Swiss beauties
Jobst Brandt
This captures what attracts me to the central alps. This is a great
ride past these scenes.
Jobst Brandt
Jobst Brandt
http://www.slideshare.net/JRCordeiroPPS/switzerland-501173
> This captures what attracts me to the central alps. This is a great
> ride past these scenes.
and this is the chorus I sense when I crest the summits in this area:
http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/0/03/51/43/fond-sonore/va-pensiero.html
Jobst Brandt
Jobst Brandt
This captures what attracts me to the central alps. This is a great
ride past these scenes.
and here is the chorus that I haer when crossing the great scenes:
Jobst Brandt
Frank Krygowski
I agree, the scenery looks wonderful. But here's something that
puzzles me:
It's very common to see great beauty in scenery that would be very
inhospitable for daily living. Examples are high mountains, deserts,
and extreme topography like the Grand Canyon. Places like those would
be even more inhospitable for members of primitive cultures, like we
all were 10,000 years ago.
So what's the evolutionary advantage in seeing them as "beautiful"?
Why aren't we much more attracted by photos of (say) wheat fields and
sheep pastures with apple trees? Why doesn't our evolutionary
subconscious say "Those Swiss mountains are ugly, because I'd freeze
to death in the winter"?
- Frank Krygowski
Ron Wallenfang
Great pictures. Opera-wise, I'd opt for the finale to Siegfried as
more befitting the high Alps.
Ron Wallenfang
There's more to life than evolution.
Leo Lichtman
"Ron Wallenfang" wrote: There's more to life than evolution.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
There is a commonly accepted hypothesis that the reason we find rivers and
lakes beautiful is related to survival. Frank, your question makes me
wonder whether that hypothesis is correct. No one has yet explained any
survival value to music--yet look how universally music is enjoyed. My
personal belief is that the brain has evolved with the capacity to solve
problems, including those having to do with survival. In the process, it
has excess capacity, which applies itself to non-survival matters, like
music, beauty and crossword puzzles.
dgk
Oh great, a real explanation. Evolution. This had potential to be
better than a helmet war.
Art Harris
> This captures what attracts me to the central alps.
>
Having been to several of those locations, I agree.
Thanks for the slideshow.
Art Harris
Tom Keats
Tectonics and geology are a natural sort of music.
In fact, tectonics and geology have inspired a lot
of human-created music.
And music affects us on such a profound level;
even more profound than the emotional level.
Upheavals, downheavals, geosynclines, anticlines,
fault-blocks, folds, bathyliths, seismic activity --
Planet Earth is always singing a song.
Or groaning under the strain :-)
Maybe we relate our experiences to the terrains
we observe.
cheers,
Tom
--
Nothing is safe from me.
I'm really at:
tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca
Tom Sherman °_°
> C:\Documents and Settings\Jobst.BIGBOY\Favorites\Europe\Schewiz\Swiss slide show\Swiss.pps
>
> This captures what attracts me to the central alps. This is a great
> ride past these scenes.
>
WHAT ABOUT IOWA?
--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.
Stephen Harding
> Jobst Brandt wrote:
>
>> C:\Documents and Settings\Jobst.BIGBOY\Favorites\Europe\Schewiz\Swiss
>> slide show\Swiss.pps
>>
> Uh?
>
>> This captures what attracts me to the central alps. This is a great
>> ride past these scenes.
>>
>
> WHAT ABOUT IOWA?
There actually are "The Iowa Alps" in the northeastern part of
the state.
Rode through them during one RAGBRAI some years ago.
Once word gets out that Iowa has such wonders, who's going to
bother with the Central Alps?
SMH
Tom Sherman °_°
than Alpine passes, as they lack hairpin turns. However, the climbs are
much shorter. Best ridden in the spring and fall, as the summers are hot
and humid.
There are also steep bluffs along much of the northern Mississippi
Valley in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois.
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driftless_Area>.
[2] Some up to 20%, if the USGS Quadrangle maps can be believed.
Jym Dyer
my favorite muralist:
Imagine my disappointment.
>> WHAT ABOUT IOWA?
> There actually are "The Iowa Alps" in the northeastern part
> of the state.
=v= One drawback with Iowa, though, is that half the state
smells like rendered pork. Factory farms and slaughterhouses
are working overtime so hipsters can have their bacon donuts.
