On the Landscape Experience 1

di Jorge D. Goldfarb
1. Introduction
The present essay is intended as an exploration of the so-called 'landscape experience' 1a . I use the
word exploration in its meaning of to go to a place that is not well known to find out more about it.
Note that the intention is 'to find more about it', not to find out what it is in the sense of aiming at
definitions or well delimited concepts.
If we accept Cosgrove's assertion that "landscape denotes the external world mediated through
subjective human experience in a way that neither region or area immediately suggest"2 , we are led to
conclude that without that "subjective human experience" the notion of landscape as distinct from that
of area, region and, especially, of space, looses its foundations. Moreover, said experience is
primordial to such activities as landscape contemplation, admiration, valuation, appreciation and other
related ones. Hence what I would call the centrality of the landscape experience.
The term 'landscape experience' is frequently taken up in the relevant literature as a given, under
the implicit assumption that the pertinent questions have already been answered; on close examination
it appears that they haven't. This state of affairs is regrettable because an understanding of the
landscape experience is crucial for the understanding of the notion of landscape; but it even goes
further than that: it may be said that landscapes become, come to be, as a result of a human
experience.
I should make explicit at the start that I don't consider it as a given but as a notion wide open to
questions of the sort of -- what is it to experience a landscape? And, even -- is there such a thing as
the experience of landscape? The latter taken to mean-- can it be clearly differentiated from the
closely related experiences of place or of space? This differentiation requires from the notion of
landscape experience to have certain <<distinct and circumscribed meaning of its own>> 3. To
examine whether this is so will be the main concern of the present exploration.
Some words about the region I am setting out to explore: this region may be situated at the place of
the confluence of discourses on Place, Space, Landscape and Experience.(note: initial capitals will be
used throughout for terms as notions, concepts or categories; terms without capitals will refer to
particular instances). Discourses on Place are a sort of foundation of all the rest. This because I
subscribe to J. Malpas' perspective: "all experience begins in place and place and experience are
intrinsically related" and "place is central to the very possibility of human experience at all. We
couldn't speak of experience without speaking of place."4
_____________________
1 This article was published in Dare Senso al Paesaggio,Vol I, a cura di Luca Vargiu, Mimesis Edizione, Milano, 2015.
An online, far more extended, version of this article may be read at read on line at:
http://www.freewebs.com/jorgeg/on-landscape-experience.
1a In J. Appleton, The Experience of Landscape, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (1996) this subject is treated along a sociobiological approach, a focus altogether different from the one presented here.
2 D.E. Cosgrove , Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, Wisconsin Univ. Press, Wisconsin 1998, p.13
3 P. Haezrahi, The Contemplative Activity, Allen and Unwinn, London 1954, pp. 3-5. Haezrahi poses similar questions regarding
the aesthetic experience; she enumerates a number of requirements leading to a positive answer, the most problematic for a landscape
experience being the one quoted.
4 J. Malpas, Place and Experience. A Philosophical Topography, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 2007.

