Art and science of place

 "By close observation of nature the artist discovers qualities existing in her which have never been portrayed before and therefore a style which is original.  We see nothing truly until we understand it.  The artist must study nature not in the same spirit, but with the seriousness and application of the scientist"

"In such an age as this, painting should be understood, not looked on with blind wonder, nor considered as a poetic aspiration, but as a pursuit, legitimate, scientific and mechanical."

A definition that could encompass both art and science is, 'a landscape is a collection of interconnected  habitats, which are unified as a visual and spiritual experience'.

The scientist also creates a mental picture from the visual experience of a collection of habitats.  The connections between habitats are expressed in words, diagrams and photographic views as an understanding of the flows of materials and energy between them that maintain the whole as a dynamic ecosystem.  The scientific boundary of a landscape as an ecosystem is as arbitrary as that of the artist portraying a scenic experience. It is set to isolate the simplest scenic representation of the world that can be directly grasped and investigated.  The scientific landscape then becomes a mental transposition of the visual experiences that define a sense of landscape as a kind of mental island, which Thurber in a broader sense described as 'the landscape of my thought'.  This points to the possibilities of fusing history and the environment to create a more democratic and inclusive interpretation of the landscapes as the mental island in which most of us live, work or take our recreation. This is exemplified by the management plans of nature sites.

Here is how TS Eliot expresses human ecology as a grand process of constant renewal in his poem 'East Coker'.

In my beginning is my end.  In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory. Or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building. Old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

T S Eliot, along with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Whitman drew strongly from India's Vedas in their writings  Thoreau in Walden spoke of the debt to Vedic thought directly, connecting his relatively minute patch of  a woodland pond in the New England countryside with the mighty Ganges quartering an entire sub-continent.

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges".

No river has kindled Man's imagination like the Ganges. From its icy origins high in the Himalayas, this sacred river flows through the holy cities and the great plains of northern India to the Bay of Bengal. In a country where the fierce heat of summer inspires prayer for the coming monsoon, the life-giving waters of the Ganges have assumed legendary powers in the form of the Hindu goddess Ganga, the source of creation and abundance. 

The Vedas are the most ancient and oldest scriptures available to mankind. Vedic poetic texts uphold the doctrine called Madhu Vidya, or interdependence between man and nature. The Vedic worldview is expressed in the famous injunction, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family). Agni is literally the first word written in the Vedas, and possibly anywhere. It is given this importance because it has a key cosmic function at many levels. Agni can be said to stand for the 'metabolism of the universe', represented by fire.  In this sense Agni represents and causes all changes and becomes a guiding light. Similarly Soma is also considered to be of prime importance due to the complementary functions that it represents. Soma stands for all that nourishes and sustains, and thus provides comfort and enjoyment in the cosmos at all levels. In fact, Soma sustains the entire cosmos itself in its highest level (known as the cosmic waters).  Thus, space or Akasha, the first great  element of manifestation according to Vedic thought, is said to be born of it.

Several Vedic hymns are prayers for maintaining balance in the functioning of all aspects of Nature as a place with spaces for humans.  From this point of view, the following hymn encapsulates the spiritual value of the landscape of the Ganges. 

 Hymn 9 'Waters'

Ye Waters are beneficent: so help ye us to energy

That we may look on great delight.

Give us a portion of the sap, the most auspicious that ye have,

Like mothers in their longing love.

To you we gladly come for him to whose abode ye send us on;

And Waters give us procreant strength.

I beg the floods to give us balm, these Queens who rule o'er precious things,

And have supreme control of men.

Within the Waters, Soma thus hath told me, dwell all balms that heal,

And Agni, he who blesseth all.

O Waters, teem with medicine to keep my body safe from harm,

So that  long may I see the Sun.