Is beauty 'really' in the mind of the beholder?
Marcello Penso
I'm an architect and haven't lurked much here, but was curious to see
what response this question would generate.
The question revolves around perception, taste and what's perceived.
I've always found the statement- 'beauty is in the mind of beholder' to
be unsatisfactory, because it implies we apply 'beauty' to whatever we
perceive.
Yet there must be something in the object/person/event perceived
that would stimulate that kind of response. Beauty isn't applied
indiscriminately, and it's possible to agree on what's beautiful and
what's not.
In other words, it's not whimsical.
I'm wondering if beauty is more than a matter of taste, like 'a favorite
color' would be.
Any references of books or good articles on this topic would be greatly
appreciated also.
Thanks!
Marcello Penso RA
Sir Frederick
You sound typical of the medieval culture in which we live. You haven't studied
brains, specifically human brains. How can you be an architect and not know about
brains, sounds absurd, well it is. Start by reading
"A User's Guide to the Brain : Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain"
-- by John J., Ratey MD , then get into some of the brain studies that center on aesthetics.
Until you do those studies you as an architect will be like the medical
doctors that bled patients to let the evil spirits out.
Should take you about five years. See you then!
--
Best,
Martin
New Email Address
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
sir freddie the unique near sd,ca
*************************
Phrase of the week :
Humanity is far from perfect in its understanding,
abilities, or intentions. We must not imagine, however,
that we and our civilization are less than precious.
We have the gift of intelligence, and that is the
finest thing this planet has ever produced.
-- Michael A. Seeds
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
Marcello Penso
says...
> Marcello Penso wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm an architect and haven't lurked much here, but was curious to see
> > what response this question would generate.
> >
> > The question revolves around perception, taste and what's perceived.
> >
> > I've always found the statement- 'beauty is in the mind of beholder' to
> > be unsatisfactory, because it implies we apply 'beauty' to whatever we
> > perceive.
> >
> > Yet there must be something in the object/person/event perceived
> > that would stimulate that kind of response. Beauty isn't applied
> > indiscriminately, and it's possible to agree on what's beautiful and
> > what's not.
> >
> > In other words, it's not whimsical.
> >
> > I'm wondering if beauty is more than a matter of taste, like 'a favorite
> > color' would be.
> >
> > Any references of books or good articles on this topic would be greatly
> > appreciated also.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Marcello Penso RA
>
> You sound typical of the medieval culture in which we live.
Why do you say that? How is my question 'medieval'?
What is your point of view on the matter?
> You haven't studied
> brains, specifically human brains. How can you be an architect and not know about
> brains, sounds absurd, well it is.
Ehm, being an architect has nothing to do with neurology. Designing good
looking buildings requires practical knowledge of space requirements,
diplomacy and aesthetic knowledge of different architectural styles
available today. An architect only needs to know about basic psychology
and have a sense of aesthetic balance, and how to properly manage the
architectural styles he/she intends to use, if the building requires a
decorative program of some kind.
I've been an architect for 14 years, and have worked in Italy for 8 and
here 6, with work experience ranging from high end commercial (Versace,
Paciotti, Verre boutiques) to commercial/office (Gap, Power 1) to
industrial (BellSouth) and residential.
What do you know about architecture?
I've read quite a bit on the brain- Restak, Pinker, Gregory- and on
perception -Gombrich, Arnheim, including Hamlyn's work.
But what does the neurology have to do with the perception of beauty?
> Start by reading
> "A User's Guide to the Brain : Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain"
> -- by John J., Ratey MD , then get into some of the brain studies that center on aesthetics.
I have 'A Companion to Aesthetics' (Cooper ed.), and Scruton's book
Aesthetics of Architecture, and a few other. I'll look for your
recommendation.
Sir Frederick
> >
What! Has five years already passed? How time flies!
Welcome back Marcello!
The point is that people with brains use buildings. No, 'really' they do.
You won't find a 'mind' among them accept as false folk lore.
