly determines every materialistic inclination its members, still it remains far away from optimism. The article, thus, attempts to check the reasons behind the failure of this culture, which is fundamentally established scientific and technological progress. The article, moreover, aims to investigate and analyze the two ideas of civilization and savageness just before Huxley's utopian/dystopian world is worried, trying to underscore, employing juxtaposing the discussion of two together concepts, how two together are perceived and what ironical whispers there are underlying their valid meanings.

Author(s) Details:

Saffeen N. Arif,
Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Koya University, Kurdistan Region, Iraq.

Please see the link here: https://stm.bookpi.org/RHLLE-V9/article/view/11943