Landschap Philia: The Origins of Human Delight in Landscape Beauty

Abstract

This paper 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. At each level there are a number of contributory factors at play, and these are described. The paper is confined to Western perspectives of landscape aesthetics. At the innate level are four landscape theories that postulate the reasons why humans find landscapes attractive. Also at the innate level are 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; of classicism, teleology, and 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, which reflected the perfect Italianate landscape. Also at this level are Western society’s attitude to mountains, which changed radically in the seventeenth century. Individuals are influenced by psychoanalytical pressures on the subconscious, by unconscious experiences in infancy such as a human’s preference for water, and by the influence of neuroaesthetics, which describes how the areas of the brain respond to aesthetic objects. Finally, research of landscape preferences over 50 years provides insights on 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 hypothesized to explain human responses to landscapes.

1. Introduction

1.1. Objectives

Why do humans find landscapes attractive? Why do so many people visit places with beautiful landscapes? What is it about them that attracts people? What is it about us that we find landscapes attractive?

It’s not about the ‘what’ we find attractive—we can identify the features that are particularly appealing to us. It’s not about the ‘where’—follow the tourist road and there they are. The question is why humans have the landscape preferences that we have.

The dictionaries agree that the meaning of ‘why’ is for what reason, cause, or purpose. What are the reasons, causes, or purposes of human’s love of landscapes? We often have difficulty in articulating why we like landscapes. As Clark [1] the art historian said, Almost every Englishman, if asked what he meant by ‘beauty’, would begin to describe a landscape.

The objective of this paper is to provide a possible explanation for this question, why humans find landscapes attractive. The paper offers original insights, new ideas and evidence, novel syntheses, and fresh perspectives on a difficult subject and one that has been rarely tackled.

In preference to the archaic term landscape beauty, the term landscape quality (or scenic quality) is now used to encompass the full range from low to high landscape quality, not only landscapes that might be considered beautiful. Given that landscape quality is perceived by our senses, particularly by sight, it can also be termed perceived landscape quality. These terms all refer to the aesthetic qualities of the physical landscape as perceived by our sight. 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. This paper focuses on the visual aspects of the landscape.

1.2. Literature

Few papers ask the ‘why’ question. Balling and Falk [2] remarked that the studies they reviewed are “generally atheoretical and none of them have addressed the issue of why humans have the landscape preferences that they do.” Hagerhall [3] asked “why landscape quality is important in human experience”; however, he focused on what triggers an aesthetic experience, not why it does so.

Only a few researchers have commented on the multi-faceted origins of landscape preferences: “Aesthetic quality is an amalgam of physical and social values” [4], and “Landscape preference is undoubtedly not simply a function of some innate preference. Experience clearly has a profound influence on human perception and preference.” [2] Fry et al. [5] divided the theories into evolutionary and cultural preference. Adevi and Grahn [6] said that while some researchers consider preferences to be culturally driven, others suggest they “depend on our evolutionary origins, implying that these preferences are innate.”

Given the hundreds of papers on landscape aesthetics, the lack of discussion about its origins is surprising. It has been argued that because of rapid changes to landscapes, researchers and practitioners “were not going to fiddle with theory while the landscape burned.” [7]

1.3. Models

The Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), hypothesized the developmental process in three parts (

Table 1. Developmental processes.

Vygotsky		Bourassa
Processes of development	Products of development	Modes of aesthetic experience
Phylogenesis	Umwelt—biological needs, drives, and instincts	Biological—innate
Sociogenesis	Mitwelt—social and cultural world	Cultural—learned
Ontogenesis	Eigenwelt—personal world	Personal—experience

), which Bourassa [8] interpreted as biological, cultural, and personal (or individual). Bourassa [9] differentiated biological and cultural as behaviour that is innate and learned, respectively; the former is transmitted genetically and the latter socially. He contended that aesthetic experiences have both a biological and a cultural basis plus “personal idiosyncrasies”.

Bourassa noted that both Hume and Dewey proposed a similar tripartite classification. He also noted that the model does not show the interrelations between the three modes.

In 1989, Philip Dearden of the University of Victoria, Canada, proposed a hierarchy of landscape influences (Figure 1), which traced the locus of influences from being common to all humanity through to being unique to the individual. The evolutionary influence is common to all people, the cultural influence is common to the people of a particular culture, while familiarity applies to all people in a particular area. At the individual level, Dearden identified socio-economic and demographic influences on the individual.

1.4. Realms of Influence

Figure 2 modifies and extends Dearden’s hierarchy to include societal and individual influences on landscape preferences. While Dearden’s hierarchy implies a progression from one to the next, the pyramidal form denotes each layer being influenced by and building on the layer beneath. The model here is shown as blank without the influences shown. The purpose of this paper is to populate the model and indicate where the various influences are located in the model.

Each of the four realms of influence derive from different intellectual origins. The innate is common to all humanity and stems from human evolutionary origins. These origins are overlayed, firstly by cultural influences and secondly by the more geographically specific societal influences; in other words, culture denotes broad human civilisations such as Western culture, while society refers here to distinct groupings, such as the British, within a culture. A society comprises individuals who are the product of the innate, cultural, and societal influences. How each of these realms are reflected in human landscape preferences is articulated in this paper.

Although innate influences are common across humankind, their manifestation may be altered by the overlays of culture and societal influences. Thus, while all may prefer natural, savannah, and visually diverse landscapes, these may not be physically present in all cultures and societies or may have been greatly modified by human-wrought changes.

Culture and society are more difficult to differentiate than the innate or individual realms. Culture is a group of people writ large; society is a group of people within a culture writ small. Culture comprises the behaviours, institutions, norms, beliefs, values, and customs that apply to its people. Society comprises people within a large social group sharing a spatial or social territory. The Jewish culture, for example, exists world-wide, but within it are the French Jewish society and the Canadian Jewish society. Western culture covers many countries, each of which comprise a society within that culture—for example, American society within Western culture, or Chinese society within Eastern culture.

The term influence refers to the power or capacity to affect or alter behaviours, attitudes, and decisions of individuals by indirect or intangible means. In this paper, it refers to the often-hidden causes or reasons behind human landscape preferences, many of which we are not consciously aware.

The paper uses these four realms of landscape influences as the sections starting with the innate and moving through cultural, societal, and individual influences.

1.5. Western Perspectives of Landscape Aesthetics

The focus of this inquiry is the Western landscape preference, as traditional or non-Western cultures often have entirely different perspectives on landscapes. The Western approach to the aesthetic qualities of landscape has been fashioned by various strands of influence. Classical Hellenistic and Roman influences re-emerged again during the Renaissance and later periods. From Christian theology developed the teleological view of nature that, together with the classical influence, dominated until the 18th century. In contemporary times, these strands have been “demoted to the level of myths, explained away as symbolic analogies or treated simply as fairytales” [11]. Yet during these centuries, they largely shaped the Western cultural image of nature and landscape.

There are many other perspectives to landscape aesthetics, including the Eastern, which includes Indian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese, traditional cultures such as the New Zealand Māori and the Australian Aborigine, as well as Islamic and Hindu perspectives. Many of these have a religious or spiritual perspective towards the landscape; for example, mountains are esteemed by the Chinese but often regarded as the haunts of devils and demons by traditional cultures. Each of these perspectives is entirely valid for their cultures and the societies in which they are located. Neither is the Western perspective the primary or dominant perspective; each is dominant within their culture. While this paper concentrates on the Western perspective, the innate elements may be common to all perspectives.

2. Materials and Methods

The paper derives from research undertaken for the author’s Ph.D., supplemented by additional research since its completion. The sections are more fully explained and explored in the Landscape Foundations sections of the website www.scenicsolutions.world (accessed on 11 August 2025).

3. Results

3.1. Innate Influences—Theoretical Models

Theoretical models aim to provide explanations of phenomena, in this case, Western aesthetic preferences. They address these at a fundamental level, describing innate influences on Western preferences. This section commences with a summary of recent theories of landscape preferences, followed by the philosophical approach to aesthetics and the Gestalt model of perception, each of which are considered to be innate influences.

