Does aesthetic appreciation of landscapes need to be science based?

Abstract

Forests are aesthetically challenging because of a perennial, dynamic sense of deep time, experiencing an archetype of creation. Scientific appreciation of natural history is necessary though not sufficient for an intense, multisensory, participatory engagement when persons, immersed in forests, constitute their lived aesthetic experiences. Forests are sublime, evoking the sense of the sacred. Aesthetic appreciation in forests radically differs from that appropriate for artworks.