Discourses on Space are intertwined with those of Place, so much so that in many cases both terms
are used interchangeably. This markedly so in discourses on human space (or life space), as distinct
from absolute space, the mathematical space of Classical Mechanics, (Newtonian space in the
following). Place and human or lived space are so inextricably linked that in the following whenever I
wrote 'space' I could have written 'place' instead and we wouldn't be any wiser for the substitution. If I
use here the term space more frequently than place it is only because place usually carries with it a
certain connotation of closure while space (in common with landscape) is frequently associated with
extendedness 5
Regarding discourses on landscapes: in the later decades we have witnessed what Tanca
aptly calls a <<frenetica moltiplicazione dei discursi sul paesagggio>> 6. This heightened
attention to the question of Landscape in a number of disciplines makes even more pressing
the need of thorough discussions on basic principles which may play an unifying role for the
diversity of discourse. Borrowing from Thrift 7 we can say that we are dealing here with <<a
series of overlapping, contending and colliding discourses that seek in various ways and for
various purposes to make landscape intelligible>>. I believe that landscape experience can
play a major role as affording a common ground on which contending and colliding
discourses may be compared and contrasted.7 It may be said that in each of the various
landscape discourses we can discern a particular, peculiar view of what a landscape
experience may be, so that discourses that collide or conflict with each other differ in their
understanding of the landscape experience.
2. On Direct Experiences and their Descriptions
An exploration starts from somewhere and I think that a promising place to start is the one
where the distinction is made between an immediate or direct experience and its description
or account. By 'immediate experience' we mean what we experience directly, not mediated by
sense-data or adverbial contents. It plays a prominent role in John Deweys writings on
Experience and for him what is fundamental is <<the contrast between gross, macroscopic,
crude subject matters in primary experience and the refined, derived objects of reflection.
The distinction is one between what is experienced as the result of a minimum of incidental
reflection and what is experienced in consequence of continued and regulated reflective
inquiry. For derived and refined products are experienced only because of the intervention of
systematic thinking>> 8
Regarding those primary or immediate experiences we have to take into account the
question of its personification, individuality or subjectivity. What William James famously
wrote about thoughts 9 is acutely valid for immediate or direct experience, so that,
paraphrasing his one may write:
_____________________
5 J. Malpas (2012), Putting Space in Place: philosophical topography and relational geography, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 30, pp. 226-242
6 M. Tanca, L'essere che non puo esser detto, e paesaggio, in Sguardi sul paesaggio, sguardi sul mondo., a cura di S.
Aru et al., Franco Angeli, Milano 2012, p.66
7 N. Thrift, Non Representational Theory. Space, Politics, Affect, Routledge, Oxford 2007.
In J. Goldfarbhttp://www.fux.com/video/222885, I stressed the need of a common plane for contrasting landscape discourses
to confront Thrifts criticism of the social sciences.
8 For a clear critical discussion of Deweys thoughts on Experience see: J. Buchler, Nature and Judgement, Grosset

and Dunlap, New York, 1966, pp. 102-152.

9 W. James, The Principles of Psychology, (1890) Vol I, Cosimo Inc. New York, 2007, p.225

At any moment, everywhere in the world, we experience this or that, but my experience
belongs with my other experiences and your experience belongs with your other experiences.
There are no experiences floating as mere experiences that belong to no one (or, if there are,
we have no means to know). Thus, every experience is owned by someone in the sense that
they belong to the minds of specific personal minds.
To this immediate experience, that which a particular someone directly experiences at a
given moment in time and at a given place, we only have a precarious access. Why this
precariousness? A number of factors are at play here, namely --a) The experience we are
trying to recall is perforce already in the past and, from the multiplicity of sensations,
thoughts and emotions, that conformed our past experience we have to extract from our
memory, at least the most salient. b) We have to put those recalled aspects of the past
experience into words and we all know how inadequate language is, especially for describing
sensations and emotions. Although we know truthfully in our minds what and how we felt
moments ago, the problems arise when we search for the adequate words necessary to
communicate to our fellows (and even to ourselves) what we then thought and felt. We are all
aware that association of words with thoughts and, even more, with feelings is a translation
process filled with flaws. c) We usually engage in some sort of self-censorship to filter out
what we consider improper to tell to others.
When we attempt to communicate what we thought and felt in an encounter with a
landscape we usually first reflect upon it and then we construe a description or account of the
experience. It is not the immediate experience that is shared with others, either by written text
or speech, but its description. For the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph there is
bound to be quite a wide gap between the two.
The various discourses are built from descriptions or accounts of experiences. For the
reasons mentioned above, these descriptions are somewhat in the nature of fiction so that
landscape discourses may be considered largely as works of fiction, This qualification
should not be taken at all as derogative; after all History, the Arts and Literature are as well
largely fictional in character. But it should serve though as a cautionary note, worth keeping
in mind, whenever we talk about the experience of landscape and, particularly, in that field of
research, within Landscape Studies, which pursues the aim of a Science of Landscape.
3. Landscape as object of the experience
As Husserl puts it, <<an experience is always an experience of something>> 10. In our
case the thing experienced is a landscape. Here we must confront a somewhat serious issue.
Faced with the question what is it to have had a landscape experience? the first obstacle we
must confront concerns the objet of the experience . Since Landscape is a markedly vague
notion, this vagueness and ambiguity has the effect of making opaque, the very notion of
landscape experience.
__________________________