3.1.1. Theories of Landscape Quality

The four theories that have been developed all derive from an evolutionary perspective, as they assert that landscape preferences are survival-enhancing. Darwin proposed that natural selection was the mechanism for evolution in which the variations that are always present in species are favoured or penalised by the environment, with those variations favoured passed on to subsequent generations, while those less-suited cease to exist.

Aesthetics may seem a long way from ensuring survival, but evolutionary theory suggests that the landscapes preferred by humans enhances their survivability.

“The central assumption of an evolutionary perspective on preference is that preference plays an adaptive role; that is, it is an aid to the survival of the individual” [12].

The four theories that have been proposed are as follows:

• Habitat theory, Gordon Orians;
• Prospect and refuge theory, Jay Appleton;
• Affective theory, Roger Ulrich;
• Information processing theory, Stephen Kaplan.

3.1.2. Orians’ Habitat Theory

Orians, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences, described the evolutionary underpinnings of habitat theory as follows:

“natural selection should have favored individuals who were motivated to explore and settle in environments likely to afford the necessities of life but to avoid environments with poorer resources or posing higher risks” [13].

Orians’ theory is that as humans evolved in a landscape of grassland and scattered trees, this became the preferred visual habitat. The East African savannah has been regarded as the cradle of humanity. According to [14],

“savannas of tropical Africa have high resource-providing potential for a large, terrestrial, omnivorous primate … trees are scattered and much of the productivity is found within two meters of the ground where it is directly accessible to people and grazing and browsing animals. Biomass and production of meat is much higher in savannas than in forests.”

Savannah pastoral landscapes featured prominently in the Arcadia of antiquity, the paintings of Claude and Poussin, and the English landscape gardens of Capability Brown through to the municipal parks and backyards of today. It is reasonable to ask: “Are many of the parks and backyards people have so assiduously created wherever they have lived in part an expression of an innate predisposition for the savanna?” [2].

Orians tested his theory by having people rate the attractiveness of photographs of trees of varying height, width, and canopy and found that “a low trunk is easier to climb than a high one; a broad umbrella-like canopy affords greater refuge from sun or rain than a narrow, high canopy” [15].

Studies by other authors generally provided support for the savannah theory ([2,6,16,17,18,19,20]).

Ref. [2] found subjects rated savannah environments as high as familiar environments, that is, environments they had experienced during childhood and adolescence. However, participants under 12 years showed a clear preference for savannah landscapes, suggesting that they are more affected by innate influences than older people.

3.1.3. Appleton’s Prospect and Refuge Theory

Jay Appleton [21], a former professor of geography at the University of Hull in England, described his theory in his book, The Experience of Landscape (1975). He later wrote that “he was looking for a simple model that could relate the idea of preference to a typology of landscapes through the medium of the biological and, more particularly, the behavioural sciences” [22]. His theory is that prospects provide the opportunity to see, while refuges provide the opportunity to hide, in combination to “see without being seen”. Prospects include panoramic views and water, while refuges include vegetation, caves, and other locations.

Many studies have tested Appleton’s theory ([13,14,15,16,23,24,25]). While prospects have generally been regarded favourably, this may be due to the appeal of mountains and water. Refuges, however, are generally regarded negatively. Males tend to prefer open prospects, while females prefer safe vantage points. While Appleton’s theory has gained extensive endorsement, it lacks strong supporting evidence.

3.1.4. Ulrich’s Affective Theory

Beginning in 1984, Roger Ulrich, emeritus professor, College of Architecture at Texas A and M University, has led research into the positive influence of nature on human well-being. By using neuro-physiological tools, he has shown that natural settings and landscapes can generate emotional states of well-being. Measured on a like–dislike dichotomy, affect correlates strongly with beautiful–ugly or scenic quality scales [26].

Ulrich argued that emotional responses to nature are pre-cognitive. In a widely quoted paper, Feeling and thinking, preferences need no inferences, social psychologist Robert Zajonc [27] argued that affect is more powerful than cognition and occurs in the absence of recognition memory. Ulrich provided evidence that affect is pre-cognitive [26]. Based on affect being pre-cognitive but influencing post-cognition that arises, Ulrich designed his psycho- evolutionary theory, which posits that positive emotions and psychological effects have survival benefits. He proposed the following:

“Immediate, unconsciously triggered and initiated emotional responses—not ‘controlled’ cognitive responses—play a central role in the initial level of responding to nature, and have major influences on attention, subsequent conscious processing, physiological responding and behavior” [28].

Much of Ulrich’s research has entailed exposing subjects to urban and nature scenes and recording their psychological and physiological responses. He found that urban scenes produced negative feelings, whereas the opposite occurred after viewing the nature scenes. Scenes of cities with trees and vegetation produced far less fear and generated positive feelings compared with treeless city scenes.

Considerable research has been carried out on Ulrich’s affective theory, and these have found supportive evidence ([28,29,30,31,32,33,34]). A review of 21 studies that compared nature and urban scenes found the preferences for nature were more than two-thirds higher than for urban scenes [35]. Exposure to green space in cities is vitally important, improving health and even reducing morbidity. The research by Ulrich and others provides strong support for this theory.

3.1.5. Kaplan’s Information Processing Theory

Stephen Kaplan, former professor of environmental psychology at the University of Michigan, applied information processing theory to perception of the environment. He hypothesized that the “perceptual process involves extracting information from one’s environment” [12].

Humans, Kaplan argued, seek to make sense of the environment and to be involved in it (

Table 2. Predictor variables.

	Understanding Making Sense	Exploration Being Involved
Immediate The visual array	Coherence Making sense now Orderly, “hangs together” Repeated elements, regions	Complexity Being involved immediately Richness, intricate Many different elements
Inferred Future, promised Three-dimensional space	Legibility Expectation of making sense in future Finding one’s way there and back Distinctiveness	Mystery Expectation of future involvement Promise of new but related information

Kaplan, Kaplan and Brown, 1989b [12].

). He identified four predictor variables, two of which (coherence and legibility) help one understand the environment, and the other two (complexity and mystery) encourage its exploration.

Coherence involves making sense of the scene. Repetition of elements assists in this. Complexity or diversity is the busyness of the scene, how much is going on. Legibility involves knowing one’s way in and the way back. Mystery is the promise of more information as one moves deeper into a scene, such as a winding path. Coherence and complexity involve minimal analysis, whereas legibility and mystery require more time and thought.

Kaplan’s theory has been tested by many studies [23,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45]. Following their review of over a decade’s research, Kaplan concluded the following:

• In each of the studies, the combination of these informational predictors yielded significant results.
• Complexity was a significant positive predictor in only a single study.
• Legibility did not play a significant role in four studies, but another study found it a negative predictor.
• Coherence was a significant predictor in most of the studies.
• Mystery is the most consistent of the informational factors.

While Kaplan’s theory has been the subject of much research, these provide varying levels of support for its components. Much interpretation is required in applying the four predictor variables to the landscapes studied. Kaplan believes the predictor variables and the preferences that result support an evolutionary interpretation.

3.1.6. Theories—Conclusions

The range of theories provides explanations of aspects of landscape preferences but not a definitive explanation. Orians’ provides support for the preference for savannah landscapes, Appleton’s for high prospects, Ulrich’s for nature and natural landscapes, and Kaplan’s for identifying components of the landscape that generate favourable preferences. However, there is not a single unifying theory that ties these together, but they do provide insights into why we are attracted to natural landscapes. They point to the innate influence of these on aesthetic preferences.

3.1.7. Philosophy and Aesthetics

Is landscape beauty innate in the landscape itself or in the eyes of the beholder? This is a fundamental question that has puzzled philosophers for millennia [46]. If it lies in the landscape, then it could hardly be regarded as an innate influence, but if it is in our eyes, then it is an innate influence.

Hutcheson, a philosopher, said in 1726, “All beauty is relative to the sense of the mind perceiving it.” Similarly, David Hume from 1757 said, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” These statements are contrary to the philosophy that prevailed for more than two thousand years, that beauty was inherent in the landscape itself, not in our eyes.

Socrates (469–399 BC), the Greek philosopher, regarded beauty as having a moral influence, while Plato (327–427 BC) argued that there was a progression to absolute beauty outside of time and space. Aristotle (384–322 BC) said that Plato’s idealised forms of beauty were immanent in tangible objects of a certain size and were comprehensible by an observer.

