Historical ecology aims to create a shared language for integrated, regional histories of human-environment relationships. It strives for a multiscalar temporal and spatial framework, with an explicit focus on the role of human cognition in the human-environment dialectic (Crumley, 1994). Time and space are taken as being integrated with human perceptions, attitudes and consciousness. However, despite the importance of the cognitive, this has not led many psychologists to become involved in historical ecology. This could be unfortunate, because in particular environmental psychology, defining itself as part of an interdisciplinary study of environment and behavior, seems to be well poised to be beneficial to the development of historical ecology. The goal of this paper is to explore some potential reasons for the lack of such interest, and to determine, if possible, how historical ecology and psychology could benefit from each others perspectives. After introducing some general theory of environmental psychology, this issue will be explored.

    The psychological study of the relationships between environment and behavior can be traced back to nineteenth century psychologists who had begun to study human perception of environmental stimuli, such as light, sound, weight, etc. By the 1940s, a modest amount of research had been reported in behavioral geography, the psychology of cognitive maps of the environment, and urban sociology. During the 1950s work in this area slowly increased, which examined the effects of the environment on the spatial behavior of children, psychiatric ward design, etc. The main impetus to the field came from architects and engineers interested in the effects of design on its users, leading to growing interest in the human experience of natural and built landscapes in recent decades. Ecological psychology, which views environment-behavior relationships as ecological dependencies, has somewhat influenced this perspective. Finally, much research has been done to determine the effects of crowding and other environmental aspects on human health.

    The landscape, perhaps the most central concept in historical ecology, is defined as the physical evidence of mental activities. Environmental psychology has shown an increasing interest in the concept of landscape, mostly related to design evaluations. In such "landscape psychology," the concept of aesthetic preference is central. Reasoning behind this is not only related to the preoccupation with design, but as Kaplan (1992) explains, also to the claim that aesthetic reactions constitute a direct and immediate guide to human behavior in relationship to the search for suitable and safe environments. This intuitive or unconscious guide influences the decisions people make in the physical environment. A complex inferential process appears to underlie this judgment.

    The main focus within landscape psychology thus lies in the explanation of aesthetic preference. Several approaches can be discerned, including descriptive design approaches and psycho-physical readings (e.g. electrocardiogram, pulse transit time, skin conductance, etc.). For the purpose of this discussion the psychological approach will be briefly explained. This approach can be divided into two lines, one of which emphasizes variation in the landscape and the other emphasizes variation in human beings. The landscape line is dominated by an evolutionary perspective (Orians & Heerwagen, 1992; Sinha, 1995). From this perspective, natural elements and their configurations serve as archetypes. These archetypes still elicit preference, even though they have lost their function which originated in hunter-gatherer history. Thus, optimal environmental conditions become hardwired in the brain. Known examples in this research come from Kaplan & Kaplan (1982), who have defined perceptual categories which have aided human functioning in the past, such as exploration, legibility, complexity and mystery. The second line, in which variation among people is central, is more phenomenological in its approach. It emphasizes accumulated interactions between an individual's life history and a physical setting. This "attachment," sometimes referred to as "sense of place," is based on the history of social interactions at a particular location.

    Environmental psychology––in particular landscape psychology––seem to have much to offer for an historical assessment of human-environment relationships, because perception and attitudes have been central in its approach. Arguably, known psychological processes underlying landcape perception might be helpful in explaining certain landscape patterns resulting from choices in the past. It could perhaps provide a framework of reference to better understand the historical landscape. What is preventing environmental psychology from adopting an historical ecological approach? It is possible that existing conservative characteristics within the field of psychology would make such an integration difficult. Most importantly, and following Kidner (1994), psychology as a discipline locates itself within the Cartesian paradigm of human rationality as the only basis for understanding. Dominated by a strong commitment to an empirical, deductive research method, the laboratorium has a central place. With observation and rationality as the dominant psychological methods, meaning and spirituality as explanations of human psychology are often seen as irrelevant and unscientific. As a consequence, the natural world is reduced to inert matter, devoid of any spiritual meaning. The structures and processes of the knowing subject are held central, reducing the external world to stimuli to be interpreted by the knower. In this way, psychology portrays a very individualistic, decontextualized sense of Self as natural and inevitable, even though critical approaches such as social psychology and psychological anthropology emphasize social context and culture as relevant to behavior. The fundamental consequences of this may be that different conceptualizations of our Self remain unarticulated and undeveloped.