Since in architecture (of which I only use, thus know something)
you are dealing with a reality (the structures),
I was hoping you would be interested
in the reality of people rather than the phantoms of people,
brains are real, 'minds' are phantoms. I do know about brains.
Here is another author germane to your original question "
V. S. Ramachandran, two books
1. "Art and the Brain : Controversies in Science & the Humanities (Journal of
Consciousness" Studies Volume 6 (1999) June - July)
2. "Phantoms in the Brain : Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind"
Who knows, perhaps you could found a new school of architecture,
based on reality aesthetics rather than folk lore aesthetics.
Marcello Penso
Great, I'll look these up. But I'm still not fully getting your point of
view on the subject.
I'm assuming you mean that beauty is an object of the mind and therefore
a phantasm? In other words, Kant's writings about aesthetics in his CPJ
are pies in the sky?
Or is it that there may be a 'beauty' neuron, like the long sought for
'grandmother' cell? And if so, is it engaged immediately upon sensory
input, or is it engaged after the brain as broken down the sensory input
into its constituent parts (lines, shades, colors, static and moving
parts in the case of vision). Or is it engaged after a few more seconds
of prefrontal lobe processing?
Marcello
Ed Cryer
"Marcello Penso" <m.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16fd1be8b...@netnews.worldnet.att.net...
you're talking great sense while your interlocutor seems to have some bee in
his bonnet that he's eager to push here. This doesn't deal with the question
you're asking. He's talking b.s.
I've always favoured the classical view of beauty; it's incorporated 'out
there' in symmetry. Look at the columns on the Parthenon, the Gothic
cathedrals, or the faces of the world's 20 most beautiful women. What do
they have in common? Symmetry. The Parthenon seems to kind of hang from the
sky, it looks so kind of lightweight. But it's all an illusion produced by
design. The columns are deliberately tapered. This produces the symmetrical
effect for the observer.
And then look at the natural world. Look at the symmetry of honeycombs in a
hive, crystal formations, etc etc etc.
Hope this helps. Ed
Buddha Thu
According to Thomas Aquinas, Beauty is stated in these words. Ad
pulchritudinem requirunter tria: Integritas, Consonantia et Claritas.
To Beauty three are required: Wholeness, Harmony and Brightness, (or
Clarity).
He was subscribing to the Greek Criteria of Beauty along with Truth
and Goodness which were held to be "indefinable" and irreducible to
which is atomistic in a way. This means that they cannot be justified
further and that one cannot apprehend them rationally except by way of
intuition.
This is not to say that there is a mystical irrational understanding
to it. Rather it is nonrational, and which is nonrational is not
necessary against reason. It is rather above reason gives reason a
starting point.
If one thinks about it, all justifications must start with practical
givens, otherwise reasons would not exist. And this is by no means
irrational. On the contrary, it is necessary.
The Greeks believe that these givens were universal and derived
intuitively.
Postmoderns would say that there is not transcendental starting point
by which we can intuit universal givens. All givens are derived from
other givens. All words, from other words. All sensibilities of beauty
from other sensibility of beauty, immanent and not transcendent from
within the culture. This is from Derida.
My view is that this postmodern view of beauty poses a problem. For
when we find certain things objectionable, i.e. someone might think
that the mass slaughter of human beings to be a work of performance
art, there is no way we can object to it. There is no appeal to a
transcendent starting point to say that this is not beautiful.
I don't think that beauty is up to taste. It is what the community
thinks of it in terms of its language games from within the culture
that its concepts plays. In this sense, there is a middle level of
objectivity and subjectivity. It is not entirely subjective since it
is not up to individual tasts. It is not entirely objective since it
is not derived from some mystical universal realm as the Greeks had
thought. Beauty is something to be shared as it is embedded by the
culture. It is the creativity that the community as a group embarks
upon to self express itself as an identity. It is like a language that
is constantly be cast and recast to something new within our
historical process. In this way, it is not entirely under a static
criteria, but it is not also something constant from within the
community.
Marcello Penso <m.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:<MPG.16fc62e14...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>...
Leonardo Dasso
"Marcello Penso" <m.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16fc62e14...@netnews.worldnet.att.net...