The early Christian era, influenced strongly by teleology, regarded beauty as an expression of God and therefore inherent in the object. To Augustine (354–430 AD), Plato’s idealised beauty existed in the mind of God and was revealed by divine illumination: “Beauty derived from a proportion of parts, together with an agreeableness of colour.”

In his influential book Discourse on Method for Properly Guiding the Reason and Finding Truth in the Sciences (1637), Rene Descartes (1596–1650) argued for reason to be the basis of truth and separating “what is out there” from “what is in here”, i.e., separating one’s environment from the mind; this became known as the Cartesian shears. It paved the way for beauty to be regarded as of the mind, “in here”, not in a physical entity, “out there”.

The 18th century was the century of aesthetics, when it became firmly established in philosophy. Two schools were prominent, Britain and Germany. The British empiricists believed that knowledge derived from experience, whereas the Germans derived their philosophy by deduction.

Key British philosophers were John Locke (1632–1704), Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713) (the third Earl of Shaftesbury), Frances Hutcheson (1694–1746), Joseph Addison (1672–1719), David Hume (1711–1776), and Edmund Burke (1729–1797).

Locke believed that beauty in its primary physical qualities resided objectively in the object, but its secondary qualities, i.e., those perceived by the senses, were a subjective quality. However, Shaftesbury, Hutchenson, and Addison all regarded beauty as inherent in the object. Hume and Burke rejected their objectivist view, arguing that it lay in the mind. Burke wrote that beauty was not defined by harmony, proportion, variety, unity, utility, etc., but rather these properties existed in the human mind.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) published Critique of Judgement in 1790. According to Kant, the aesthetic experience is the mind’s representation of the object and, experienced with disinterest, is pure and is wholly subjective. The state of harmony between an object’s imaginative representation and our understanding yields aesthetic pleasure. Such pleasure is neither sensual or intellectual, nor does it involve conceptual judgement. Objects that we consider beautiful have a kind of formal quality dependent on their perceptual properties, a purposiveness of form but not of function. Aesthetic pleasure, which is free, without an ideal, and without cognitive determination, is universal and common to all who experience it [46].

Of significance is the close parallel between Kant’s philosophy and landscape quality. Landscape quality is without function, and there is no ideal or limit; no conceptual judgement is made—the response is immediate, and the pleasure is often shared. The pleasure from landscapes is gained without desire or want for it; the pleasure is universal and a common response, and landscapes provide a public, not private, pleasure. Kant’s disinterest principle is similar to the non-cognitive response to landscape quality, not linked to any thought of personal interest, although in evolutionary terms it is survival-enhancing and hence biased in the long term. His universality principle applies to landscape; if it is survival-enhancing, then all humans must respond to it. The perception of beauty is inherent in all humans, though what is appreciated is likely to be influenced by culture. Finally, the lack of determinant rules for beauty provides flexibility, an essential component of survival. Kant’s theory identified survival-enhancing principles many decades before Darwin.

Most 19th and 20th century philosophers have regarded beauty as subjective, lying in the mind, not the object. George Santayana (1863–1952) argued that the key quality of aesthetics is pleasure and defined beauty as pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing or pleasure objectified—i.e., projected onto the object. Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) regarded art as expression and intuition; his formula was intuition = expression. To John Dewey (1859–1952), the aesthetic experience is a consummate, enjoyable, and complete experience, and the aesthetic experience was the product of the interaction of the subjective and the objective.

The philosophy of aesthetics comprises a vital examination of the basis of perceiving landscape quality via our senses as interpreted by our brain. The paradox is that we often comment on how beautiful a landscape is, when we should say “I think that is a beautiful landscape.” The beauty lies in our mind’s interpretation of it, not in the landscape itself.

The key shift that has occurred among philosophers over millennia has not been to regard beauty as inherent in the object but rather regard it as the perception by one’s senses as interpreted by the brain. This is a shift from an objective to a subjective view of beauty. Being subjective, it is influenced by all that is in the brain innately as well as from culture, society, and individual experiences.

3.1.8. Gestalt Influence

We do not appreciate a piece of music by its individual notes but by listening to passages of music. A book is not simply a collection of random words but rather words in a particular order to tell a story. Similarly, a square shape is not simply four equal lines at right angles; its characteristic is a square. Late in the 19th century came the realisation that reducing phenomena to their smallest components loses their essential character. In landscape, analysing each of the components—landform, land cover, land use, water, etc.—misses the essential character of the landscape.

This realisation was the origin of Gestalt psychology, commencing with Christian von Ehrenfels, a German psychologist in 1890, when he identified the Gestaltqualitat or form quality as a key aspect of features. In 1912, Max Wertheimer published a paper that gave birth to the Gestalt movement and defined Gestalt as “a whole whose characteristics are determined, not by its individual elements, but by the internal nature of the whole” [47]. He also said, “The qualities of the whole determine the characteristics of the parts: what a part has to be is determined by its relationship to the whole.” [48].

The Gestalt concept has been applied in social psychology, economic behaviour, human perception, animal behaviour, art, and aesthetics. Although von Ehrenfels coined the term “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”, the Gestalt psychologists actually described it as “the whole is different than the sum of its parts.” However, von Ehrefels’ description is more commonly cited, including, for example, landscape literature. Duffield and Coppock [49] and Aiken [50] both referred to the landscape as being greater than the sum of its parts.

The early Gestaltists laid down the following laws for the appearance of organised wholes [51]:

• Wholes are primary and appear before their so-called parts (Law of Primacy).
• To perceive and react to wholes is more natural, easier, and occurs earlier than perception of parts.
• Wholes tend to be as complete, symmetrical, simple, and as good as possible under prevailing conditions (Law of Prägnanz).
• Wholes tend to be governed by internal rather than external factors (Law of Autonomy).
• Parts derive their properties from their place or function in the whole.

Wertheimer’s Law of Prägnanz is fundamental and is the goal-directed tendency to restore balance to the organism, a grouping towards maximal simplicity and balance, with stronger patterns dominating weaker patterns [52]. Where ambiguous conditions apply, such as an incomplete letter or word, Prägnanz completes the form and resolves it to provide ‘good’ Gestalt. Prägnanz produces a tension to complete the whole, straightening a line, completing a circle, or even cleaning the blackboard. Artists use Prägnanz to allow the viewer to complete the picture.

Figure and ground is an important Gestalt principle that refers to, for example, a tree (figure) seen against the sky (ground). The figure always has stronger form characteristics than the ground. The ground provides the framework for viewing the figure; the smaller unit is the figure, and the larger is the ground.

Gestalt is relevant to landscapes in several ways. The whole being more than the sum of its parts describes our perception of landscape, focusing on totality as a single entity, not on its constituent parts. The Prägnanz principle of good Gestalt includes large round forms, superimposed and juxtaposed forms such as a series of spurs or trees receding in the distance, isosceles triangles including peak mountains, circles such as round trees and boulders, and symmetrical figures including mountains, hills, and trees. Landscapes with strong forms, symmetry, roundness, and repetition of forms are preferred over landscapes without these.

Antrop [53] considered Gestalt to be extremely important in landscape perception:

“Human perception is extremely powerful in analysing and recognising complex patterns, spatial structures and images… When individual elements in a pattern are recognised, new partial structures are immediately constructed to form new objects which are identified on a higher level of abstraction.”

While Gestalt principles can help explain landscape preferences, they are not consciously perceived; rather, they are extremely subtle and hidden in the landscape but are often evident in the paintings and photographs of landscapes, if you know what to look for.

Gestalt comprises an important influence on how the brain perceives a landscape; it perceives it as a whole, not as components, and in its entirety, not segmented into its parts. The brain is very rapidly able to assess a landscape, recognise familiar aspects, and appreciate its aesthetic qualities as a complete landscape.

3.1.9. Innate Influences Summary

These three sections, landscape theories, philosophy, and Gestalt, describe innate influences on human preferences. Being innate, they are fundamental and universal and apply world-wide, although they are often overlaid and modified by cultural and societal factors. Although they have a strong influence, the cultural and societal factors may be stronger and overwhelm their manifestation.

