The Philadelphia Flower Show and Its Dangerous Sensibilities

This chapter puts forth the notion of biophilia as a holistic dimension with physiological, biological, psychological, and existential components. It involves the drive to satisfy embodied needs concerning attunement to natural ecological rhythms and elements and bonding/caring/interrelations with other forms of life. Biophilia is shown to be interrelated with embodied aesthetic needs that entail the geography of the imagination. The goal of the author is to expose the danger of substituting aesthetic symbolizations for healthy ecological practices, practices that may not necessarily serve our aesthetic needs, but are necessary therapeutics for the environment. But since both biophiliac and aesthetic needs can also be met through aesthetico-commodity appropriations, we can become insensitive to the potential destruction to the environment. In terms of the overall thesis of the book we see here how motivations within geographies of the imagination in the mode of anthropomorphic aesthetics may not be attuned to the demands of geographies of the actual. Even though we cannot separate imagination and perception, it is possible on the basis of examining the perceptual/imaginative continuum to nevertheless recognize tensional friction between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric ecological matrices.