Ciao Marcello!
I'd say that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, because it is us
who perceive things and find them beautiful, ugly, dull or whatever. I think
that the question is whether us humans share certain universal criteria of
beauty, ie, whether certain things are found beautiful across different
people and different cultures. I'd say probably yes, as criteria such as the
golden rule are found pleasant by most people, and some experiments have
been conducted where certain faces were shown to people of different
cultures and the same faces were found "beautiful" by most people.
I have a book that I read some years ago and that in one of the chapters
deals with this concept -though there must be an abundant literature dealing
with the issue. The book I have is "The culture of Hope --a new birth of the
classical spirit" by Frederick Turner.
regards
leo
Tim Wesson
<mmcn...@fuzzysys.com> wrote:
There is an important sense that aesthetics _is_ folk lore aesthetics.
I suspect in fact that a building scientifically designed to be beautiful
would in fact be missing something important from it for the same reason
that artists can make more beautiful things than engineers. Notably that
recognising beauty is an emergent property of the brain, and the best
tools for analysing and producing beauty are not necessarily our
abilities to process data logically and systematically, rahter, a holstic
approach is required.
> --
> Best,
> Martin
> New Email Address
> mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
> sir freddie the unique near sd,ca
> *************************
> Phrase of the week :
> Humanity is far from perfect in its understanding, abilities, or
> intentions. We must not imagine, however, that we and our civilization
> are less than precious. We have the gift of intelligence, and that is
> the finest thing this planet has ever produced. -- Michael A. Seeds
> :-))))Snort!)
> *************************
--
Tim Wesson
There is no tyranny like the rule of God
Mike Dubbeld
a universal beauty in the form of harmony in the universe. They held that
for example music that was harmonious was somehow connected to
Divine and dissonance/inharmonious music was not. Pythagoras found
a mathematical relationship in harmonious music (harmonics) and today
the study of these things is found in Music Theory. (I only know because
I have an interest in waves/vibrations/frequencies). They believe that
beauty was divinely connected and the soul needed to be purified by
this harmony/attune itself to its true nature.
The expression 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' was more or less the
same position that Protagoras (a Sophist) held under his famous expression
'Man is the measure of all things.' Meaning what is right to me is what is
important and no one can tell me otherwise. It means everything is
subjective.
This is a position that Plato and Socrates basically trashed completely
making Protagoras look very foolish.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is saying everything is subjective to
the opinion of each individual. It is the view held by Existentialists.
If I say there are 8 planets around the sun - An Existentialist will say
that is reality to me. The opposing view of a modern Realist (Einstein is
probably the most famous Realist) will say no - you are wrong. There is
9 planets around the sun. My forgetting the 9'th planet makes that 9'th
planet no less real.
If you look in psychology you will find that there are a large number of
things that people like. Advertisers make practical use of this all the
time.
If beauty was totally subjective/there was no basis for a person selecting
one product over another based on appearance - a lot of people would
be out of work. Things are arranged on store shelves so as to present a
pick me up/pleasant/inviting look. (for all you AI nuts I am sure you can
write programs to distinguish this sort of thing). More over subjects are
given things to look at and a camera with a high zoom lens trains on their
pupils. Pleasing items were found to invoke a larger pupil indication a
selling winner. Also in psychology you can find optical illusions that tend
to baffle people. In art as you may know the study of paintings is an art
and a science. A church with a spire with a cross on the top and a star
above it - the spire leads the eye upward. In 'The Last Supper' painting
with Jesus sitting in the middle of the table with all his disciples sitting
on both sides of him - that big table in the center of the picture screams
out with stability. This is actually a form of practical mysticism!
Further yoga holds as the ancient Greeks that beauty is associated with
the Divine. When one looks at a statue of David - the sculpture tried to
capture in stone an attitude of superiority. Of an intellectual look that
at the same time is a relaxed and powerful look. In short aesthetics are
connected with the Divine as we are with souls which can identify with
it/this beauty. It is only arm-chair cry baby philosophers that want to
objectify everything or dismiss its existence that tend to use this -
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - as an example of showing the
subjective nature of such things and thereby establishing the uslessness
of even thinking about it. But in actual fact they only deceive themselves
because not only is there such a thing as beauty - it is highly capitalized
upon by advertisers and marketing of all kinds as a practical matter.
