The links between trees, forests and improved mental and physical health are becoming clearer, with an increasing amount of applied research providing a more solid evidence base. When researchers offer explanations as to why such links are evidenced, their theories tend to ultimately be grounded in psycho-evolutionary theory or what the Biologist E.O Wilson termed ‘Biophilia’.
Psycho-evolutionary theory is based on the notion that millions of years of evolution have left modern humans with a partly genetic predisposition to respond positively to nature and prefer landscapes that favour their own survival, with the ability to identify relaxing, restorative settings, and the capacity to recover from fatigue and stress, being adaptive.
The timeline reflects how humans have evolved in a largely unmodified natural environment, with only a tiny fraction of our evolutionary history having been spent in artificially constructed urban environments. Because of this, it is suggested, our physical and mental wellbeing is still highly dependent on contact with the natural environment, and this is why trees and forests in and around urban places can provide places that improve our mental and physical health.
Psycho-evolutionary theory has been extensively critiqued, and whilst I intuitively find it an endearing theory, if conceived in stringent biological terms of genetic determinism, it does have several limitations. Similarly, the circular nature of the theory has been strongly criticised and there is a danger that a preoccupation with 'proving' the theory becomes a barrier to evaluating the links between trees and wellbeing.
The theory states that ‘beauty is in the eye of the gene’, so therefore a positive perspective towards trees and woods would seem 'natural'. Yet the issue is not simply reducible to biological terms, of people’s innate tendencies to affiliate with trees. Filtered by cultural input, trees produce complex feelings in the public, from attraction to aversion, from awe to indifference, from peacefulness to fear-driven anxiety. Or as William Blake succinctly remarked, over 200 years ago, “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way". So with regard to any hard-wired love of trees, it must be accepted that such evolutionary dispositions are relatively weak and tend to wither without learning, experience and social support.
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