    Psychology thus faces the burden of a traditional dualistic scientific legacy. Embedded within this tradition, environmental psychology is prevented from taking cultural-historical differences between groups and individuals into its account of environmental perception. However, it seems that, especially in light of the need for environmental concsiousness, an historical approach to environmental psychology could give an important contribution to the field. When viewed from the transcendental and interdisciplinary perspective of historical ecology, a more critical psychological theory seems to develop. One of the arguments of historical ecology is that a complete explanation of ecological structure and function, which includes human cognition, must involve reference to the actual sequence and the timing of the causal events that produced them (Winterhalder, 1994). To take part in such an endeavour, environmental psychology would have to challenge its Cartesian paradigm, elaborating its subject toward a contextualized definition of the individual, including environmental, social, cultural and historical influences within its cognitive make-up. This would perhaps mean that the two earlier mentioned and contrasting psychological approaches in landscape assessment--––variation in landscapes and variation in individuals––could share common ground in a dialectical relationship between the cognitive perception of landscape configurations and the captured meaning of  cultural-historical form. When challenged to look at itself in an historical context, alternative conceptions of the Self, must be taken into account. With the aim of exposing possible alternative environmental behaviors, environmental psychology could use such an historically informed perspective on the Self to provide constructive criticism to the dominant Western individual Self conceptualization. Furthermore, and perhaps even more importantly, the possible variability of different Self conceptions underlying changed environmental conditions could be explored. For example, within the global climate change paradigm, the benefits of such knowledge could contribute to public education aimed at increasing environmental consciousness.

    Looking at cognitive classification from an historical perspective, it would also be interesting to explore ways in which the cognitive structure has changed over time––a "historical cognitive science," so to speak. This differs from current (functionalist) psychological cognitive theory, which claims that cognitive structures are universal and relatively ahistorical. The only noted change is the life-span development of cognitive structure to a mature, adult state. This mature state consists out of short-term and long-term memory, different attention and perceptual mechanisms, etc. Because much of this work is based on laboratory experiments and primate studies, the structure of this mature state is not historically contingent: it builds upon a correlation with a lower level and relatively fixed neurobiological basis. This perspective, however, ignores the dynamic interaction between the cognitive system and a variable ecological environment. Although it is likely that fundamental properties of these structures have been constant through time, a true dialectical, ecological perspective on cognitive organization has not been explored. Proof of differences in cognitive categorizations from cross-cultural studies is only the beginnning of this idea. Thus, an ahistorical, functionalist theory of cognition ignores an important key issue: the understanding of the response of systems to disturbances--ecological or cultural--are related to an understanding of its evolutionary history. The implication of this is that generalizations of current psychological research on the way people perceived their environment must be done with great care. Unfortunatly it would be impossible to bring Neolithic Europeans to the cognitive science lab to further explore this point, and primate research can fill this gap only in a indirect manner. Because evidence for the historical perception of the environment may be read in the landscape, some historical evidence of cognitive change can possibly be derived from such analysis.

    Historical ecology could give environmental psychology an avenue through which to achieve a less decontextualized status. Integrating a diachronic perspective into its theory, environmental psychology could ground itself more in the cultural and material  reality of landscape archeology and anthropology (Crumley, 1998). The challenge will be to go beyond the current psychological theories of Self and strive toward a more ecologically sound model of "that which we perceive to be part of." In psychology, such attempt have already been taken up by Jungian, transcendentalist and ecological psychological approaches (Sinha, 1995; Kidner, 1994). To achieve further progress in the field, breaking through the laboratory barrier seems to be a prime challenge. Among the few, Sinha (1995) has argued for qualitative research methods in environmental psychology, pointing at studies of literature, art and cultural theory. If environmental psychology succeeds in doing this, it would be in the unique critical position to call into question some of the Cartesian assumptions present in mainstream psychology, and as a consequence contribute to a fundamental reorientation of personhood. Its interdisciplinary focus, interactive nature, and commitment to ecological protection and environmental awareness (Bell, Fisher, Baum, Greene, 1996), makes it a ready candidate to suggest a critical and historical approach.

    In conclusion, I believe that historicizing environmental psychology might bring some unexpected and important implications for general psychological theory and methodology. Historical ecology's transcendental nature and interdisciplinary focus could play an impotant role in this transformation. As a discipline, an historically informed environmental psychology would be more critical and  anthropological, and valuable in its application to landscape studies.
 

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