Information Thinking: A New Solution to the Dilemma of Ecological Aesthetics ^†

Abstract

The creation of ecological aesthetics is a response to the ecological crisis in the field of aesthetics. Based on the grand goal of the construction of an ecological civilization, research on ecological aesthetics has emerged. However, ecological aesthetics has failed to keep pace with the times in terms of informatization. If the ecological aesthetics of an information civilization wants to realize an energy-level transition and surpass the traditional vision, it is necessary to pay attention to its information factor. In order for the eco-aesthetics of an information civilization to make an energy leap beyond the traditional eco-aesthetic vision, it is necessary to pay attention to the information factor of eco-aesthetics. Information thinking generated from information science and information philosophy can provide a new solution to the dilemma in ecological aesthetics in modern times.

1. Introduction

When human beings started to walk upright, the huge wheel of human civilization began to travel on this blue planet. In this mighty historical process, human civilization has experienced three turning points: from a slash-and-burn primitive civilization to an agricultural civilization, and then to an industrial civilization that liberates human hands. Nowadays, human beings have begun to take great strides from an industrial civilization to the era of an ecological and information civilization.

Therefore, exploring how to achieve theoretical and methodological innovation in ecological aesthetics under the information age, making it more contemporary, generating a research space with innovative characteristics, and finding a philosophical base that has time characteristics are the primary concerns of current ecological aesthetics research.

2. Great Achievement of Ecological Aesthetic in the Context of Ecological Civilization

Humans initially conflated beauty with the gods, believing that they were the creators of the beauty of heaven and earth. After the rise of the Renaissance, people began to conflate beauty with human beings themselves and regarded people as the subject of aesthetic appreciation. As science and technology progressed, and a series of ecological problems appeared, beauty began to be conflated with ecology, and the connection between ecology and aesthetics was thus established.

The way in which ecology and aesthetics are linked is achieved by the continuous expansion of the intersection between the fields of ecological research and aesthetic research to form the interconnection of disciplines, which contributes to the richness of ecological aesthetics.

In the initial stages of ecological aesthetic research, scholars combined ecology and aesthetics, creating a strong scientific profile. Later, ecological aesthetics expanded to various levels of science (such as physics). And based on its theoretical breadth and realism, the position of scientific ecological aesthetics was established, which emphasized the importance of scientific knowledge in natural aesthetics and using scientific knowledge as the guiding principle of aesthetic judgment to ensure the objectivity of natural aesthetics.

In addition to the scientific standpoint, many scholars have introduced more disciplines into ecological aesthetics in order to achieve its complexity in further research. Koh [1] combines phenomenological aesthetics, ecological philosophy, physics, ecology, psychology, and other relevant theories on the basis of design to build a general guiding principle of ecological aesthetics applicable to environmental design so as to realize the unification of practical eco-design, eco-architecture, and aesthetic principles. His practical theoretical framework is based on a post-modern holistic and evolutionary ecological philosophy paradigm, abandoning the tradition of separating the subject and object of natural aesthetics and pointing to a new idea of ecological aesthetic with inclusivity, unity, balance, interaction, complementarity, and creativity.

Ecological aesthetics tend towards holism in modern and contemporary studies. Starting from the wholeness of man and nature, this kind of ecological aesthetics advocates for their “synaesthetic integration”, and holds that the dynamic balance and harmonious unity of man, nature, and society under the ecological aesthetic state is the cornerstone of its aesthetic framework. Meanwhile, it focuses on the category of ecological aesthetics in the harmony of life and its immediate environment, which truly reflects the “ecological” implication of ecological aesthetics. This idea breaks the entitative limitation of the research object of ecological aesthetics, which is restricted to the entitative framework of the aesthetic subject and the aesthetic object, or man and nature. Instead, it takes the aesthetic form of the ecological system as the key object of research. Thus, the following are of great significance to the evolution of ecological aesthetics: the transfer of ecological aesthetic concepts, the popularization of Chinese and Western ecological concepts, the carrying forward of Chinese traditional core values that are compatible with the construction of a Chinese ecological civilization, and the promotion of equal dialogue between China and the West in the era of ecological civilization.