10

E. Husserl , Experience and Judgement, North Western Univ, Press, Illinois 1997, p.132

Moreover, in recent times there has been a turn in various disciplines in which landscape
plays an important role, towards discourses like landscapes of power, of alienation, of war, of
colonization, etc.11 A consequence of this turn is that Landscape as a category must we
widened to include instances which previously were not considered as such. This poses a
challenge to previous understandings of the landscape experience, prevalent up to the first
decades of the 20th century and, concomitantly, to landscape criticism and appreciation.
We can face the challenge posed by this widening of our conceptualization of landscape in
a number of ways: a) by restricting ourselves to particular, often stipulative, definitions
which, in turn, entail well delimited concepts of Landscape; b) to abide with the vagueness
and ambiguity and make the most of the opaqueness of the notion of Landscape and that of
its experience c) to opt for a middle ground between the two.
In my view alternative a) evades the problem because, so far, we have been unable to reach
consensus within the academic circles regarding a definition and, with so many of them
going around, we'd be still left with a multiplicity of kinds or types of landscape experiences.
The b) alternative has quite an appeal because it is the very diversity of meanings and
understandings of landscape what makes Landscape such a rich and widespread notion. Its
drawback though is that it entails taking the risk that too many things may be considered as
landscapes i.e., those stemming from metaphorical use of the term like the molecular,
economic, political or mental landscapes. When the extension of a category is much too
large we ran the risk of ending with a useless one.
The dilemma between those two alternative approaches is in many ways a reflection of a
problematic that Clara Incani treats as a dilemma between the foci of <<consistenza and
inconsistenza del paesaggio>> 12. It may be said that those scholars aligning with consistenza
tend to favour the first alternative, whereas those aligning with inconsistenza tend to go along
with the second.
This problematic is not unique to Landscape; it appears in other important fields of
enquiry. The experience of Art, for instance, faces the question of what is 'a work of art' as
the thing to be experienced and in that field the debate over alternatives a) and b) is still
ardently carried on. Here, alternative c) that of a middle ground has been taken up by B. Gaut
in the form of a cluster concept13. I mention it here because it is an approach that can prove
fruitful if applied to landscape. Its adoption would entail, first, making lists of properties of
landscape taken up from the various definitions that have been proposed; to preserve
eclecticism, the larger the number of properties, the better. Second, to give relative weights to
certain items in the list according to one's preferred landscape theories or according to the
context or field of enquiry one is dealing with. For instance, in the context of Experience and,
given my views on the centrality of the spatial experience, I would give relative large weights
_______________________
11 Only a few selected references are given here: S. Zukin, Landscapes of Power. From Detroit to Disney World,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993.- J. Duncan, C, Nuala, R. Schein, A Companion to Cultural Geography,
Blackwell Publ., Oxford 2004.- W. J. Mitchell, Landscapes and Power, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002.- S. Shubin,
(20011), Living on the Move, Population, Space and Place, 18:5, 617-626.- C. Pow (2009), Good and Real Landscapes,
Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 91: 2, 91-105.
12 C. Incani, Sul Passage. Ancora una tessera per un mosaico infinito,in Sguardi sul paesaggio, sguardi sul mondo., a
cura di S. Aru et al., Franco Angeli, Milano 2012, p. 913 B. Gaut (2003), The Cluster Account Defended, British J. of Aesthetics, 45:3, 273-288.
14
This may be taken up as well as the most basic meaning of the term, in the sense that, while not in contradiction
with the large majority of other discerned meanings, leaves the gate open wide enough to admit a wide variety of instances
(the multiplicity referred to above) but not enough so that everything goes (like in the case of certain postmodernist

meanings of discourses and texts)

to two properties from the following positive characterization: unbounded space as

experienced or, shorter, experienced unbounded spaces.14 (Unbounded should not be
confused with infinite space since even the most extended panoramic view is always bounded by
the horizon lines.)

