On Landscape Appreciation

                  Places and the Landscape

                          or

         Landscapes as Holarchies 

 In order to further illustrate the ideas discussed in the previous page concerning landscape considered as an holarchic structure of its constituent parts, we present as an example the analysis of this picture:

                      Gaspard van Wittel (1653-1736)

                       "Landscape with river and bridge"

                         (ink drawing) Louvre Museum

    Copied from: Reunion des musees nationaux, France

 For more on van Wittel click here:#*#*#*

      While examining van Wittell’s drawing, we may assume that it is a representation of an actual view comprehended within his visual field at the position he selected. Within his representation of this whole space we can discern a number of parts ( which we choose to call places). These are not delimited by actual boundaries but acquire their individuality and a certain independence by virtue of our focused attention.

        There’s of course an unlimited number of these parts, depending on which detail catches our attention at a particular moment. To list just a few of these places:

the one under the bridge, enclosed by the tall river banks; the river itself before it reaches the bridge; the top of the left bank with the road tall trees and an ox-chart; the orchard on top of the hill at the right; the mountain with the clouded sky; the sky alone and many, many more.

  ( A note on landscape analysis: there's no real need to analyze a landscape by "breaking it into parts" in order to perceive or appreciate it. However, we seem to have a compulsive tendency to do so, not only with landscapes but with everything, from car engines to flowers. I wouldn't say that this is an innate human trait but it's certainly a well ingrained one. "To analyze is to understand" someone said; this is a debatable statement but the parallel one "To analyze is to appreciate" is certainly suspicious. In wine appreciation sometimes properties like color, flavor, aroma, transparency are given separate rankings, which helps objectivity but places that sort of appreciation far away from wine enjoyment. Similarly with landscape appreciation where frequently we tend to evaluate separately the different landscape elements, clouds, water surfaces or rocks, leading to a somewhat reductionist approach

      Regarding the philosophical school of Reductionism I'd venture to say the same that is said about wine: quite healthy when not drunk in excess. It's dificcult however to strike the proper balance between reductionist and holistic approaches. In my opinion, one of the best available systematic devices designed to keep us in the golden mean is by applying the concepts of Holons and Holarchies and that's why I'm presenting this Section). 

        Each one of the selected places may be considered a “whole” in the sense that they are functional and coherent, as opposed to dysfunctional ones , like if we had chosen half of the bridge or a group of trees without their foliage crowns. A proficient painter or photographer can represent each of them separately and make them appealing or attractive (because they have internal coherence). Each place is a whole made up of constituent elements (trees, bushes, rocks, clouds) but in turn, in a Janus-faced fashion, it’s one part of the larger whole that is the landscape.)

   More on Koestler and his holons in Footnote 1

        With apologies to Vanvitelli for ruining his picture, I have encircled some of these parts or "landscape units" in the image below :

  Suppose we “crop” each of these sections and, resolution permitting, we make a number of pictures to be hanged side by side on a wall. These will be representations of separate places that may be studied, analyzed or appreciated individually but, it is evident that the sum of the information thus obtained, will be smaller than that supplied by the whole picture.

  If we then reassemble the separate sections, what becomes apparent is the functional relationship between its parts which now acquire the character of holons. (before they were just separate parts) Not only the isolated parts make now “more sense” but the added complexity of the re-assembled picture enhances its aesthetic qualities.

 Bernard Patten  coined the term environs for the units or holons of ecosystems in 1976; later in "Environs, Relativistic Elementary Particles for Ecology", The Am. Naturalist, 119, 179-219(1982), he presents a detailed analysis of the concept with a thorough mathematical treatment. The name environ was chosen because"it sorrounds a set of influences localized within a defined system". (As far as I know the implications of the concept in landscape studies have not been examined and I intend  to have a go at it in the future.).

Zev Naveh(2000) introduces, not quite in the same sense of environs, the term ecotopes for landscape-holons. For him ecotopes are "the smallest, more or less homogeneous and clearly discernible and mappable building block of nature, with all its subordinated landscape elements and fluxes."

     The following quote (pp32) is illustrative: " By studying, managing and restoring landscapes with all their unique natural, cultural and perceptional dimensions, as ordered holons of such a landscape hierarchy, we can conceive the complentary nature of landscape units, being both parts of a higher space-time and perceptional hierarchy and wholes towards their lower hierarchical levels. Thereby we are overcoming the contradiction between entirely one-sided holistic or reductionistic perceptions of landscapes. However we have to realize that their organizational complexity cannot be treated as a rigid one-dimensional spatially structured physical and biological hierarchy, but only as dynamic, multidimensional space-time conceptual and perceptual Holon holarchies, from the largest and most complex global ecosphere landscape to the samllest landscape cell or "ecotope".(My italics)

Notes on the painter and the painting:  Just because the artist was born in Ammerhost under such a name as  Caspar Adriaans van Wittell one shouldn’t “jump to conlusions” and assume that the painting above is from a Dutch scene. It is far more likely that it is an Italian landscape (at that time landskip) by a certain Gaspare Vanvitelli.

