西方生态美学的进展:从景观感知与评估的视角看

Development of Ecological Aesthetics in the West: a Landscape Perception and Assessment Perspective

在景观研究领域,景观设计师基于专业知识进行评估,社会科学家以公众偏好作为研究的基础,二者已经形成了一种庞大的知识基础,并且为评估与管理景观的视觉特性提供了依据。在这种情况下,主导的风景美学立场限制并忽略了自然美这一观念;对诸如生态系统健康与生物多样性等景观的生态价值而言,风景美学甚至可能是有害的。这一审美—生态冲突的状态迫使景观感知与评估方面的工作开始寻求另外的途径——即建构生态美学,以更好地理解与管理景观的审美价值。这种生态美学旨在探讨景观研究中审美价值与生态价值相结合的问题,它融合了自然科学、自然审美哲学、生态艺术与设计以及景观感知整体性研究实践中的诸多观点,倡导一种全新的景观审美感知模式,为推动进一步的深入研究与实践提供了原则与指南。从生态美学角度来解释景观感知与评估已经引发了一场精彩讨论,内容涉及人类审美反应的本质、在人类头脑中灌输生态审美的能力,以及与此灌输活动相关的伦理学问题等。

The paper approaches the topic from the perspective of landscape perception and assessment, and argues that while the expert-based assessments by landscape architects and the public preference-based studies by so cial scientists have built a considerable knowledge base for identifying and managing the visual qualities of landscapes, the dominant method of scenic aesthetics constrains the idea of natural beauty and can lead to the strategies that neglect and may even prove harmful to the ecological values of landscapes such as ecosystem health and biological diversity. This aesthetic-ecological disjuncture has led some working in landscape percep tion and assessment to seek alternative approaches to understanding and managing aesthetic values in the landscape. Blending ideas from practice in the natural sciences, the aesthetic philosophies of nature, the ecological art and design, and the holistic study of landscape perception, an ecological aesthetics advocates a qualitatively different approach to assessing aesthetic perceptions of landscapes and in so doing, provides principles and guideline for advancing research and practice. The explication of an ecological aesthetics for landscape percep tion and assessment has also set off a lively debate over the nature of human aesthetic response, the ability to instill ecological aesthetics in people and the ethics of intervention aimed at doing so. It concludes by discussing potential ways connected the work to interests and efforts in ecological aesthetics and environmental aesthetics in China.