As Ive suggested elsewhere 15, Gaut's approach may be considered as a special case of the
Prototype Theory of Concepts and thus it may be complemented by two central notions of
said theory: 'typicality' and 'graded membership'. As distinct from formal or classical
categories in which all members have the same status, within prototype theory the status
varies so that some members are better cases than others. Graded membership, as the name
indicates, results in that some cases are 'good examples' (close to the prototypes), while
others are 'poor examples'.

4. On Experienced Spaces
In the footsteps of science and painting, philosophy and above all, psychology seem
to have woken up to the fact that our relationship to space is not that of a pure
disembodied subject to a distant object but rather that of a being which dwells in space
relating to its natural habitat.(Merleau-Ponty) 17 (my underlining)
As mentioned above throughout this essay I consider space as human lived space, a notion
with markedly different features than those of Newtonian space. An unbounded space may be
out there in the world, unnoticed by human beings but still not a landscape. It becomes,
comes to be a landscape (in the Bergsonian sense of becoming) when the space is
experienced by humans.18
I adopt in the following ideas from Bollnow on human lived spaces 19 His central notion is
what he calls experienced space' whose main distinctive features are: I) It has a distinct centre:
"the location of the experiencing human being." II) Areas and locations in it have qualitative
differences which give to the space an inner structure.
Regarding I) the distinct centre: In contrast to the homogeneity of the Newtonian space,
experienced space is characterized by its lack of homogeneity. Whilst in the former the three
axial directions have the same quality in the latter we have directions of different quality,
directions which are inextricably linked with the relationship of the human being with space (as
highlighted by Merleau-Ponty in the above quote). We can discern 3 pairs of axial directions the
________________________
15 J. Goldfarb, Landscape Genres and Prototype Theory (2011). Online at this URL:
http://landsgenre.webs.com/landsgenresprototypes.htm
16 J. Hampton(2007), Typicality. Graded Membership and Vagueness, Cognitive Science 31, 355-383
From Hampton: << Vagueness generally relates to the question of whether or not, and to what degree, an instance falls
within a conceptual category>>. << Gradedness, or ,ore precisely, the degree of membership M,is defined as an index of this
gradation, with continuous values ranging from 0 to 1. Tipicality (T), on the other hand reflects how representative an
exemplar is of a category>> The measure T is then primarily an index of the degree of similarity of an instance with the
prototype.
17 M. Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, Routledge, NewYork,(2005), p.55
18 True, the landscape experience is a complex one; other elements are thrown into the bin during the process: poems,
melodies, remembrances, anger, frustration, joy and notably the sense of beauty or lack of it. But all these and many others
are in the role of invited guests ; if in particular circumstances they assume the role of hosts then the experience ceases to be
that of a landscape experience and turns into a religious or a poetical or a historical , etc. experience.

