Are Poplar Plantations Really Beautiful? On Allen Carlson’s Aesthetics of Agricultural Landscapes and Environmentalism

Abstract

Allen Carlson’s aesthetics of nature contends that a deepening in the scientific knowledge of natural objects and environments is required to achieve an appropriate aesthetic appreciation of them. This ‘scientific cognitivism’ is often presented as supporting the emergence and development of environmental awareness, as well as a theory consistent with the requirements of environmentalism that have been set out by Carlson himself. But Carlson’s view about the aesthetic appreciation of contemporary agricultural landscapes gives more relevance to their functional fitness for human purposes than to scientific cognitivism. It will be shown here how this different treatment weakens the link between Carlson’s work and his requirements of environmentalism.