=v= In Switzerland, at least, you smell chocolate.
<_Jym_>
Tom Sherman °_°
whatever they do to soybeans, and oats cooking.
Jym Dyer
> fermenting, whatever they do to soybeans, and oats cooking.
=v= Whatever they do to soybeans? They feed them to hogs.
<_Jym_>
Jobst Brandt
> http://www.slideshare.net/JRCordeiroPPS/switzerland-501173
Better yet is the URL:
>> This captures what attracts me to the central alps. This is a
>> great ride past these scenes.
>> and this is the chorus I sense when I crest summits in this area:
http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/0/03/51/43/fond-sonore/va-pensiero.html
The intro sound track of the slide show is unusual because it is a
clear and steady alpenhorn, and instument not noted for its clarity
but for its deep tone.
Jobst Brandt
Stephen Harding
I've ridden across Iowa about 4 or 5 times and I can't say I noticed
any peculiar smells during my travels.
Indeed occasionally passing by a hog farm produces its aromas, but
nothing ubiquitous as far as the state was concerned.
SMH
Artemisia
> Places like those would
> be even more inhospitable for members of primitive cultures, like we
> all were 10,000 years ago.
>
> So what's the evolutionary advantage in seeing them as "beautiful"?
> Why aren't we much more attracted by photos of (say) wheat fields and
> sheep pastures with apple trees?
I don't think members of primitive cultures had the same idea of beauty
as we do, or that there is anything fixed or genetic or "evolutionary"
about it. Indeed, everything about aesthetic appreciation suggests that
it is historically contingent. Just as there are periods in fashion,
there are time-related changes in how we apprehend beauty. The taste for
the "Sublime", i.e. inhospitable wild landscapes like mountains, only
came in with Romanticism in the late 18th Century. It is possible that
it is connected with intensified urbanization, the beginnings of
industrialization, the first intimations of the damage that
overpopulation could do to quality of life. These early experiences of
the ugliness of human overcrowding could have spurred a yearning for the
pristine and untouched.
I definitely remember reading pre-Romantic accounts of crossing the Alps
that described them as unambiguously hideous. I think it was in the
memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. And he was a major sculptor who could
hardly be accused of lacking aesthetic sensibility. "Beauty" to the
Renaissance mind was the walled princely palace with its strict
Classical geometry, its spaces meticulously calculated to conform to the
"Golden Ratio", and its oh-so-contrived gardens of ornamental cabbages!
Cheers,
EFR
Ile de France
Frank Krygowski
Interesting reply.
On the one hand, I recall reading accounts of the earliest settlers in
Ohio (when it was first officially opened for Euro-folk colonization),
and their dismay at the dense, dismal forests. They couldn't wait to
clear the land and get sunlight in and crops planted. And I recall
modern historians claiming that settlers saw wilderness as something
that must be tamed.
On the other hand, I also recall reading parts of the Lewis & Clark
journals, at exactly the same time period. They were traveling
through some of the wildest territory on earth, and IIRC they
frequently rhapsodized about its beauty.
I do think "fashion" influences us, to a degree. But it still seems
to me that we perceive some inherent beauty in very wild, even
inhospitable landscape.
Hmm. And as I sit here and look out my window, I'm seeing several
inches of snow, temperatures well below freezing, and a good breeze to
add wind chill. I might not survive 48 hours out there in deep
woods. But it certainly looks pretty!
- Frank Krygowski
Jym Dyer
>> fields and sheep pastures with apple trees?
=v= There are those said to be attracted to sheep, but the lest
said about that, the better.
> I don't think members of primitive cultures had the same idea
> of beauty as we do, or that there is anything fixed or genetic
> or "evolutionary" about it. Indeed, everything about aesthetic
> appreciation suggests that it is historically contingent.
=v= Fashion comes and goes, but there there are some aesthetic
appreciations that endure. The human form comes immediately
to mind (well, half of 'em, at least).
=v= We are attracted to apples and flowers. The prevailing
theory is that fruits and flowers are adaptations to attract
animals, and it seems to work. (Apple orchards are artificial
constructs of ordered rows and low-to-the-ground pruning. We
can certainly develop a fondness for that, but the apples are
at the core of it.)
=v= Some have studied symbols and found what seems to be a
universal appreciation for them. Bicycles are, of course,
the highest form of aesthetics.
<_Jym_>