Some argue that on religious grounds that since all nature was created by
God it is all divine/beautiful. That is true but things that appear
friendlier
appear to more closely match our ideas of divinity. Beauty is a divine
quality - manifested as health of the physical body or a clean (pure)
place of any sort etc.
Mike Dubbeld
"Marcello Penso" <m.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16fc62e14...@netnews.worldnet.att.net...
Squirrel
> Hi,
>
>
> I'm wondering if beauty is more than a matter of taste, like 'a favorite
> color' would be.
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Marcello Penso RA
>
Dear Marcello, I think beauty is perceived in what we appreciate. This
can be something we have been taught to appreciate, or could derive from
our own personal value system. For example blonde haired women are
often regarded as beautiful (given all other features are ok), more
frequently so than those of other hair colour. I think this derives in
part from the idea that white symbolises good, and black evil,
regardless of the true character of the woman. Also that young children
are usually fairer so there is an association of innocence, again
regardless of the woman's true character. By wearing the symbol of
goodness and innocence she is more likely to gain a nuance of that
aspect and therefore appreciated favourably. Of course if clearly by
other signals as being the opposite, that creates tension and therefoe
possibly excitement. Sometimes to a man a woman is beautiful if
regarded as being available, regardless of true looks. This can be
signalled in grooming, body language, and perceived effort to be
appreciated. Black and white have a long history in our culture,
whether in association with the game chess, which can be regarded as the
great battle between good and evil, bright light which reveals, darkness
which hides ( and can therefore seem more scary) Apart from dark and
light I doubt that black and white as colours had much meaning in
caveman times. But light would have been appreciated, and in its own
way feared; lightning, reveal what the day could bring.
I know many people like the western classical culture, and see all its
symmetry as beautiful. Personally I find it boring and dislike
classical architecture as a whole. I personally prefer the gothic style
with its reaching/aspiring towers its vaulting, its ugly gargoyles, its
stained glass, ...on an intimate scale I find it really beautiful.
I am also fond of assymmetry. To me a symmetrical object (although good
for some things, and practical) they don't hold my interest. I am more
involved in something assymmetrical, there is more variety. I may have
to engage my mind to work out what the rest of it looks like. But then
a quality that is high on my list of what I value is curiousity. A lot
of what seems symmetrical isn't really entirely on closer inspection.
Like a foot, or one arm's musclecature may be bigger than the other.
I love the colour Turquoise, partly because I associate it with the sea.
Although I love all colours in many different nuances and aspects,
turquoise is to me extra beautiful, and many things would seem more
beautiful to me for being that colour, unless I see the colour wrong for
the object or the context. Same with green which I associate strongly
with nature and trees, although some trees are naturally red leafed.
I think what I am trying to say is that beauty is governed by what we
value, regardless if the connection with the value is obvious or
unclear, whether instilled passively into us via culture and
symbolisation of values regardless of whether the object bearing those
symbols hold the truth of that symbo, those values guide us into what we
regard as beautiful. This can apply to a person as being physically
beautiful, or intellectually beautiful, or morally beautiful We
appreciate kindness. A kind person can be regarded as having a beauty
inside. Um,...you get what I mean?
Uglav.
Ed Cryer
mathematical models of natural processes. You get the impression that the
more beautiful a particular theory is, the more likely it is to be true.
They communicate in maths about the big bang or multiverse theories; they
just stand at a blackboard scribbling formulas that are completely not for
the layman. There's something 'beautiful' in Newton's formula for universal
gravitation, or Einstein's 'E=Mc^2'; a kind of simplicity of representing
nature to human reason.
Einstein argued with Niels Bohr for years about quantum theory; he just
refused to accept it. He's credited with the statement 'God does not play
dice with the universe'. He couldn't accept the Uncertainty Principle; a
universe whose basic structure could not be accessible to reason.