3. The Dilemma of Ecological Aesthetics in the Context of Information Civilization

The brilliant achievements of ecological aesthetics in an ecological civilization are obvious to all. However, it has failed to keep pace with the times in terms of informationization. Current research on this topic does not consider the background of the era of information civilization, does not grasp the characteristics of the information age, and does not follow the trend of the information age, which makes the theory of ecological aesthetics lag behind the development of the modern era.

However, in recent years, the emergence of terms such as “Digitalization”, “Internet”, “Artificial Intelligence”, and “New Media” and the dramatic changes brought about by information technology have forced us to consider the characteristics of the information civilization, which is parallel to the era of ecological civilization. The proliferation of terms such as “Information Explosion”, “Information Technology”, and “Information Environment” has also forced people to consider the significance of information. Since the 1940s, the rise of information systems and complexity science, such as molecular biology, information theory, hypercyclic theory, holographic theory, and mutation theory, has pushed traditional thinking toward information thinking, and compelled us to apply information thinking to scientific research, thus promoting the development of science in the direction of multidimensionality, complexity, and comprehensiveness.

The expansion and application of information has also continued to permeate into all fields and has had a significant impact on the humanities in particular. The humanities have begun to draw on relevant knowledge from natural disciplines in order to achieve compatibility and complementary enrichment, to create new ideological weapons to solve the problems in their own discipline, or to transplant or apply natural sciences to their own disciplinary research to achieve methodological innovation. Examples of this include the extension to philosophy, such as the rise of information philosophy; and the development in aesthetics, such as the creation of information aesthetics, information theory aesthetics, system theory aesthetics, etc. However, few relevant studies have addressed the field of ecological aesthetics. There is a lack of specific discussion on, research in, or explanation of the information mechanism of ecological aesthetics, and the relationship between ecological aesthetics and information has not been specifically elucidated in contemporary research. The spirit of the times is not reflected in the connotation of ecological aesthetics, which has led to a kind of absence.

4. Information Thinking: New Ideas for Lifting the Dilemma of Ecological Aesthetics

Traditional ecological aesthetics only pay attention to eco-aesthetic elements, such as ecology, eco-beauty, ecological aesthetic activities and ecological aesthetic feeling, and only puts the “synaesthetic integration” of human and nature in a shallow chaotic state without taking information factors into account nor conducting a deep exploration from the perspective of the existence and evolution of the system. However, in order for eco-aesthetics under an information civilization to make an energy leap beyond the traditional eco-aesthetic vision, it is necessary to pay attention to the information factor of eco-aesthetics.

Information thinking [2] generated from information science and information philosophy can provide a new solution to the dilemma of the times in ecological aesthetics. We can reconstruct ecological aesthetics and redefine and explain the ecological aesthetic elements (such as ecology, eco-beauty, ecological aesthetic activities, and ecological aesthetic feeling) in a information meaning. Based on this, a new theory of information ecological aesthetics can thus be constructed.

The essence, characteristics, and properties of eco-beauty, ecological aesthetic activities, and eco-aesthetic feeling are revealed, grasped, and described from the structure and relationship patterns, evolutionary procedures, and process patterns of the subject and the ecology. And by taking the subject and ecology as the carrier and code of information, the indirect existence about the historical state, realistic relationship, and future trend of ecological aesthetic elements are decoded, and then defining and integrating them, they can be unified in theory and reality.

For example, in terms of the origin and essence, ecological beauty is the regenerated information formed by the subject’s reception and reprocessing of the information of the ecosystem (in essence, the orderliness of ecological information), is the subject’s re-grasp of ecological information, is the extreme display of the harmony between the subject and the ecology, and is the product of the intersection of information of a strong subjectivity and a strong ecosystem. Ecological aesthetic activity is the process of reflecting and evaluating the purposeful reception of ordered ecological information by subject. Ecological aesthetic feeling is the feeling of beauty experienced by subject, i.e. the orderly information of the ecology received that is conducive to its own survival and reproduction in the aesthetic process.

From the re-interpretation of the basic concept of ecological aesthetics, it is possible to complete the edifice of ecological aesthetic. Perhaps, information thinking can be the key to pushing eco-aesthetics to come into full bloom in the information era.