3.2. Cultural Influences—Historical Foundations

3.2.1. Arcadia and the Golden Age

Yuan [54] wrote that “human beings boast a highly developed capacity for symbolic behavior”, and this is particularly true in relation the Grecian image of the Golden Age of antiquity, in which Arcadia was “peopled by nymphs and satyrs, shepherds and herdsmen, living and loving in a life of innocent simplicity” [11], a time “in which man lived on the fruits of the earth, peacefully, piously and with primitive simplicity” [1]. Early theologians linked the Arcadian Golden Age with the Biblical Eden [55].

The Garden of Eden, from which God banished Adam and Eve, can be seen as a picture of a former Golden Age. The Garden of Eden became synonymous with paradise, a word derived from the Persian pairidaeza denoting an enclosed park. The Biblical accounts of the early origins of humans paralleled that of the Grecian Golden Age—gardens in which people played much and worked little, places where in later times, they longed to return. The prominence of parks and gardens is evident in modern cities.

Our delight in parks and gardens, in personal gardening, and in spending time and effort in our gardens derives in part from regarding it as our own personal paradise, a place where we too can play much and work little.

3.2.2. Classicism

From the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome came classicism that was the following:

“An aesthetic tendency characterized by a sense of proportion, by a balanced and stable composition, by a search for formal harmony and by understatement; imitation of ancient writers; aversion to the exceptional; well-nigh exclusive interest in psychological and moral analysis; control of sensitivity and imagination …” [56].

Ancient Greece was regarded as the pinnacle of perfection, of perfect proportion, and balance, qualities of ideal beauty, perfect equilibrium, and harmony that infused classicism into Western cultural attitudes towards landscapes. The European monasteries founded from the 7th century on became centres of classical learning, and their enclosed gardens symbols of tamed landscapes. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Renaissance rediscovered the classical origins of European culture, translating the ancient Greek and Roman texts and spreading classicism across Europe. Follow Nature was classicism’s “battle cry”, and the imitation of nature was a strong influence on writers.

While the focus in England was initially on Rome, as more translations of the Greek classics became available, interest switched to Greek religion, mythology, and philosophy and this dominated in the 19th century, described as Homer’s century [57]. The influence of classicism was so strong that students were required to learn Greek and Latin and to study the classical literature in their original language. However, by the end of the 19th century, education shifted by necessity to the three “R’s” (i.e., ‘riting’, ‘reading’, and ‘rithmetic’), the classics having little relevance in commerce and industry. The expanding British Empire made society more aware of other cultures and languages. WW1 saw classicism die “on the battlefields of Flanders” [58].

Classicism’s perfection of proportion, balance, harmony, and focus on nature are expressed in the layout and form of our cities and towns, in our public gardens and parks, and in our own homes and gardens.

3.2.3. Teleology

Teleology derived from the West’s Judeo-Christian roots and had an immense influence on society’s attitudes to nature up to the mid-19th century. Teleology is the doctrine of final causes, particularly for evidence of design in nature. The perceived unity and harmony observed in nature led to the idea of a purposefulness of creation, with the book of Genesis providing the blueprint. This was reinforced by subsequent passages such as the following:

Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands”. Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without any excuse.”

The Genesis account of creation is brief, and the early Church fathers Philo, St Basil, and St Ambrose and on through to the physico-theological writers of the 17th to 19th centuries set about filling in the details, a vast hexameral literature (hexa = 6 days of creation) that [59] described as “a vast curiosity and irrelevancy”, much of which was spurious and pseudo-science.

The monasteries transformed European landscapes, making them more ordered and productive and, it was generally believed, improved on God’s creation—domesticated plants gave better fruit, and grains and vegetables were larger, softer, and better-tasting under cultivation.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the discovery of the New World, the discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Boyle, and the development of the microscope and telescope were regarded as providing or revealing further proof of God’s existence and generated interest in the designed earth, with Newton and Boyle writing about final causes.

Glacken [59] summarised the influence of teleology on Western culture as follows:

“The Judeo-Christian conceptions of God and of the order of nature were often combined by the early Church Fathers with both the classical argument of design and the idea of an artisan-deity or demiurge, creating a conception of the habitable world of such force, persuasiveness, and resiliency that it could endure as an acceptable interpretation of life, nature, and the earth to the vast majority of peoples in the Western world until the sixth decade of the nineteenth century.”

Darwin’s The Origin of Species, published in 1859, marked the demise of the teleological influence.

Nicolson [60] put this era into perspective as follows:

“It is difficult today, in an age when social, economic, and international problems are paramount, to think ourselves back to a time when these were of far less importance than theological issues. We are so much more intent upon what man has made of man than upon what God originally made of him, so much more concerned with what man may make of Nature than with the Nature originally created by God, that once-burning issues seem trivial.”

While the specifics of the teleological view may be regarded as having little relevance today, viewing impressive landscapes continues to bring a sense of awe and a sensitivity to a spiritual dimension outside of oneself. Although probably not agreeing with the landscape providing evidence for design or purpose in nature, viewers can be transported to an ethereal dimension.

3.2.4. Cultural Influences Summary

Influences on Western culture comprise the concepts of Arcadia and the Golden Age, classicism and teleology. Each of these has had a strong presence in Western culture, although the influence of classicism and teleology are now weak compared with what they were in centuries past. Nevertheless, they have helped to shape what Western culture is today and how we perceive landscapes and other aesthetic objects.

3.3. Societal Influences—Artistic Representations

3.3.1. Landscape Art

In pre-17th century paintings, landscapes were seen mainly as a backdrop to the subject, many of a religious theme. By the 16th century, trees were beginning to be portrayed more realistically. In the 17th century, Dutch landscape painters captured the “naturalistic type of picturesque landscape”, complete with old, gnarled trees, water and windmills, rustic bridges, and shaggy animals [61]. Although the general society was antagonistic towards mountains during the 17th century, artists favoured “great rock masses in the foreground and frequent use of mountains and hills at the horizon, not to mention the Alpine landscapes.”

The 17th century saw the emergence of the Italianate classical landscape painting, in which Greek and Roman classical themes provided the subject set in an Italian landscape. Claude Lorraine (1600–1682) became the foremost artist of this theme, using the Italian landscape and climate, ruins and buildings of the classical period, and subjects from classical literature. Claude perfected the Italianate style of scenes of trees, ruins, mountains and rivers.

“He inspired the very elements with mind and feeling; his valleys, woods, and seas were just a veil through which divinity was visible. All that was ugly, painful, and confused was purified and transfigured in his hands. There is no sadness or denection (i.e., rejection) in his pictures, but a spirit of serene beauty, free from ostentation, far-fetched contrast, or artificial glitter. Light breezes blow in his splendid trees, golden light quivers through them, drawing the eye to a bright misty horizon…” [62].

Particularly influential among the northern European artists was the mood of diffused euphoria, in which peaceful scenes evoked a feeling of “a quietly functioning cosmos ordained by God to fulfil purposes essentially benevolent, that is, the feeling of well-being” [61]. The physico-theologians could scarcely have said it better.

In contrast to Claude were the drama and violence in the paintings by Salvatore Rosa (1615–1673), who painted classical and religious themes. Sir Joshua Reynolds described Claude’s paintings as comprising “the tranquillity of Arcadian scenes and fairyland”, a sweet dream, but Rosa’s were like a nightmare incarnate, a “sort of wild and Savage Nature.” Thomas Gray described Salvatore’s paintings as follows: “Excelled in savage uncouth places, very great and noble style; stories that have something of horror and cruelty” [63]. When Horace Walpole visited Grand Chartreuse in 1739, he exclaimed the following in a letter: “Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvatore Rosa!”

In the 18th century, landscape art assumed a greater importance in England than in previous years, and the paintings of Claude Lorraine, Salvatore Rosa, and other Italianate artists exerted a tremendous influence on English taste, with engravings and prints of their works in English middle-class homes and the originals in those of the wealthy. Italy was scoured for paintings of the Italianate artists and brought to England. A letter of a visitor to Italy in the 1790s described the paintings with exclamation marks, suggesting Baedeker’s star rating of sites:

“A battle by Salvatore Rosa!!!; A beautiful landscape by Claude Lorain!!!!; Two capital landscapes by Salvatore Rosa!!!,…a Claude!!!… a Claude!!!…a Claude!!!!”

