Abstract

The relationship between Nature and Culture is complex. Where does the Natural end and the Cultural begin? Western culture has traditionally associated Order with Linear Order, with the Geometrical, the square and the round. This association is as old as the Pythagoreans, and has stood the test of centuries. But now, this association is being called into question, especially as it serves as a description of the Natural world. Linear order is being questioned as a form of social construction, one which does not describe the world as it is, but is rather a human fiction impressed on the world, which remains in one fashion or other, mysterious, and beyond the strength of language. ;The method I have chosen in this work takes this question into account. I have tried to abandon the impersonal, distant voice of the scientist and the critic, and have written what may be termed a personal essay, a landscape essay, in order to place myself as the author, as the reader of the land, directly into the middle of it, in order to foreground the personal and the human nature of all contemplation about the world, and to place such contemplation at the forefront of human questioning