biophilia hypothesis, idea that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. The term biophilia was used by German-born American psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), which described biophilia as
the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.The term was later used by American biologist Edward O. Wilson in his work Biophilia (1984), which proposed that the tendency of humans to focus on and to affiliate with nature and other life-forms has, in part, a genetic basis.(From Britannica)
Biophilia: Love of Living Beings
...
The Human Relationship with Nature
Anecdotal and qualitative evidence suggests that humans are innately attracted to nature. For example, the appearance of the natural world, with its rich diversity of shapes, colours, and life, is universally appreciated. This appreciation is often invoked as evidence of biophilia.
The symbolic use of nature in human language, in idioms such as blind as a bat
and eager beaver,
and the pervasiveness of spiritual reverence for animals and nature in human cultures worldwide are other sources of evidence for biophilia.
Such spiritual experience and widespread affiliations with natural metaphors appear to be rooted in the evolutionary history of the human species, originating in eras when people lived in much closer contact with nature than most do today.
Human divergence from the natural world appears to have occurred in parallel with technological developments, with advances in the 19th and 20th centuries having the most significant impact, fundamentally changing human interactions with nature. In its most literal sense, this separation was made possible by the construction of enclosed and relatively sterile spaces, from homes to workplaces to cars, in which modern humans were sheltered from the elements of nature and in which many, particularly people living in more-developed countries, now spend the majority of their time.