The three moods of well-being and activity, mountain horror and drama, and the Italianate, dominated landscapes in England in the latter 17th century and through the 18th century. In the second half of the 18th century, classical themes weakened, giving place to sublimity, original genius, and Romanticism [64]. In addition to the beautiful and the sublime came a new term, the “picturesque”, defined by the Reverend William Gilpin as “that kind of beauty which would look well in a picture” [65]. Picturesque tours became popular, informed by Gilpin’s books on each area.

The picturesque was associated with a thatched cottage, a rustic mill, and a shaggy ass, each indicative of the close link between the picturesque and the Romantic [63]. The picturesque painting described the world “as it might have been had the Creator been an Italian artist of the seventeenth century” [64]. This illustrates the paradoxes of the picturesque: firstly, it delighted in nature but then wanted to “improve” it, and secondly, it delighted in English landscapes but represented them as imitations of Claude or Rosa [66].

While beauty was equated with smoothness, equality, and uniformity, the picturesque was rough, irregular, and varied. While Grecian architecture was beautiful, its ruins were picturesque. With age, buildings, trees, and even people changed from things of beauty to picturesque.

The 18th century saw the rise of Romanticism, in which imagination provided an interpreter of experience; what was important was the inner eye of imagination, seeing into the heart of things. “The Romantic movement was an awakening of sensation” [65]. While classicism involved thinking, the picturesque involved seeing, and Romanticism involved feeling. To take it further, the Romantic used a scene to “delve into his own psyche and to analyze its effect upon his emotions” [67]. Romantics focused on the past, interested in human mental illness and imagination, and they were nature lovers with a vast number of books and collections. Painters searched for Romantic scenes in the Lake District, Wales, Scotland, and the Alps.

Turner (1775–1851), an outstanding landscape artist, created scenes of colour and light unseen before. Over his lifetime, Turner shifted from a representative painter to an impressionist painter, capturing the essence of landscapes in colour and light. Clark [1] considered that “Turner fulfils practically every aim that the earlier Romantics foreshadowed.” To John Constable (1776–1837), clouds were a Romantic element, and he saw in them “his own transient but aspiring spirit buffeted, shaped and sometimes left floating in peace, but always changing at the whim of exterior forces” [67].

Emerging from its subservient role as a background to paintings of religious and other subjects, landscape painting developed as a subject in its own right through the European schools of the 17th century. Claude Lorraine and Salvatore Rosa of the 17th century had an immense influence in shaping the aesthetic sensibilities in England of the 18th century. The 18th century saw the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque distinguished as distinct aesthetic concepts. Romanticism was followed in France in the later 19th century by Impressionism, which further sought to convey feeling rather than objective fact.

In the 19th century, the schools of art ruled what was acceptable and regarded it as vulgar to paint what one saw; nature had to be improved [1]. However, the Impressionists broke away from this straitjacket, accurately portraying the changing qualities of light but using ordinary subjects from daily life, often painting en plein air.

In the 17th century, landscape painting became well-established, and by the 19th century, Clark regarded landscape painting as that century’s chief artistic creation, recognising the contributions of Turner, Constable, and Wilson and the many Romantic and Impressionist artists.

Art represents the aesthetic preferences of a society, what it likes and dislikes. We have seen how, for Western societies, this has changed over time. The strands of artistic influence, the Italianate classical landscape, the pastoral, the sublime, picturesque, Romanticism, and Impressionism, continue to influence contemporary society. While professional artists seek to strike out to something new, the countless amateur paintings and landscape photographs often reflect these influences.

3.3.2. Parks and Gardens

Before the classical period, in Persia, extensive parks were established. Sitting on the east–west trade routes, the idea of the Persian parks reached Europe. Greek and Roman villas were often surrounded by gardens.

In China and Japan, gardens assumed symbolic significance linked with poetry, providing inspiration for painters. Strict rules governed the placement of rocks, trees, lakes, and other features within the gardens, and their replication in the West can be trite and meaningless, being separated from the culture from which they sprang.

In 710 AD, the Arabs invaded Spain and established Moorish gardens, such as at Alhambra and Generalife in Granada. In the Middle Ages, Christian monasteries were established in Europe that became centres for walled gardens symbolising the Garden of Eden [59]. A well or fountain in the garden was often fashioned to symbolise the rivers that flowed from Eden [11]. The walled garden was derived from the Song of Solomon 4:12, where the virgin bride is described as follows: “You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.” The virgin bride was equated with the Virgin Mary.

By the 15th century, English aristocracy established hunting parks on their properties, with well-spaced trees and clumps providing habitats for deer and rabbits which could be hunted.

Italian gardens were formal prior to the Renaissance, with a central fountain and monastic patio [55]. However, during the Renaissance, these blossomed into major works of art. The Villa d’ Este near Rome, established between 1550 and 1580, made extensive use of fountains, cascades, sprays, and pools. The Renaissance gardens were enclosed by walls with strong axial hedges, paved paths, and ponds connected with fountains.

In 17th century France, country châteaux were built with extensive grounds as the aristocracy sought to outdo each other in the extent and content of their gardens. Covering hundreds of acres, they contained lawns, hedges, and ponds. Some royal parks extended to the horizon, ponds became lakes, paths became avenues, garden temples became palaces, and whole forests were sculptured. The French gardens were seen to reflect the autocratic monarchy.

In contrast, the English looked to the Italian landscape as combining the desired natural and classical associations. Both Manwaring [63] and Hussey [65] argued that the English gardens were based on the Italianate paintings of Lorraine, Rosa, Poussin, and others. The Earl of Halifax’s Stanstead gardens “recall such exact pictures of Claude Lorrain that it is difficult to conceive that he did not paint them from this very spot” [63].

English gardens contained ruins, constructed for the setting and reflecting the Italianate influence. Eighteenth century gardens contained grottos, caves, cliffs, hermitages, waterfalls, statuary, and exotic objects [55].

Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1716–1783) was the outstanding landscape garden designer of the 18th century, responsible for over 200 parks, in which he brought out the “‘capabilities’ he discerned in the chaos of nature” [68]. While his parks brought him great fame, many criticised their monotony and tameness, although his use of water was unexcelled—it “was his boast that Thames could never forgive him for the glories of Blenheim” [63]. His formula was sweeps of lawn, sinuous streams, and clumps of trees arranged to provide vistas beyond with the aim to capture the peace and tranquillity of the classic pastoral scene. Speaking of Capability Brown, one poet wrote of the Italianate influence: “At Blenheim, Croom and Caversham we trace Salvatore’s wildness, Claud’s enlivening grace…” [63].

Parks and gardens are idealized landscapes in a small space. Throughout history, stretching back to Persia, Greece, and Rome to contemporary times, gardens have been significant visible cultural features. The expansive 18th century gardens reflected the English characteristics of benevolence and moderation in contrast to the French formal gardens, representative of autocratic monarchy. The English picturesque gardens of the 18th century derived inspiration and often sought to emulate the paintings of Claude, Salvatore, and Poussin, creating gardens of naturalness, understatement, peace, and contentment that transcended their physical elements. These represented the ideal landscape, replicating the classical images of the Golden Age with their pastoral imagery. They also often replicate the savannah landscapes of grass and trees which were the landscapes of our ancestors.

Today’s parks and gardens reflect these influences, which also extend to our backyards with lawns and trees. There is something very comforting and appealing about parks and gardens to our psyche.

3.3.3. Attitudes Towards Mountains

Western attitudes towards mountains are a societal influence, though it could be argued that they are at the more fundamental level of cultural influence. The attitudes of society towards mountains provide an excellent example of the influence of classicism and teleology and how radically attitudes changed in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Western societies. In 1657, mountains were described with epithets such as “warts, wens, blisters, tumours, imposthumes” (i.e., an abscess), yet a century later in 1769, Thomas Gray wrote of the Scottish Highlands as “the mountains are ecstatic” [60]. These quotes reflect a sea change in attitudes towards mountain landscapes that occurred in the space of a century.

In her book Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, Marjorie Hope Nicolson (1894–1981) traced the reasons for this shift. She considered that the change was the result of “one of the most profound revolutions in thought that has ever occurred.”