I once saw a TV documentary about Watson and Crick unravelling the
double-helix structure of the DNA molecule. They were doing it in a closed
laboratory, and all the others were interested in what was going on in
there. They asked all kinds of questions including 'Is it beautiful?' and
the answer was 'Yes, it is beautiful'. I think this meant that it was
compact, functional and easily modellable mathematically; ie highly
accessible to human reason.
There are also old buildings like the Great Pyramid of Cheops and
Stonehenge. The Pyramid's beauty seems somehow enhanced once you learn that
the relationship of the base length to the height is pi. It's enhanced even
more when you start studying all the theories that have been produced about
the alignment with Sirius etc. etc. etc. It's the same with Stonehenge and
the mid-summer solstice.
"Marcello Penso" <m.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16fc62e14...@netnews.worldnet.att.net...
Gea Jones
--
Best Wishes
Gea*
"Ed Cryer" <e...@ecryer.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:a72fm9$4jb$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
This may interest you.
I am a clairvoyant, as the reading progresses, and
I get "DEEPER"into the person, they begin to look more beautiful,
I told my mother and she said it is because I am seeing peoples soul;s.
I don't know, but certainly faces become more open and radiant,
as they unburden themselves.
I was married to an architect,
and he was very concerned about beauty.
He very much believed that the environment could alter people, [nature
versus nurture],
unfortunately , I think George Bernard Shaw said that the only ugliness is
poverty.
I tend to agree.
Nature is about the only yardstick most of us have to go on ..
A rose, the sea, corn, sunsets, all indisputibly beautiful.
Of course man -made beauty is something quite different,.
It is subject to fashion, supply and demand,
etc.
the greek idea of beauty is very different to ours now.
although certain rules seem to
still apply, form, symmetry, shape,
colour etc.
I am "obsessed" with beauty, I love beautiful things , people,
buildings, paintings etc.
I choose to live in a very beautiful remote area of Devon, and have given
up a more exciting lifestyle in London, because I love the beauty
of nature.
From my windows I can see the Atlantic, the beach, trees, flowers, hills,
it nourishes me.
They once did a little research into the most important
things people look for when they buy a house,
top of the list was "the view",
this really surprised me.
Gea Jones
Ed Cryer
"Gea Jones" <Geaj...@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:a72kjb$ms1$1...@paris.btinternet.com...
of happiness there. I find as much soulfulness in what you've written here
as in some of the best lines from Wordsworth.
I live on the edge of a large city in NW England, and, although I'm no
clairvoyant, I see quite a lot of what you might call 'human ugliness'. I
mean people who are tied up in the daily scratting, and can't rise above it.
Whenever I can I get away to the countryside; the Lakes or preferably the
Scottish Highlands. My soul sores there. It makes me a better person; more
responsive to others. I call it 'refreshing myself' or 'rejuvenating'. I get
a similar sort of high from studying the history of human achievement and
culture. It keeps me in touch with the higher aspects of our life.
Ed
The Immortalist
> there' in symmetry. Look at the columns on the Parthenon, the Gothic
> cathedrals, or the faces of the world's 20 most beautiful women. What do
> they have in common? Symmetry. The Parthenon seems to kind of hang from the
> sky, it looks so kind of lightweight. But it's all an illusion produced by
> design. The columns are deliberately tapered. This produces the symmetrical
> effect for the observer.
>
> And then look at the natural world. Look at the symmetry of honeycombs in a
> hive, crystal formations, etc etc etc.
>
ya! now we are getting somewhere. I like to think that our perceptions
of qualities are re-re-presentations of symmetries or fractional
(fractal) organization. The reason we pay attention is because the
threats we faced in our evolutionary past had symmetry our if
intelligent these threats displayed these qualities. This is why we
notice patterns.
Nature on this planet has in no way discovered all patterns so
computer programs that exist now which can discover symmetries natural
selection bypassed can give trade secrets to the artist.
