Traditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art. Allen Carlson shows how much of aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature, in one's response to sunsets, mountains or horizons or more mundane surroundings, like gardens or the view from a window. He argues that knowledge of what it is that people are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and that scientific understanding of nature can enhance the appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it.

Traditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art, Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature. He argues that knowledge of what it is we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and that scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it.

Is East Asia heading toward war? Throughout the 1990s, conventional wisdom among U.S. scholars of international relations held that institutionalized cooperation in Europe fosters peace, while its absence from East Asia portends conflict. Developments in Europe and Asia in the 1990s contradict the conventional wisdom without discrediting it. Explanations that derive from only one paradigm or research program have shortcomings beyond their inability to recognize important empirical anomalies. International relations research is better served by combining explanatory approaches from different...

Is East Asia heading toward war? Throughout the 1990s, conventional wisdom among U.S. scholars of international relations held that institutionalized cooperation in Europe fosters peace, while its absence from East Asia portends conflict. Developments in Europe and Asia in the 1990s contradict the conventional wisdom without discrediting it. Explanations that derive from only one paradigm or research program have shortcomings beyond their inability to recognize important empirical anomalies. International relations research is better served by combining explanatory approaches from different...

This book contends that sovereignty, and more directly the extent to which it creates walls between any given state and other actors in the international system, lies at the core of China's foreign relations during the reform era. Through a comprehensive survey of both Chinese and English-language sources, the author shows that during this period China's stance changed in unexpected ways, and argues that such shifts were products of the evolving relationship between deeply entrenched sovereignty-centric values within China, new self-interests created by Deng Xiaoping's emphasis on reform and...

Environmental aesthetics is an emerging field of study that focuses on nature's aesthetic value as well as on its ethical and environmental implications. Drawing on the research of a number of disciplines, this exciting new area speaks to scholars working in a range of fields, including not only philosophy, but also environmental and cultural studies, public policy and planning, social and political theory, landscape design and management, and art and architecture.

Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty addresses the complex relationships between aesthetic...

The roots of environmental aesthetics reach back to the ideas of eighteenth-century thinkers who found nature an ideal source of aesthetic experience. Today, having blossomed into a significant subfield of aesthetics, environmental aesthetics studies and encourages the appreciation of not just natural environments but also human-made and human-modified landscapes.

Nature and Landscape is an important introduction to this rapidly growing area of aesthetic understanding and appreciation. Allen Carlson begins by tracing the development of the field's historical background, and then...

Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson offer an in-depth philosophical study of the relationship between function and aesthetic value, breaking with the philosophical tradition of seeing the two as separate.
They begin by developing and defending, in a general way, the concept of Functional Beauty, exploring how the role of function in aesthetic appreciation has been treated by some notable thinkers in the history of aesthetics. They then consider the relationship to Functional Beauty of certain views in current aesthetic thought, especially what we call "cognitively rich" approaches to the...

Contemporary Chinese Politics: Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies considers how new and diverse sources and methods are changing the study of Chinese politics. Contributors spanning three generations in China studies place their distinct qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches in the framework of the discipline and point to challenges or opportunities (or both) of adapting new sources and methods to the study of contemporary China. How can we more effectively use new sources and methods of data collection? How can we better integrate the study of Chinese politics into the...

Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson offer an in-depth philosophical study of the relationship between function and aesthetic value, breaking with the philosophical tradition of seeing the two as separate. They begin by developing and defending, in a general way, the concept of Functional Beauty, exploring how the role of function in aesthetic appreciation has been treated by some notable thinkers in the history of aesthetics. They then consider the relationship to Functional Beauty of certain views in current aesthetic thought, especially what we call "cognitively rich" approaches to the...