Art, science, and nature

 Art, science, and nature

If garden and landscape design is concerned with the relations between humankind and nature, it is largely determined by one or the other of the conflicting philosophies about how human beings do or should relate to nature. People know that they are

 biologically and physiologically the products of natural evolution, yet their great technological accomplishments lead them to feel that they are above, beyond, or outside nature, that they have conquered and dominated the wilderness and have it now within their power to remake the world. Every work of garden and landscape design reflects one or the other of these conflicting attitudes. The Japanese garden, for example, is inspired by the notion of humans as a part of nature, the Renaissance garden by the idea that humans are nature’s masters. Garden and landscape design thus reveals much about a culture and a period. One result of the impact of the environmental movement on design in the West in the late 20th century was the emergence of design values that sought the integration of the human and the natural rather than their separation.