Until the mid-17th century, mountains were not featured in art, literature, or poetry except along classical lines. The mountains of Greece—Olympus, Pelion, Ossa, and Helicon—were described as they were imagined, as few writers had actually seen mountains.

The Bible provided the texts that determined attitudes towards mountains. Genesis 1:9–10 described the third day of creation—“And God saw that it was good.” As God said that what He created was good, it should have been a flawless model of perfection. Theologians debated whether mountains were created on the 3rd day or at a later time, which was the dominant view. Because classicism dictated that symmetry, proportion, and restraint determined what was beautiful, God could not have created something as irregular as mountains. Later at the Fall or at the Flood, when sin and judgement entered the world, it was believed that mountains emerged, representing the imperfection of man.

John Bunyan saw mountains as allegories of life and hills symbolised the ups and downs of life, while mountains were proud and valleys humble. In 1401, Adam of Usk had himself blindfolded and carried across St. Gotthard Pass rather than view the horrid peaks. Dr Samuel Johnson described the Pyrenees as “uncouth, huge, monstrous excrescences of Nature.” When in 1644 John Evelyn reached Lake Maggiore, he described the Alps “as if nature had here swept up the rubbish of the Earth in the Alps, to forme and cleare the Plaines of Lombardy.”

Thomas Burnet (1635–1715), an English theologian, wrote a hugely influential book, A Sacred Theory of the Earth (1681), and visited the Alps in 1671. He found the “incredible confusion” appalling, saying that it would have “cost no more to put these things into better Order!” However, despite being horrified by the mountains, he also experienced awe and attraction by their immensity, and he regarded mountains, along with oceans and the cosmos, as giving him pleasure because of their sheer scale. “The greatest Objects of Nature are, methinks, the most pleasing to behold… a pleasing kind of Stupor and Admiration.” While he saw beauty as being based on order and symmetry, mountains represented a vastness, a grandeur that led to contemplation of God and infinity.

“Awe, compounded by mingled terror and exultation, once reserved for God, passed over in the seventeenth century first to an expanded cosmos, then from the macrocosm to the greatest objects in the geocosm—mountains, ocean, desert.” [60].

There was no place in Burnet’s philosophy for beauty to derive from an emotional response; it had to be rationalised, and he therefore linked it with the response to the divine.

On its publication, Burnet’s book had attackers and defenders locked over it. His generation became mountain conscious; hills were described by poets as Burnet mountains. His book led to a new aesthetic, the sublime. Nicolson wrote of “an era that went mad over sublimity.” In Burnet’s lifetime, mountains did not become beautiful, but they did become sublime.

The trickle that Burnet launched in the late 17th century turned into a flood during the following century as more and more travellers to the Alps experienced the dilemma Burnet faced in reconciling their classical upbringing and the Bible with their experiences on the ground. In 1688, John Dennis wrote of his journey across the Alps using phrases such as “wonders, astounding prospects, horrid, hideous ghastly Ruins, monstrous heaps, horrour joined with harmony, a view (that) was altogether new and amazing, a delightful Horrour, a terrible Joy” [69].

In 1699, Joseph Addison (1672–1719) toured the Alps and felt “an agreeable kind of horror” at the vastness of the mountains. Gradually mountains became significant aesthetic objects; while there were reversals to the classical position, a major shift in Western attitudes regarding mountains had begun, and there was no turning back.

In 1765, Thomas Gray visited Scotland and wrote to a friend:

“I am returned from Scotland, charmed with my expedition; it is of the Highlands, … the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year. None but those monstrous creatures of God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror” (Letter to Rev. W. Mason, 1765).

During the 18th century, Genesis was replaced by geology for the explanation of the rocks, the six days of creation were replaced by “long and leisurely earth processes”, and descriptions from observations replaced classical and Biblical descriptions of mountains. Horror and abhorrence of mountains gave way to delight in mountains. Today, Western societies delight in mountainous scenery, which draw tourists and recreationists to enjoy it.

Mountains today represent vast sublime objects that we are astonished by and which we appreciate aesthetically, a position which Western culture was drawn to within the past few hundred years, having rejected the belief of them being the haunts of demons and devils and being scars on God’s creation.

Mountaineers are often at a loss to explain why they climb mountains. “Because it’s there” was Edmund Hillary’s response after climbing Everest. Viewing and climbing mountains is not about conquering them as much as becoming close to them, entering into their realm, and appreciating them for what they are.

3.3.4. Societal Influences Summary

The sections described here cover landscape art, parks and gardens, and attitudes towards mountains. Each of these represent what is preferred in Western societies, and although each has changed and been modified over the centuries, each strongly influences Western landscape preferences today.

3.4. Influences on the Individual

3.4.1. Psychoanalytical Perspectives

Psychoanalytical concepts can offer significant insights into individual perception of objects, elucidating the hidden unconscious influences on human aesthetic preferences. Originating with Sigmund Freud at the end of the 19th century, psychoanalysis defined two fundamental systems operating in the human brain: firstly, the id (unconscious instincts), ego (protecting the individual from the world), and superego (moral conscience and links to parents); secondly, the unconscious (repressed contents and instincts), pre-conscious (knowledge and memories), and conscious (perception of the world and internal perception). The unconscious is derived early in life and harbours desires, fears, and socially unacceptable feelings, many sexual in nature, which affect our conscious thoughts and behaviour.

Two other concepts are fundamental to psychoanalysis. Introjection is the absorption by the ego of external pleasurable objects, ideas, and influences (particularly the mother’s breast), while its opposite, projection, is the ego pushing painful things into the world. These occur from our earliest age and are fundamental to our perception of the world.

The second concept is phantasy, unconscious mental content that may become conscious. Freud found that all conscious thoughts have their origins in the unconscious; “there is no impulse, no instinctual urge or response which is not experienced as unconscious phantasy” [70]. The earliest phantasies are based on taste, smell, and touch as received through the baby’s mouth and lips, later supplemented by sight. An infant sucking their thumb is a phantasy of sucking the breast. Phantasies are significant in perception:

(There is) “a wealth of evidence to show that phantasies are active in the mind long before language has developed, and that even in the adult they continue to operate alongside and independently of words.” [70].

Symbols are central to Freud’s psychoanalysis, involving an object having more than one meaning and representing ideas and fantasies, particularly sexual in nature, of which the viewer is barely aware. Mammary-like hills and phallic-like rock formations are examples. Symbols may, however, be extremely subtle and barely apparent to the consciousness of the viewer. Sachs [71] described the gentle, kind “motherliness of mother” of the Golden Age or Arcadia, a time of fecundity and pleasure with paternal kindness bestowed by a benevolent God.

Several psychoanalysts have applied psychoanalytical concepts to aesthetics, particularly art and proposed models of aesthetics, including Hanns Sachs [71], Anton Ehrenzweig [72], Melanie Klein [73], Meira Likierman [74], and Ellen Spitz [75]. Key outcomes identified by these psychoanalysts are as follows:

• Development of unconscious phantasies, based on introjection of objects and things which give pleasure.
• Symbolism of external objects in terms of an individual’s unconscious sense of meaning.
• Projection of unconscious feelings and phantasies onto external objects as representative of these.
• Sublimation of socially unacceptable unconscious feelings and drives in socially acceptable ways such as through art, sport, recreation, and other pursuits.
• Softening the superego’s censorial role in the presence of aesthetic pleasure.
• The aesthetic equated with the good or ideal object.
• Pleasure from an aesthetic object gained without its consumption.

Several psychoanalysts have applied psychoanalytical concepts to aesthetics, particularly art, and proposed models of aesthetics, including Hanns Sachs [71], Anton Ehrenzweig [72], Melanie Klein [73], Meira Likierman [74], and Ellen Spitz [75]. Key outcomes identified by these psychoanalysts are as follows:

Psychoanalysis provides rich insights into the underlying human perception of aesthetics, but it does not provide a means for verifying its findings [76]. Kline [77] considers it a “huge collection of empirical hypotheses and propositions some of which may be true.” Despite these constraints, psychoanalysis does offer insights into the human perceptions of aesthetics and reinforces the significance of individual differences.