In this chapter segment Kevin Kelly, in the book OutOfControl, speaks
about methods for discovering patterns in "possibility space" and
mention a few thing about ART and COMPLEXITY:
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch14-f.html
this breeding instead of creating is the future - where the work of
art is FOUND not designed. SO the trade secret for the architect is
that there are programs out there for regular pcs which could create
never before seen structures for a cheap price and they will
automatically stimulate the mind of the beholden.
minds notice things that do something
Marcello Penso
says...
But some things of great beauty have no symmetry- like a cloudless star-
filled night sky, a flower, a landscape.
In the case of art and architecture, there are any number of purposely
assymetrical works that are also beautiful, like paintings by Mondrian,
or works by Carlo Scarpa (to name an architect).
So while symmetry can be seen as something that instills an appreciation
of beauty, it's not the only thing.
Marcello
Marcello Penso
reanima...@yahoo.com says...
Apart from symmetry, are their other patterns this author talks about,
which could be thought of a stimulating appreciation on our part?
Marcello
Marcello Penso
tim.w...@nontlspworldam.com says...
Some of the most beautiful man-made structures are bridges. Verrazano-
Narrows comes to mind as one. Not just awesome, but also beautiful.
But yes, engineers are in the business of solving problems efficiently-
artists simply express whatever they want.
Efficiency however can be beautiful, though I think it's of a different
type than the kind of beauty perceived in objects. Efficiency is more of
a conceptual beauty- a judgement obtained upon reflection and
contemplation, perhaps in a way that Kant suggested in his Critique of
Pure Judgement.
> Notably that
> recognising beauty is an emergent property of the brain, and the best
> tools for analysing and producing beauty are not necessarily our
> abilities to process data logically and systematically, rahter, a holstic
> approach is required.
I'm not sure if a holistic is really 'required' to appreciate beauty or
generate something that's beautiful. A color spectrum, for instance,
while perhaps not necessarily beautiful is certainly eye-catchy. Yes the
color spectrum may be the only thing worth noting in, say, a painting of
an art supplier's shop window.
But I do agree that beauty is not arrived at logically, and to some
extent, while it may have some basic criteria, there is probably more to
it than a set of required elements.
In this case here, then, the object is the thing that has the properties,
and therefore beauty is only dependant on a given person's willingness
and capacity to perceive those properties.
Marcello
Marcello Penso
Budd...@hotmail.com says...
If a culture determines what is acceptable as 'beauty' (and this is to
some extent true for some things), what is gonig on when, say, an
aborigine, a Mayan, a 20th century American, a 1st century Visigoth, all
find a sunset or a flower, or a particular landscape to be beautiful?
And would the Pyramids, as a basic structure (perhaps more awesome than
beautiful) still be beautiful to all of them?
Marcello
Marcello Penso
Lda...@btinternet.com says...
Good point. But even if he perceive things in similar ways (having
similar brains and basic sets of experiences which are common- having
parents, seeing a sunset, etc.) is beauty a cross-cultural concept,
exclusively mental in nature? If so, how is it stimulated by experience?
How does an object generate 'the beauty response'?
Certainly there must be something in the object which causes us to
respond in that way. After all, we normally use beauty as a descriptive
term to a limited set of things, experiences, events, people, etc.
Marcello
Marcello Penso
> The ancient Greeks - particularly Pythagoras and Plato also believed in
> a universal beauty in the form of harmony in the universe. They held that
> for example music that was harmonious was somehow connected to
> Divine and dissonance/inharmonious music was not. Pythagoras found
> a mathematical relationship in harmonious music (harmonics) and today
> the study of these things is found in Music Theory. (I only know because
> I have an interest in waves/vibrations/frequencies). They believe that
> beauty was divinely connected and the soul needed to be purified by
> this harmony/attune itself to its true nature.
>
> The expression 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' was more or less the
> same position that Protagoras (a Sophist) held under his famous expression
> 'Man is the measure of all things.' Meaning what is right to me is what is
> important and no one can tell me otherwise. It means everything is
> subjective.
> This is a position that Plato and Socrates basically trashed completely
> making Protagoras look very foolish.
