Allumfassende Ordnung

The close connection between gardening and natural science is particularly clear in the models for gardening developed in Europe from 1770 on. The theoretical basis of this new style of gardening developed from the interplay between aesthetics and physics. As previous theory of gardening emphasized an artistic undertaking with political symbolism, theoretical development indicated a scientific basis and took the presentation of limitless space as the possibility for varying concepts of perception as the center of consideration. This study illuminates this development by the example of the landscape gardens in Gotha. It not only relates the history of the gardens within the broad context of the history of the theory of space, but considers itself a contribution to the history of the relation between art and natural science in the period of the Enlightenment.