At infancy, maternal characteristics of warmth, roundness, closeness, and peace derive from the infant’s association with the mother, but as noted by Isaacs [70], words do not convey the full richness of experiences. These qualities are introjected into the ego (i.e., consciousness) along with socially unacceptable feelings introjected into the unconscious (id). Over time, with further inputs, phantasies develop, which reinforce their strength and influence on the unconscious mind and form a reservoir of unconscious experiences from which the conscious mind draws when viewing landscapes. Maternal characteristics such as envelopment, roundness, serenity, and fecundity are viewed positively.

Likierman [74] considered that the aesthetic experience commences from birth and, being independent of utility, parallels Kant’s concept of beauty, being “purposivenesss without purpose”. Spitz [75] wrote “any value which the individual places on a non- functional, non-need fulfilling quality of the object is necessarily aesthetic.” Beauty is a quality not given, consumed, or possessed; it is the quality that the object “keeps to itself and represents its essential ‘otherness,’ … its unique identity.”

In summary, the psychoanalytic model is based on the development of unconscious experiences in infancy, which provide the material for later development of phantasy. When viewing landscapes, these unconscious experiences influence our perception, and we recognise their symbolic content. The model’s insights assist in understanding the landscapes that humans find attractive, because they trigger hidden memories.

3.4.2. Neuroaesthetics

Recent decades have seen the emergence of neuroaesthetics, the science of the biological basis of the aesthetic experience—where and how the brain experiences aesthetic objects. The means of measuring responses goes beyond the physiological tools used by Ulrich, which are applied externally. The non-invasive tools of studying the brain’s reaction include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), event-related potential or the electro-physiological response (ERP), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), and neuropsychology.

The location of experiencing landscape paintings has been found to be the parahippocampal gyrus, which surrounds the hippocampus at the base of the brain. The judgement of whether a scene is beautiful occurs at the front of the brain, in the medial orbito-frontal cortex. The perception of an aesthetic object activates the brain’s reward system. The reward system involves the release of dopamine, which is the main neuro-transmitter involved in pleasure. Dopamine has been called the “feel-good” hormone, which gives a sense of pleasure from eating, drinking, having sex, and even enjoying scenery that one finds beautiful. Dopamine is made by the adrenal gland on top of the kidneys and is released into the bloodstream.

Using a wide range of scenes including rooms, city streets, and natural landscapes, Yue et al. [78] found that viewing highly preferred scenes was pleasurable and produced greater blood oxygen level-dependent responses in the right parahippocampal cortex. Jacques [79] observed that while neuroaesthetics has concentrated principally on art objects with little attention to landscapes, “there appears to be no theoretical obstacle to the entry of the findings of neuroaesthetics into the landscape arena.”

Familiarity with a landscape has been found to increase ratings slightly, and research by Leder et al. [80] included familiarity as part of implicit memory integration in sensory processing.

Finding the locus of the aesthetic response suggests a brain centre of aesthetics, related to the perception of beauty. However, Semir Zeki of the University College, London, the founder of neuroaesthetics, stated the following:

“Anatomical evidence shows that there is no single area to which all of the specialized visual areas connect, which would enable it to act as an integrator capable of binding signals coming from all of the different visual sources.” [81].

Neuroaesthetics offers tantalising glimpses into the inner workings of the brain in relation to aesthetic objects, and it may provide keys to understanding landscape preferences. The landscapes humans find attractive trigger an emotional delight, which releases dopamine into our system.

3.4.3. Water, the Secret Ingredient

The presence of water has an inordinate influence far beyond its extent in enhancing landscape quality; even a tiny glimpse of water lifts ratings. Many studies have established the significant and positive influence that water has on individual preferences, including [23,29,32,82,83,84,85].

Explanations for the extraordinary influence that water has on humans include that it is essential for human survival [8] or is biologically based on our evolutionary past. Adevi and Grahn [6] noted that “some researchers relate humans’ preferences for water to the notion that humans are genetically predisposed to a life near water.” “Viewing water in the landscape has been found to have beneficial psychophysiological effects, potentially serving important restorative health needs.” [84].

Water has substantial utility value, including for drinking, washing, cooking, transport, fishing, recreation, industry, and hydro-energy; but these uses are unrelated to its aesthetic value. To the Greeks, water was the mythical “fountain of youth”. Historically, water has important religious significance, including for baptism for Christians, immersion prior to marriage for Jews and Moslems, and cleansing the body prior to burial [84].

These reasons—evolutionary, cultural, religious, and utility—do not provide sufficient gravitas to explain the extraordinary attachment that humans have for water and the positive role it plays in aesthetic preferences.

An alternative hypothesis by the author [35] is based on all humans starting life in the womb, surrounded by amniotic fluid, 99% water, which protects the foetus from external injuries and impacts, helps to maintain an even temperature in the womb, and enables the foetus to move freely within the womb, which is vital for its symmetrical external growth. The foetus registers the environment from the middle of the second trimester, around 20 weeks gestation, and through its developing senses of hearing, touch, and possibly smell, it registers the amniotic fluid in which it grows. The first experience of the world outside itself is thus of water. From 16 weeks, the foetus can hear sounds, the sounds of the mother’s stomach, the whoosh of air in and out of the mother’s lungs, and the sloshing of the amniotic fluid in the womb. These watery sounds imprint on the developing baby and later, after birth, the individual is subconsciously reminded of it by the gurgling of water in rivers, waterfalls, and fountains.

Every human has experienced the pre-birth womb environment and the imprint of water on their subconscious. This pre-natal in-utero experience of the amniotic fluid is hypothesized to provide the foundation for the human delight of water. From psychoanalysis, we know that early experiences have an extraordinary influence on the unconscious of which later in life we are scarcely aware. Our delight with water may all stem from the positive pre-cognitive experience of water gained in the womb.

Evidence for the hypothesis may be gained from the appeal of water to children. Zube et al. [86] found for landscapes with water, the highest preferences were among children aged 6 to 8 years. In a study in Japan, both children and adults were provided with cameras to record the river environment [87]. While 29% of adult photos were of water, for children it was 54%. Children focused on water quality rather than flow. His findings reinforce the strong attraction of children to water, which wanes, though is still significant, in adulthood.

In the context of exploring why landscapes are esteemed, this hypothesis provides a possible explanation for the water component of landscapes. Landscape surveys find that water always produces positive responses, and its universality lends support to this hypothesis. Being triggered pre-birth, our love of water is universal and common to all humankind. Although with its universal nature it could be placed at the innate level, it is placed at the individual level, as its influence is not evolutionary-based.

3.4.4. Contemporary Landscape Preferences

The findings of the many studies of individual landscape preferences, undertaken over the past fifty years, include the following. Note that the author has published in all of these areas: see Projects—The science of scenery.

• Landform height, steepness, rockiness, and scale all enhance landscape quality ([88,89,90,91,92]).
• Natural and agricultural land uses are invariably preferred to urban, industrial, or commercial uses ([93,94]).
• Trees enhance the landscape and convey significant psychological and physiological benefits ([95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103]).
• Water has a profound and positive effect on landscape preferences, probably the greatest of all landscape components, and is enhanced by its visual significance, length of water edge and area, reflections, waves, cleanliness, naturalness, and colour ([104,105,106,107,108,109]).
• The naturalness of the coast and sea, rivers and lakes, mountains and hills, and trees and forest enhance landscape quality ([110,111,112,113,114,115]).
• Diversity in the landscape positively enhances landscape quality ([116,117,118,119,120,121]).
• Colours can enhance landscape quality ([122,123]).
• Familiarity with a landscape generally enhances preferences ([115]).

Each of these are the product of the range of influences—innate, cultural, societal, and individual. They reflect, for example, in the shift in the Western view of mountains as being attractive, in the delight in parks and gardens in our cities, and in the positive response that water always engenders.

3.4.5. Individual Influences Summary

Individual influences include psychoanalytical perspectives, neuroaesthetics, how we view water, and landscape preferences as derived from contemporary surveys. These all influence the individual, though they are generally the culmination of the innate, cultural, and societal influences that have gone before.

4. Discussion

4.1. Summary

This paper has covered a wide range of ideas, time, and space, the influences of which have been transmitted to contemporary Western society. These were assigned to four realms of influence: innate, cultural, societal, and individual.

