I find the attempt to try to explain ‘how’ to appreciate nature charming. Nature is an order from which we are spawned and for which we feel awe. It is a natural arrangement which mirrors our own physical and mental arrangements. This makes it aesthetically pleasing by default. It is an order that lies beyond total comprehension, a puzzle which is never to be fully solved. This complexity retains our attention and triggers our imagination, it is a full aesthetic experience in itself. Carlson’s idea of “Object of Art Model (OAM)” only works for a setting in which we are cued to appreciating a work of art. He explains how a rock or a piece of driftwood might be taken out of its context and placed in a gallery setting for our appreciation, but then it becomes a fabricated aesthetic experience, it ceases to be a natural, pleasing ‘accident’ that our sense of beauty responds to and loses a sense of its original beauty because it lacks context. 

The “Landscape or Scenery Model (LSM)” presents an interesting idea in terms of appreciation of a scene, although it also involves the human mind in order for the scene to be fully assimilated by a viewer. It negates the possibility of first-hand appreciation and emphasizes the need for image-editing in order to manufacture an enhanced aesthetic experience. This comes closer to the “Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic” which states that an aesthetic experience can only be had if an object is created by man, leaving nature’s creations beyond the realm of aesthetics. I strongly disagree with this point: it is too purist and paternalistic and it fails to take women into account altogether. It attempts to explain what an aesthetic experience should be and what it should not. This, I believe, is not an experience that can be forced or clearly defined by words, and it is in this forced need to explain it and categorize it that it loses force as an idea and fails to account for the complexity of the experience: a qualitative experience defies quantification. This compulsive dependency on categories and explanations is the West’s biggest strength, but also its biggest weakness: In trying to quantify and define specifics, these theories miss the overarching experience that links us to our basic humanity. 

It is the idea of Aesthetics of Engagement which defines us as participants rather than observers, making active our role within the awareness of the reality being confronted. Our aesthetic appreciation of nature is solely dependent on our alertness of its elements and our interaction with them. This links to the concept of the Natural Environmental Model where we find ourselves connecting the AOE to the more traditional theories of aesthetic appreciation. I find the idea of this model linked to ethics very interesting as a basis for environmental sciences: the moment we become active entities within the system and apply theories of aesthetics to it, we are faced with moral issues about the health of such an environment, making us more aware of their importance through aesthetic experience. Altogether, my opinion is that it falls short of what it proposes to explain.