   As the story goes, van Wittel went to Rome still a young man and remained there the rest of his life in Italy as Vanvitelli. ( also nicknamed  Gaspare degli Ochialli  because he became short-sighted and had to use  spectacles). Although his landscapes are very appealing his main achievements lie not here but in another field: he’s credited with being the initiator of urban landscapes and cityscapes,(a subject frequently touched upon on these pages) in particular he is famous for his “views”(vedute) of Rome and Venice. A very good resource on van Wittel can be found in Vanvitelli and the Origins of View Painting.

      The concept of holons was proposed by Arthur Koestler in a book called "The Ghost in the Machine" first published in 1967 (now out of print). For nearly 20 years the concept was largely ignored except by his students and fans (of which I happen to be one); after that holons have been receiving ever increasing attention so that by now I think there's hardly any discipline, from Physics, to Biology, Sociology, Industrial design, etc. in which the concept has not been introduced. (It would be difficult to provide a complete bibliography and the interested reader is refered to Google  for a search). As noted, B.Patten(loc.cit) in Ecology and Evolution and much later Z.Naveh by applying it to Landscape Ecology. The connection with Landcsape Perception and Appreciation seems to have received little attention so far.

         Quotes from Koestler (pan Books edition, 1975):

 " A part, as we generally use the word, means something fragmentary and incomplete which, by itself would have no legitimate existence. On the other hand, a whole is considered as something complete in itself which needs no further explanation. But wholes and parts, in this absolute sense,   just do not exist anywhere, either in the domain of living systems or social organizations. What we find are intermediate structures on a series of levels in an ascending order of complexity: sub-wholes which display, according to the way you look at them, some of the characteristics commonly attributed to wholes and some of the characteristics commonly attributed to parts."

    " Phonemes, words, phrases are wholes in their own right, but parts of a larger unit; so are cells, tissues, organs; families, clans, tribes. The members of a hierachy, like the roman god Janus, all have two faces looking in opposite directions: the faced turned towards the sub-ordinate levels is that of a self contained whole; the face turned up towards the apex, that of a dependent part. This Janus effect is a fundamental characteristic of sub-wholes in all types of hierarchies."

                                             The god Janus                      

                                                                 from:Mitchell                                                             

  " It seems preferable to coin a new term to designate these nodes in the hierarchic tree which behave partly as wholes or wholly as parts,  according to the way you look at them. The term I would propose is holon, from the Greek holos = whole, with the suffix on which as in proton or neutron suggests a particle or part."

   In his book Koestler sets down general properties of open hierarchical systems which later came to be called holarchies. I'll quote here only some which may be relevant to the consideration of landscapes as holarchies.

  3.1 Functional holons are governed by fixed sets of rules and display more or less flexible strategies.

3.2  The rules-- refered as the systems canon--determine its invariant properties, its structural configuration and/or functional pattern.

4.1  Every holon has the dual tendency to preserve and assert its individuality as a quasi-autonomous whole; and to funtion as an integrated part of a larger whole. This polarity between the Self-Assertive and Integrative tendencies is inherent in the concept of hierarchic order. The Self-Assertive tendencies are the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness; the Integrative tendencies of its partness.

====

 Coming back to van Wittel's drawing discussed above : The  picture is a representation of a whole (that is the view encompassed within our field of vision) which of course, is a part of a larger whole(that of the entire region or pays). Within the landscape as represented we can discern large sections or parts (roughly those delineated in the second figure). Each one of these parts or landscape-holons may be called a Place and, in that sense, the landscape is a sum of all the places enclosed. However, the places are not haphazardly arranged but hierarchally structured according to rules, the canon of the picture. These are rules of composition, perspective, etc., which have been followed by van Wittel. (for an example where this canon is totally ignored see for instance Joan Miro's Catalunyan Landscape).

   Each section or landscape holon asserts its individuality as a Place ( a quasi autonomous whole) in this sense it is Self- Assertive. It is as the same time Integrative in that is functionally linked to the larger landscape.

    Such landscape holons or Places, considered as wholes, are made up in turn of constituent holons. For instance, the Place on the left can be thought of an structured hierarchy of elements such as the road, the trees, the ox-chart, etc. each structured or arranged following the same sort of canon as that for the whole. A tree in turn is made up of holons such as the trunk, branches and foliage.

      At some stage in this analysis we are bound to stop because of a limit in detail imposed by the fact that this is a visual representation. In a similar fashion there's a limit in the details that can be discerned from our visual perception of an actual landscape. When our analysis is pursued further we arrive to a discontinuity. We come out of the context of landscape and enter the realm of natural science, where different canons will be applicable. In the case of the tree foliage, for instance, sub-ordinate holons appear(the tissues of individual leaves, then the cells that form them and then the constituent molecules) whose interrelations are governed by entirely different sets of rules.  It may be argued that the colors of the foliage are the result of the chemical composition of the leaf surface; this might be so but its discussion does not belong to the realm of landscape studies.

              Back to Previous Page      

              Back to Front Page