Innate influences included the theories of landscape aesthetics, philosophical views of aesthetics, and Gestalt theory. Theories of landscape aesthetics are based on the landscape’s survival-enhancing properties. The range of theories help to explain aspects of landscape preferences but fall short of an all-encompassing theory that comprehensively informs human landscape preferences.

Philosophers have long been interested in the concept of beauty, and whereas philosophers from the time of the Greeks through to the 18th century regarded beauty as inherent in the object, from the 18th century on, they have mostly regarded beauty as perceived by one’s senses, particularly sight, as interpreted by the brain. This was a major shift, from regarding landscape beauty objectively as an inherent quality to understanding it to be a subjective quality in the eye of the beholder. Gestalt, the whole being more than the sum of its parts, applies to how a landscape is viewed in its totality, not by segmenting it into its constituent parts.

Cultural influences are traced by the legend of Arcadia and the Golden Age, followed by Classicism’s battle cry to follow nature with an aesthetic of formal harmony, balance, proportion, and understatement. Up to the mid-19th century, teleology, the evidence for design in nature, had a strong influence.

Societal influences are evident in the development of landscape art and of parks and gardens. Attitudes towards mountains also reflect societal influence. While landscapes originally provided backdrops in religious paintings, by the 17th century, landscape painting emerged in its own right. Claude Lorraine, Salvatore Rosa, and other Italianate artists had immense influence on England’s aesthetics. It saw the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque develop as aesthetic concepts followed in the 19th century by Romanticism. Parks and gardens are idealized landscapes in a small space and have long held an important place in Western culture, as reflected in their contemporary prominence.

The influences of classicism and teleology were evident in society’s changed attitudes to mountains, from being hideous objects symbolic of man’s fallen nature to becoming significant aesthetic objects that gave rise to the sublime, immense objects made by God or man.

A powerful influence on the individual is Freud’s psychoanalytical model, which focused on the significant influence that unconscious experiences in infancy have on a person’s later life.

Neuroaesthetics has identified the areas of the brain that respond to aesthetic objects, releasing dopamine into the bloodstream, which rewards the brain. Humans’ extraordinary affinity with water may derive from the imprint of water on the unconscious mind during every human’s gestation, enclosed in watery amniotic fluid in the womb for nine months.

Over the past 50 years, much research of landscape quality preferences has been carried out and has quantified these preferences and their influences on individual landscape preferences. The influence of landform, land cover, land use, water, naturalness, diversity, colour, and many other factors have been assessed for a range of landscapes and much knowledge gained.

4.2. Realms of Influence

How do all these influences translate into explaining human landscape preferences? It is apparent that no single answer will suffice, but rather there are areas of influence on human preferences, some of which we are aware, but many of which are hidden in the unconscious. These are assigned into four realms of influence on landscape quality preferences: innate (or evolutionary), cultural, societal, and individual. While the cultural and societal influences are well-documented and are largely historical, the evolutionary and individual influences are largely hidden from view. The strength of these influences varies widely and is difficult to separate and quantify.

Table 3. Summary of influences on landscape quality preferences.

Source	Content	Preferences	Realms of Influence
Habitat theory, Orians	Savannah parklike	Agricultural land uses Species-rich, diverse landscapes Trees Moderate tree density Deciduous trees Visually significant water Natural appearance Visually diverse	Innate
Prospect–refuge theory, Appleton	Prospects—hills, mountains	High, steep, rocky mountains Trees Moderate tree density Natural appearance Visually diverse	Innate
Affective theory, Ulrich	Nature and natural landscapes	High, steep, rocky mountains Natural and agricultural land uses Visually significant water Natural appearance Visually diverse Colourful	Innate
Information processing theory, Kaplan	Coherence and legibility	High, steep, rocky mountains Trees Moderate tree density Visually significant water Colourful	Innate
	Complexity and mystery	Visually diverse A few clouds	Innate
Philosophy	Beauty in the eye of the beholder, not in the landscape		Innate
Gestalt	Good Gestalt	Trees Moderate tree density Visually significant water Natural appearance	Innate
Golden Age Arcadia	Innocent simplicity	Natural and agricultural land uses Species-rich, diverse landscapes Trees Deciduous trees Natural appearance Natural sounds	Cultural
Classicism	Orderly, balanced, harmonious	Trees Moderate tree density Deciduous trees	Cultural
Teleology	Lifts spirits	Landscape vastness	Cultural
Sublime	Vast objects	High, steep, rocky mountains Visually diverse Natural appearance	Cultural
Artistic conventions	Beautiful, picturesque, and Romantic	High, steep, rocky mountains Trees Moderate tree density Deciduous trees Visually significant water Visually diverse Colour	Societal
Parks and gardens	Classical pastoral images and savannah	Species-rich, diverse meadows Trees and hedgerows Moderate tree density Deciduous trees Visually significant water Visually diverse Colourful	Societal
Psychoanalytical theory	Unconscious experiences in infancy	Envelopment, roundness, serenity, and fecundity Round hills and steep mountains	Individual
Neuroaesthetics	Aesthetic objects reward the brain.	Symmetry and familiarity	Individual
Pre-birth	Watery amniotic fluid	Visually significant water	Individual

summarises the influences on landscape quality preferences—innate, culture, society, and individual. The Source column comprises the list of sixteen influences, while the Preferences column inserts the appropriate items from contemporary research. Figure 3 summarizes the model.

The lowest layer, innate, applies to all humanity and is expressed through preferences for savannah or pastoral landscapes, for natural landscapes, and in the terms of Kaplans, understanding and exploring the landscape. It also reflects the preferences for species-rich and visually diverse landscapes. The philosophical approach to aesthetics and the Gestalt influence are also classified as innate.

The second layer covers the influence of culture and includes the preference for the beautiful, picturesque, sublime, and Romantic landscapes and of classicism, the Golden Age, and teleology.

The third layer refers to society and its influence within a culture.

The top layer represents the individual who is influenced in turn by their society, culture, and innate factors. Also affecting the individual are their psychoanalytical experiences as an infant, in-utero experiences (i.e., in water), and the influence of neuroaesthetics.

The answer to the question, why do humans find landscapes attractive, rests on the combined influence of each of these factors, from those innate to all humanity through to experiences of the individual in infancy. For many of these factors, humans have no conscious awareness. The model indicates that for people within a particular culture and society, the response to landscapes will be similar, differentiated only at the individual level. This accords with findings in landscape surveys, where the preferences of a wide range of respondents are similar—not identical but close to each other.

There are limitations to this model. There may be additional influences not considered here, and these may provide a fruitful area for future research. The relationships between and among them deserve closer examination. The strength of each influence has not been gauged; some of them might be very weak while others may be very strong—measuring their influence quantitatively would be a worthwhile endeavour for research. Tracing the influence of the innate factors across cultures and societies would be of great interest.

5. Conclusions

If the source of human appreciation of landscape quality derives from these influences, what are the implications? For research, it suggests the need to broaden the ambit of research to focus on these influences and to assess and quantify their contributions to landscape quality perception.

A full theory of landscape aesthetics must encompass all possible influences on preferences, not just the traditional ones but also the additional influences of the unconscious and neuroaesthetics. While landscape theorists have conducted research to assess the validity of their theories, such research should be expanded to assess the contribution of the unconscious and of neuroaesthetics on landscape preferences.

Such research also needs to assess the varying strength of these influences by age, gender, ethnicity, and culture. There are indications, for example, that water has a stronger influence on children’s preferences compared with adults. Is this universal? Does neuroaesthetics apply only to adults, to both genders, or to all cultures?

The failure of current theories to provide an all-encompassing theory of landscape aesthetics is due to the narrowness of their ambit of influences—Orians’s focus is solely on evolutionary influences, Appleton’s on prospects and refuges, Ulrich’s on the restorative influence of nature, and Kaplan’s on extracting information from the environment. Theoretical development needs to encompass all possible influences and provide a rationale for their contribution.

Through agreement on identifying the relevant influences and expanding to include additional influences, scholars can progress in developing a theoretical model to explain landscape preferences for all peoples, cultures, and societies.