Perceiver, Perceived, Perceptual Product (Evaluating Experts' Interpretations of the Components of ‘Landscape’ Definition)

In recent decades, the interpretation of the relationship between man and the environment has been one of the most important researchers’ challenges, caused by the development of urban sciences. This issue has shaped new concepts such as landscape. The emergence of this concept has been the result of many studies conducted by experts and researchers over the years.  Reviewing the literature shows that there is a semantic pluralism for the term landscape. It also highlights a lack of consensus on the term among the scholars. Experience has shown that the survival of a scientific approach requires reflection on its logical foundations. This could be achieved by providing a single definition for its basic concepts. Such a definition makes it possible for researchers to debate on the issues in the field. Multiple interpretations result in various strategies through which the environment can be influenced. The interpretations also lead to developing different approaches. This study shows that different and sometimes contradictory concepts have been used to describe the term landscape. In the proposed definitions, the term landscape has been conceptualized as perceptual relations including the perceiver and perceived components and this concept is the product of experts' interpretation of how these components are related and how their relations are verbalized. This paper sought to analyze contemporary approaches to explain the concept of the landscape. To this purpose, we examined the components of definitions and analyzed them using content analysis to propose a comprehensive definition of the term landscape. Growing research shows that experts' descriptions of the components (perceiver, perceived, relation, and product) fall into several conceptual categories. It seems that the term landscape can be best described as the perceptual relationship between "man as a perceiver" and "environment as a perceived element" established by a "continuous" link and results in products with an "objective-subjective" nature.