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Fact and Fiction in the
Aesthetic Appreciation of
Nature
Marcia Eaton
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Mission/Issues
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If positive aesthetic responses lead to care  we must establish a
way to generate aesthetic response that lead to sustainable care
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“if people see how beautiful such ecosystems (coral reefs) are, they will
tend to act in ways that will better protect these and other
environments”
Some actions are viewed as ways
of “caring for landscape” but are
actually harmful to it
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Mowing lawns with small gasoline
engines
Fertilizing with chemicals that pollute
the ground water
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What is it to have an aesthetic
experience of nature?
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When is this experience of the
right sort?
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Marcia Eaton on Ethics and
Aesthetics
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Believes that meaningful lives are as much aesthetic as moral
and involve these two dimensions in interwoven dependence
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Ethics and Aesthetics are inseparable but different
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Aesthetic appreciation should be ethical
Cognitive Approach to nature appreciation is important
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Can help us locate its aesthetic properties and sustain our
attention to them
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If you appreciate something under the wrong category, you can
make appreciative mistakes
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Aesthetic response to not nature that are not guided by
knowledge frequently lead to bad environmental policies
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Carlson’s Cognitive Model
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Eaton supports this approach of aesthetic experience of
nature
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Aesthetic appreciation of nature must be directed by
knowledge about it
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Aesthetic experience consists of scrutiny of an object and a
response based upon it
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Scrutiny based upon and enriched by scientific understanding of
the workings of nature
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Response must be to nature and not something else
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Emily Brady: Imagination
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Claims that Carlson fails to account for the significance of
imagination in our experiences of nature
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Eaton believes fiction (manifested of imagination) plays
large role in shaping way culture perceives & conceives
environment
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Eaton: Must have understanding of role that artistic culture
plays in shaping human attitudes toward environment
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Understanding can then be used to establish sustainable
practices
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Emily Brady: Imagination
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Eaton: Brady makes common mistake of leaving humans out
of nature
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Few places that are not to some degree a product of human
creation
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Humans are natural
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Eaton: fiction construed broadly to refer to objects created by
and appealing to the imagination
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Brady: imagining interpreted as visualizing or otherwise
coming up with ranges of possibilities
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Brady & Kant
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Brady agrees with Immanuel Kant’s position that “a free play
of imagination” is central to human aesthetic pleasure
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Respond to objects as we please
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Free to think of a tree as a person, animal, tower etc.
Brady/Carlson agree in basic distinctions between artistic
and natural appreciation
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Natural objects lack intentional acts of an artist which could give
us cues that direct our attention and thus imagination
No need to be concerned with what nature is intended to
express or how it functions as an object  freedom is
expanded
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Importance of Knowledge
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Eaton does not think that this distinction between art &
nature, entails that information about context is either
nonexistent or irrelevant
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Eaton/Carlson insist that knowledge concerning how natural
objects function within a particular context plays a major role
in appreciating nature
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Ex: failure to understand proper function of certain trees or forest
soils has led to mismanagement of forests, even when motivated
by providing aesthetic value
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Forests protected from fires, (b/c burned out areas may be seen
as ugly)  detrimental to plants whose growth is stimulated in
burned and blackened soil (warms more quickly in the sun)
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Brady on Cognitive Model
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Fears cognitive model precludes access
to richness of imaginative insight
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Insight: aesthetic experience, interpreted
in terms of imagination
Ex: “contemplating the fresh
whiteness of a lamb and its
small fragile stature evokes
images of purity and naiveté”
(152)
Too much reliance on knowledge
may fail to provide framework that
is clearly aesthetic
Mixed up with environmental values
(ecological, historical, cultural)
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How we should imagine
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Brady: “Imagining well”
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Spotting aesthetic potential
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Having a sense of what to look for
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Knowing when to clip the wings of imagination
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Preventing irrelevant, shallow, naïve, sentimental, responses
that could impoverish appreciation
Eaton: Can responding to a white lamb with thoughts of
innocence be regarded as shallow or naïve?
