Qualità terziarie e affordances nello studio del paesaggio = Tertiary qualities and affordances in the study of the landscape

This paper is an introduction to the study of the landscape from the point of view of perception. It discusses the theories of tertiary qualities and affordances in order to explain the theoretical contribution of Experimental Phenomenology. The philosopher Georg Simmel was a precursor in this line of research applied to the landscape, with the introduction of the concept of Stimmung. Tertiary qualities have been studied by Gestalt psychologists: this theory considers tertiary qualities as immediate properties of the perceptual field, independent of the subject. According to James J. Gibson, the father of Ecological Psychology, affordance is a relational concept that implies the action of organisms; but values and meanings in the environment are “external to the perceiver” (Gibson, 1979, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, p. 127). The article concludes that the phenomenological theory of expressive qualities, considered as objective properties of the environment, is crucial to psychological studies on the landscape.