A Comparison and Evaluation of the Basics of Relationship Between Human and Nature in Two Bodies of Landscape and Ecology Knowledge

Sustainability is the knowledge that refers to the recovery of the relationship between man and nature and seeks to provide a set of concepts and methodologies to help humans and nature better interact. Ecological sustainability is a widely recognized branch of sustainability knowledge that draws upon the ecological interpretation of the components of the human and nature relationship to provide solutions for the enduring interaction of these two components. Thus, a review of the theoretical literature on ecology indicates that this interpretation is only based on the physical components of this relationship that does not provide a context for understanding their semantic aspects. This research aims to answer the question: “Which body of knowledge can produce the most effective man-nature relationship that is capable of making the two sides sustain it? “ Thus, this article uses the pathology of the relationship between human and nature in ecological knowledge and establishes an analogy over the explanation of this relationship in landscape knowledge to examine the two attitudes using a descriptive-analytical method which is based on a critique of content and structure of the two attitudes. The findings suggest that ecological sustainability fails to describe all aspects of sustainability comprehensively and cannot provide solutions for the objective aspects of it, owing to its theoretical foundations. One would say that the relationship between man and nature is not only noted in biological aspects but also in yet another respect, which is affected by the perceptual process between these two components. On the other hand, landscape knowledge is an attitude that both explains the physical and semantic dimensions of the relationship between humans and nature. Thus, the conceptual sustainability model, if based on an interpretation of landscape from the relationship between humans and nature, can clearly explain the physical and semantic dimensions of sustainability and result in more complete measures.