Review Of Allen Carlson’s Environment Aesthetics

The rise of the environmental aesthetics has its specific reasons, with the continuous development of society, environmental problems have become more and more serious. In order to solve the environmental crisis, people made various environmental movement, and began to study the scientific theories about the environment, so that the environmental aesthetics was able to produce and get rapid development. At the same time, the aesthetics itself has been developing constantly, the environment has gradually become an important area of the aesthetics research, and people began to realize the important aesthetic value of the natural objects, so that the environmental aesthetics is very necessary to emerge.This thesis mainly analyzes the thoughts of Allen Carlson’s environmental aesthetics. Firstly, the thesis make a study of Allen Carlson’s natural environment aesthetic, which is including the analysis of the environmental model and the positive aesthetics. Allen Carlson puts forward his own environmental model by criticizing the object model and the landscape model, meanwhile, Allen Carlson has emphasized the vital function of the scientific knowledge, so that Allen Carlson’s natural theory is also known as "scientific cognitivism" theory. In the process of demonstrating the positive aesthetics, Allen Carlson find a reasonable argument with the help of scientific knowledge. Allen Carlson thinks that the scientific knowledge provides the appropriate category for the natural environment aesthetic, and puts an argument of the "natural perfection" positive aesthetics. Secondly, the human environment aesthetic is also called the people’s daily living environment.In the aspects of the human environment aesthetic, Allen Carlson mainly analyzes the appreciation ways of the architecture, agricultural landscape and gardens. Allen Carlson puts forward that people should using the "ecological method" to appreciate the daily living environment, the "functional adaptation" concept in the method shows a creative significance for the human environment aesthetic appreciation. The thesis analyzes the aesthetic appreciation principles and characteristics of Allen Carlson’s environmental aesthetics, Allen Carlson arguments that people should against to the formalism and insist on the scientific cognitivism when appreciating the environment, so that Allen Carlson’s thoughts show an environmental concept of objectivist position and an tendency of antihumanism.As one important apart of the western aesthetics, Allen Carlson’s environment aesthetics has its value for that it make a so important contribution to the development of the environment aesthetics. However, there are also some things that we should think over seriously. The systematic study of Allen Carlson’s thoughts is very helpful for people to make a reflection and adjustment when they do the appreciation activities, while the study of Allen Carlson’s thoughts also make a theoretical guidance role of the environment protect movement. Considering the development of all the environment aesthetics, it is also very important and necessary to study Allen Carlson’s environment aesthetics thoughts.