{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.019801980198019802, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003094059405940594, 'mean_word_length': 5.14828897338403, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Aesthetic Implications of the New Paradigm in Ecology

Thomas Kuhn describes a scientific paradigm as a conceptual framework or set of background beliefs and values held by members of a scientific community. Part of a scientific education, he argues, is learning how the background beliefs and values that underlie scientific practices articulate a paradigm. Part of an aesthetic education, I argue, is learning how to ap preciate natural beauty differently and appropriately when new discoveries trigger what Kuhn calls a paradigm shift?a shift in the beliefs and values that determine scientific theory and practice. In 1992 scientists S. T. A. Pick ett, V. T Parker, and P. L. Fielder announced that ecology had undergone such a shift.3 The new paradigm in ecology emphasizes dynamic change, disturbance, and nonequilibrium in natural systems, and it presents some challenges for contemporary environmental aesthetics, one of which has to do with the thesis known as "scientific cognitivism." Scientific cognitivism holds that appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature must be informed by scientific knowledge. If this thesis is correct, and if the new paradigm in ecological science tells us that nature is in a state of dynamic nonequi librium, then aesthetic appreciation must adapt to constant change in nat ural systems. More generally, if aesthetic appreciation of nature must be informed by scientific knowledge, and if ecological science undergoes a par adigm shift, then a cognitivist model of aesthetic appreciation must adapt to the new paradigm. Another challenge the new paradigm presents has some