19

O. Bollnow Human Space, translation by C, Shuttleworth, Hyphen Press, London 2011.

centre of which is the location of the human being who is experiencing the space:
right and left, front and back and above and below. To each being we can ascribe then a
different experienced space; there is not one, like in Newtonian space, but a large multiplicity
of spaces corresponding to the various human beings embedded in the landscape.
Regarding II) the structure of experienced space: We must now probe deeper into what
Bollnow calls the inner structure of experienced space. <<Based on their relationships a
structure of experienced space is built up, rich in content, for which there is no analogy in
mathematical space>> 19. This inner structure is not something inherent to a particular space,
but we, as humans from a particular culture, do structure it. To structure human space is a
way of making sense of it. We do this partly by discerning form and composition, a
composition which is largely influenced by the nearness and the distance of things. In this
regard, Schellenbergs distinction between intrinsic and situational properties can prove a
useful complement for the analysis of the structure 20. We also structure experienced space
by ascribing meanings to selected elements of the perceived scene, which makes some more
important or interesting than others, and hence more prominent or outstanding.
Among the various modes of structuring of experienced space suggested by Bollnow, his
mood space merits extended comment because of its relevance to experiencing landscapes.
As considered by Heidegger, who introduced it as a basic philosophical component, mood
proves as a suitable point of departure for it still lies before the formation of a distinction
between the subject and the object of an experience. Needless to say, Newtonian space is not
affected by the mood of the observer, whilst experienced space is very much so. A number of
external conditions may have a cheering, bright, oppressive or distressing effect on a person.
But at the same time man himself is governed from within by a certain mood (we can be in
this or that mood but never in no mood at all) and is inclined to transfer this to the
surrounding space (a transference which is largely subconscious). Although one talks of a
mood of the human temperament as well as of the mood of a landscape, or of a place, 21 both
are, strictly speaking, only two aspects of the same phenomenon.
Bollnows mood space is particularly relevant to the question of landscape experience
because, as I contend below, it is the affective content of the experience the one that could be
said to support the notion of a landscape experience as distinct from a more general space
experience. But before going into the emotional aspects of the experience, an analysis of the
what as different from the how of the experience according to Husserls views may serve to
clarify.
In Husserl's writings the noemic focus is used to designate the directional element of
experience; it refers then to the object, the what, to which we direct our attention. This as
distinguished from the noetic focus which involves the referential elements of the experience,
that is to say those dealing with how each individual's various cognitive and affective biases
add further elements of meaning to the experience. It should always be kept in mind though
that we cannot approach any experience in our life, past or present, without instantaneously
evoking both foci.22
In the case of experienced space the noema, the what to which we direct our attention,
would correspond to the various included objects on which we might centre our attention
___________________________
20 S. Schellenberg (2008), The Situation-Dependency of Perception, The Journal of Philosophy CV, 2, 55-84
21 C. Manzo (2003), Beyond House and Heaven, toward a revisioning of emotional relationship with places, Journal of
Environmental Psychology 23, 4761
22 E. Spinelli, The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology, Sage Publ., London, 2005,p.16

together with certain aspects of its structure; (the perception of space as hodological may be
conceived as noematic). The experience of the space as extended or unbounded should relate
also to this noemical focus. All in all then, the noemical focus of the spatial experience is
made up predominately by cognitive aspects of the experience.
The noetic focus, the how we perceive the what, involves both cognitive and affective
aspects. Putting a particular experiencing human being as the center or origin of the space,
with all that it entails and considering it as either embodied or embedded may be said to be a
cognitive action. But we don't relate to what we perceive in our personal experienced space
in a purely objective fashion (although classical aestheticians claim to do just that) we also
relate 'affectively'. This starting from the mere like or dislike to more complex and refined
emotions. And it is to the affective aspects of the how we perceive the what in spatial
experiences that we turn now our attention.