In which works was this achieved?
Excellent points. Thanks for your post.
Could you recommend some literature related to what you're saying?
Marcello
Marcello Penso
lead him to appreciate some things rather than others, and favor some
things rather than others. But I think there is a difference between
liking something or disliking something (like the way you dislike
classical architecture) and finding something beautiful.
Truly beautiful things tend to be powerful experiences, and they may
involve things that we previously did not like or did not consider as
beautiful. Someone who hates classical music may come to find it
beautiful, and love it, simply be experiencing a performance of Mozart's
Requiem, for instance.
In this case, something evidently clicks, and I think it's more than just
a person's willingness to see it.
Marcello
Marcello Penso
says...
Kant in his Critique of Pure Judgement goes to some length to define
beauty (and curiously, nobody yet has brought up Kant's definition and if
it's even a good one), and as part of it he states that the greatest
experience of beauty is the contemplative one, where one senses via
intuition through the 'sublime' (Kant's word), in a kind of transcendant
experience, that they are part of a universal order.
I think the beauty in science, and particularly math, is of this type.
And yes, it is also true that intimate knowledge of a thing's properties
can enhance the pleasure in experiencing a beautiful thing. It happens a
lot in all the arts. The experience of Beethoven's 5th is definitely
richer when one knows intimately about music and can appreciate all the
choices and methods the composer used. In this way, not only is the music
beautiful, but the experience of the music is also beautiful, since it
involves contemplation of a sort.
Marcello
Marcello Penso
says...
buildings are the same height, it's the layout of the spaces, and
whether the bathroom has a real window. Same in suburban Florida, unless
of course you live on the beach. Then the view is paramount.
Nice post, by the way. Thanks.
Marcello
squirrel
> >
> Good points, yes. A person's background, character and experience can
> lead him to appreciate some things rather than others, and favor some
> things rather than others. But I think there is a difference between
> liking something or disliking something (like the way you dislike
> classical architecture) and finding something beautiful.
>
> Truly beautiful things tend to be powerful experiences, and they may
> involve things that we previously did not like or did not consider as
> beautiful. Someone who hates classical music may come to find it
> beautiful, and love it, simply be experiencing a performance of Mozart's
> Requiem, for instance.
>
> In this case, something evidently clicks, and I think it's more than just
> a person's willingness to see it.
>
> Marcello
I don't find classical architecture beautiful, but then I haven't seen
the parthenon in person. I have a weakness for ruins, so that could
change. Yes beautiful things are profoundly moving. There was an
artist in my own country- Colin McCahon. When I first saw his work in
a gallery, I didn't like it, and seriously questioned that it was art.
Many years later I had a dream about his work, like I was inside the
painting. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of what I saw. I have
loved his work ever since, and a couple of months ago I went to see
one of my favourites of his works in a local gallery. I had seen it
many times befoe, and always felt uplifted by seeing it. This last
time I left in tears, because I felt so overwhelmed by it. I had
realised that it captured for me the happiest moment of my childhood.
The picture is an abstract landscape "Tomorrow is the same but not as
this is". It looks like nothing in postcards. There is also a poem
that moves me deeply called "rain". I feel it on my skin. It is by
New Zealand poet Hone Tuwhare. So in art, I often find beauty in
works that evoke emotional responses. Works that remind me of my
values. I find that ideas can also be beautiful. Maybe in a
different way. Ideas demonstrate interconnections. They also can
reflect or support values. I find the notion of infinity beautiful. I
find beauty in looking beyond what we commonly recognise. Perhaps
because I sense a kind of freedom.
squirrel
> mathematical models of natural processes. You get the impression that the
> more beautiful a particular theory is, the more likely it is to be true.
> They communicate in maths about the big bang or multiverse theories; they
> just stand at a blackboard scribbling formulas that are completely not for
> the layman. There's something 'beautiful' in Newton's formula for universal
> gravitation, or Einstein's 'E=Mc^2'; a kind of simplicity of representing
> nature to human reason.