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We rely on Cognitive Model to determine this
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Eaton: Importance of Cognitive
Model
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Knowledge should do more than deepen the experiences
that imagination provides
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If we want to preserve and design sustainable landscapes,
knowledge should direct these experiences
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Issue: imaginative fancies-often directed by fictional
creations- can and do lead to harmful actions
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Fiction has had significant influence on attitudes, images and
metaphors with which we approach nature
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Tendencies to sentimentalize or demonize  misconceptions
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Influence of Fiction
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Bambi
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Has made it more difficult to respond to deer in terms appropriate
to the role they increasingly play in the ecological systems they
have come to dominate
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Increase in deer population/decrease in several songbirds and
tree species
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Tend to respond as fictional account directs us to
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Noble deer, who never kill
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Teaches children not to be violent, but also gives false
impressions about actual effect of overpopulation of deer
in forests
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Influence of Fiction
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Wetlands
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Often conceptualized as “swamps”
inhabited by slime monsters!
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Fear of death by quicksand is common
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Would be hard to convince lovers of
The Lion King, if lion populations
started to threaten environment
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Influence of Fiction
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Richard Forman’s book, Land Mosaics,
discusses importance of protecting
“keystone species” that play central role in
ecosystem
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Cassowary bird
 Territorial bird, as tall as and able to rip the
guts out of a man
 Normally inhibits large forests
 Logging/fragmentation have eliminated it
from several areas
 Eaton guesses this bird is depicted as a
terrible monster in fiction, making it harder
to save--but is fiction to blame for its downfall?
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Eaton: Importance of Imagination
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Fiction and imagination in general, can play a positive role in
developing a sound nature aesthetic, if and only if, it is based
upon, tempered by, directed and enriched by solid
ecological knowledge
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3 Stages in the examination of unfamiliar landscapes
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*One decides whether to explore or move on
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If one decides to stay/explore, one the begins to gather info.
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Finally, one decides whether to stay longer or move on
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*flights of imagination may be important factor during step 1
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Being deceptively intrigued by a man-eating bird may be what
leads one to learn more about Cassowary Bird.
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Eaton: Importance of Imagination
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Imagination is probably essential in producing people who
are able to envision new and more successful ways of
designing and maintaining environments
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Evidence shows that humans are genetically inclined to
respond positively (be more calm) to nonthreatening nature
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Genetic reasons that we prefer savannas to wetlands 
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Education is required to show people that wetlands etc. are also
valuable
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Eaton: Importance of Imagination
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Our attitudes toward nature are largely determined by
metaphors (from literature and other arts) with which we
conceptualize it
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hit rock bottom or get at root of problem in order for ideas to
blossom
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Imaginatively creating new metaphors may allow us to think
outside the box
Fiction must still remain at the service of facts
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Eaton: Revisits Cognitive Model
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There are sustainable environments that
have had no help from scientific
knowledge
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Admits that the priority of the cognitive
model is not universally required for an
adequate nature aesthetic
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Aesthetic and ecological planning are always
site specific
Colin Turnbull meets man dancing with
forest in Congo
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Shows use of imagination and independence
from scientific knowledge
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How much time would you spend
appreciating this flower?
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Eaton: Revisits Cognitive Model
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Some object that insisting upon scientific basis for
appreciation of nature “takes all the fun out of it”
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Eaton does not believe that knowledge kills aesthetic
pleasure, but that it increases it
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Aesthetic interest is not separate from our other interests as
human beings
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In learning what to look for, we achieve the very possibility
of seeing
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Minnesota trout lily grows only in two (Minnesota) counties on
earth!
ONLY with knowledge will sustainable practices develop
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Conclusions
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While recognizing benefits of fiction/imagination, one must
constantly be aware of its possible harm
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When we read thing like Bambi, we must remind ourselves to
balance the story with an understanding of relation between
an increasing deer population and a decreasing songbird
population
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A proper combination of the delight that human beings take
in flights of imagination with solid cognitive
understanding of what makes for sustainable environments,
will produce the kind of attitudes/preferences that will
generate the kind of ethical care we strive for