5. The Case for Affect in Spatial Experiences

In the Introduction I raised the question of whether it is warranted to talk about a landscape
experience as a peculiar, distinct experience, with characteristics of its own, which
distinguishes it from the more general and comprehensive spatial experience.
I contend here that it is proper to talk about a landscape experience, distinct from a,
more general, spatial experience, whenever the affective components of the experience
of unbounded space are preponderant, that is, greater in power or importance than its
cognitive components. Note that the words proper and warrant apply to 'talking about' the
experience whether to others or to ourselves. Proper or improper is a judgment that applies
to the description or account of the experience, and not to the experience itself; there are no
improper or incorrect 'immediate experiences'.
It should be kept in mind when differentiating between cognitive and affective components
that although it is convenient and sometimes necessary for philosophical work to break down
experience into components, such an exercise is done for analytical purposes only;
components are just distinguished from the whole, when isolated they cease to be
components.
I should emphasize that I am not attempting at any quantification whatsoever of
how more weighty the affective components have to be in order to warrant the label. In the
absence of any quantification, there is bound to be a considerable 'grey zone' where we are
uncertain about talking of either 'experience of landscape' or 'experience of space'. This is in
a way a consequence of having been abiding to the vagueness of the notions of both
'landscape' and 'experience' and of purposely evading a particular definition of each. 23
Suppose a person happens to be situated, in a space that she experiences as unbounded.
Now, what she visually perceives as a whole setting (scene), may arouse in her feelings or
emotionsor it may not. If those feelings and emotions outshine her train of thoughts, take
the limelight of her consciousness then the experienced space can be said to be a
(experienced) landscape. In brackets because talk of a experienced landscape is
redundancy since landscape has been taken up as a mode of experienced space.
____________
23 The most we can hope for, within the context of graded membership is to be able to say: this one is a prototypical
instance of a landscape experience, this one is clearly an instance of a landscape experience,this one looks (or doesn't
look) like a typical landscape experience and other utterances of the sort.

The idea that affective responses to our visual perception play an important role in the
experience of landscapes is not at all a novel one and, as such, incorporated into quite a
number of discourses on landscape. But usually the idea has been left at the stage of
declarative wording, without further elaboration while attention has been centred on the
cognitive aspects.
Why have the emotional aspects been left relatively unexplored? Largely because, upon
the assumption that we come to know the world through our experiences; experiences were
discredited in most philosophical discourses after Descartes; they are considered unreliable
because of being largely subjective. Whilst cognitive experiences are somewhat respectable,
emotional experiences were considered worthless as solid evidence. This attitude represented
a turn from the philosophers of the 17th and 18th century that took passions as their leitmotifs.
Seventeenth century philosophers favoured talk of passion and affect, while their
eighteenth century counterparts made increasing use of sentiment. None of these terms
carried the meaning they now do or that emotion has come to bear.
A most common case of experiencing scenic nature is "nature as beautiful" which
subtends an aesthetic experience of the space in question. Among discourses on beauty the
so-called classical or orthodox aesthetics has claimed exclusiveness; however this has
obscured the obvious fact that the sense of beauty is overwhelmingly feeling and emotion.24
As Bhme aptly remarks, sensuousness and nature largely disappears from aesthetics after
Kant.25 Fortunately, Nature has recently reappeared 26 and attention has been called upon the
affective components related to landscape 27.
Let us begin our considerations on of the affective components of the landscape experience
with some somewhat pedestrian considerations: Confronted with a particular space we may
either like what we see, dislike it or feel indifferent about it. A prerequisite for undergoing an
experience is that we give sustained attention to what is perceived. We may lend sustained
attention either because we very much like or dislike what we see. If the view leaves us cold
it is fair to assume that no (notable) experiencing will ensue. So experience is rooted in affect
whether positive or negative. Pleasure or disgust seems to be primary in determining whether
or not the visual experience develops because they are the determinants of interest 24.
There is though an additional, nagging question to be considered when digging deeper
into this matter. Affect may be considered as a sort of umbrella term for quite a number of
emotions and feelings and, if we leave it at that, we'd be left at an uncomfortable level of
generalization; still at the declarative stage. The nagging question being: from the
multiplicity of sensations, feelings and emotions that can be aroused by extended
(unbounded) spaces, can we perchance discern a particular one that we may single out as
idiosyncratic to the landscape experience? A promising candidate for such a peculiar kind of
Affect seems to me to be the one that goes by the name of Wonder.
__________________
24 G. Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, Dover Publications, New York, republication 1955 of the 1896 original.
25 G. Bhme(1993), Atmosphere as a Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics, Thesis Eleven, 16, 113-126
26 See for instance: M. Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature, Oxford University Press, New York (2002) and
E. Brady, Aesthetics of Natural Environments, Edinburgh Univ. Press, Edinburgh, (2002) . For the affective aspects of the
aesthetic experiences see: J. Levinson What is Aesthetic Pleasure in The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical
Essays, ,Cornell Univ. Press, New York, (1996)
27 A seminal work is R.W. Hepburn (1996) Landscape and the Metaphysical Imagination, Environmental Values, 5:3,
191-204. The case for affect has been effectively argued by A. Franceschinni (2007) in Il paesaggio. Verso una lettura
emozionale, Quaderni del Dipartamento di Geografia, Universita di Padova, 24, 103-114 and in P. Puente (2012) El Valor
Emocional de la Experiencia Paisajistica, Cuadernos Geograficos, 51, 270-284.

