It may seem intuitive, in evolutionary terms, why we would find natural settings attractive and appealing. The biologist Edward O. Wilson argued that humans possess a trait called biophilia (fondness for nature, or an innate tendency to seek connections and affiliations with nature and other forms of life), which he argued makes sense evolutionarily. It…
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The sublime is a concept in aesthetics that stands for the quality of greatness that leads to experiencing positive and negative emotions (e.g. fear and wonder) at the same time. This paradoxical emotion is often experienced in natural surroundings, during confrontations with natural phenomena that overwhelm oneself due to their size or power. This is…
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Benjamin Sack is an American artist who is noted for creating hyper-detailed drawings of cityscapes that mingle realism with abstraction. He depicts infinite cities, architectural labyrinths of dizzying detail. When I first came across his work, I was incredibly impressed (mindblown, to be honest) to see how he represented both the infinite and the infinitesimal…
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The connection between psychedelics and philosophy isn’t made too often, despite the fact that there are myriad ways in which the psychedelic experience can relate to, challenge, contextualise, and add weight to various philosophical ideas and theories. There is, however, a definite history to the philosophy of psychedelics, with writers such as William James and…
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