The Biophilia Hypothesis

The word biophilia comes from two ancient Greek words; Bios which means life, and Philia which means love. Biophilia literally means “love of life or living systems”. The German psychologist Erich Fromm was the first to use the notion of biophilia to describe the human tendency to connect with nature (Fromm, 1964). With the publication of his book (Biophilia) in 1984, the biologist Edward Wilson brought widespread attention to the concept of biophilia. Wilson argues that the human attraction to nature environments and processes is rooted in our biology (Wilson, 1984). In their book (The Biophilia Hypothesis) Stephen Kellert and Wilson investigated the notion of biophilia in a scientific way, they presented their hypothesis and examined the

He argues that the physical environment where early humans lived contained several sources of threats which put them in a negatively toned emotional state that helped them to take immediate responses. Such responses were vital for their survival but in the same time they lead to physical and psychological stress. Since early humans’ survival depended on their physical energy, focus and attention to potential threats, they needed restoration from stress as soon as the source of threat disappear. According to Ulrich unthreatening natural settings provided a good source of restoration from stress (Ulrich,

O’Keefe, May Britt Moser, and Edward I. Moser won Nobel Prize in physiology for the discovery of the nerve cells responsible for sense of place (place cells) and navigation (grid cells). The place cells are a group of nerve cells present in the brain and responsible for creating mental maps for different environments. They provide the brain with spatial memory capacity. The grid cells are another group of nerve cells adjacent to the place cells. Grid cells provide the brain with internal coordinate system essential for navigation. Grid cells fire in the same spacing and orientation, but different in phasing so that together they cover every point in the environment. The firing of grid cells follows a fractal grid, the firing of neurons form nodes, the extension of such nodes cover every point in the environment and follows the same pattern of the original node -self-similarity- (Moser, et.al.,