6. The Case for Wonder

The proposition argued for here is that there is one particular type of Affect called
Wonder that is common to most or the large majority of landscape experiences; not only
those experiences linked to aesthetics but as well to the ones linked to historical, poetical,
conflictual themes.28
Parsons calls wonder an intense word: the Latin word mirari means 'to wonder' or 'to
marvel at'; later on, a cognate, admirari, (from which: admiration) appears to have gradually
acquired the meaning of purely natural wonder 28. Moreover, wonder is from Old English
wundor, which appears to come from the German Wundt and derived into the English wound,
thus the meaning of being pierced by wonderment. Something wondrous (like unbounded
space) is worthy of attention and reflection.
For Prinz wonder, like the related interest is a kind of regard. But, <<whereas
interest can be characterized as a way of looking, wonder might be better characterized as a
way of seeing: we see things with wonder (or, alternatively, we see the wonder in things>>28
What is at issue here is not only wonder at light and sight, but wonder as a response
to the often sudden and striking encounter with things whether it be light refracted
through droplets of water in the sky, the explosion of taste in a mouthful of wine, the
heady scent of blossoms on the still night, the experience of the open-ness of space and
the capacities of the body in the exhilaration of a dance, or the complex interplay of
elements in a piece of music. In each case, it is the encounter and the character of that
encounter as a revealing, an opening up, of things and of the world that seems to lie at
the heart of the experience of wonder. (Malpas 28)
Another aspect that supports the case for wonder as characterizing the landscape
experience is that landscapes are not static they are ever changing with the seasons, the time
of the day (illumination) and of course with our moods (closing of circle). This continuous
shifting of appearances ensures that wonder is never exhausted. It may be said that << what
gives an experience the quality of wonder<<is just the sense of sharp novelty in qualitative
awareness (sense, images) and (secondarily) in meaning.>> 28
The proposal that wonder is the kind of affective response that, if present, may
differentiate landscape experiences from other spatial experiences should not be taken to
imply that if a particular place or space elicits in some persons another kind of affective
response their experience cannot be called a landscape experience. What we are simply
saying is that wonder may be considered a characteristic or property of a typical landscape
experience and, when other emotions are aroused, that landscape experience may be
considered less typical. What I propose is that one of the more significant features of a
landscape experience is for that experience to be largely affective and that, within those
affective components, 'wonder' may be said to be the most promising one for a positive
characterization of the experience as a peculiar and distinctive spatial experience.
________________________________

28

In the following I am basing myself mostly on H.Parsons(1969), A Philosophy of Wonder, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 30:1, 84-101, on Hepburn's Landscape and the Metaphysical Imagination cf.cit.27 and,
especially, on J.Malpas, Beginning in Wonder: Placing the Origin of Thinking in N. Kompridis (ed) Philosophical
Romanticism, Routledge, Oxford (2006). The idea that wonder could play a central role in aesthetical appreciation was put
forward originally by J.Prinz, Emotion and Aesthetic Value, presented at the Pacific APA, San Francisco, (2007).