>
> double-helix structure of the DNA molecule. They were doing it in a closed
> laboratory, and all the others were interested in what was going on in
> there. They asked all kinds of questions including 'Is it beautiful?' and
> the answer was 'Yes, it is beautiful'. I think this meant that it was
> compact, functional and easily modellable mathematically; ie highly
> accessible to human reason.
>
purpose and completeness that pattern implies, and a sense of relief
at understanding more of the universe around us. Shining a light into
the darkness, seeing what is there and feeling more in control.
Mathematics is really a symbolisation of physical phenomena.
Sir Frederick
Present day aesthetics consists of rules of thumb (heuristics), folk lore
theories for dealing with human brain structures and functions without
knowing about those brain structures and functions. I am saying with more
and more human brain understandings the aesthetics can become richer and more
direct. This is your challenge despite the medieval mouthpieces herein that
nay say anything outside their limited understanding.
>
> Or is it that there may be a 'beauty' neuron, like the long sought for
> 'grandmother' cell?
Please don't play simplistic, you know better, this is a complex issue,
more than just a few neurons are involved.
> And if so, is it engaged immediately upon sensory
> input, or is it engaged after the brain as broken down the sensory input
> into its constituent parts (lines, shades, colors, static and moving
> parts in the case of vision). Or is it engaged after a few more seconds
> of prefrontal lobe processing?
Read your books.
The Immortalist
> > of qualities are re-re-presentations of symmetries or fractional
> > (fractal) organization. The reason we pay attention is because the
> > threats we faced in our evolutionary past had symmetry our if
> > intelligent these threats displayed these qualities. This is why we
> > notice patterns.
> >
> > Nature on this planet has in no way discovered all patterns so
> > computer programs that exist now which can discover symmetries natural
> > selection bypassed can give trade secrets to the artist.
> >
> > In this chapter segment Kevin Kelly, in the book OutOfControl, speaks
> > about methods for discovering patterns in "possibility space" and
> > mention a few thing about ART and COMPLEXITY:
> >
> > http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch14-f.html
> >
> > this breeding instead of creating is the future - where the work of
> > art is FOUND not designed. SO the trade secret for the architect is
> > that there are programs out there for regular pcs which could create
> > never before seen structures for a cheap price and they will
> > automatically stimulate the mind of the beholden.
> >
> > minds notice things that do something
> >
> I bet those designs would be too expensive to build!
Actually you can get alot of these programs for free. Then it would be
a matter of scaling them down to economical and sensory levels.
> -= ==============================================
> -= How long is the coast-line of Great Britain?
> -= Given a map one can sit down with a ruler and
> -= soon come up with a value for the length.
> -= The problem is that repeating the operation with
> -= a larger scale map yields a greater estimate of
> -= the length. If we actually went to the coast and
> -= measured them directly, then still greater estimates
> -= would result. It turns out that as the scale of
> -= measurement decreases the estimated length increases
> -= without limit. Thus, if the scale of the (hypothetical)
> -= measurements were to be infinitely small, then the
> -= estimated length would become infinitely large!
> -=
> -= The ultimate map is the terrain itself. The particular
> -= method we use to search through the "possibility space"
> -= determines how close we look and how
> -= accurately we model the terrain.
> -= ============================================
no one could afford the ultimate map at this time in history no matter
how rich.
> Apart from symmetry, are their other patterns this author talks about,
> which could be thought of a stimulating appreciation on our part?
YES - many. This author talks mainly about self-organizing patterns
like in nature and how we can borrow these technics for our
technologies. But he does use non-symmetrical examples many times,
especially describing the evolution of self regulating machines, in
fact this awesome book could be considered a handbook to "pattern
types". (thisbook) hehehe, i read it 31 times and suggest caution,
actually because you will be confused at first if you make it all the
way through from beginning to end.
I guess that my point was that there are little known methods for
finding patterns, symmetrical or not, and if i were into architecture
i would struggle to get these programs like sim city (free and has
lots of architecture) to get an edge on what is going on. This trade
secret thing, i suppose, meant - little used and/or known methods.
Many movie makers use these kinds of programs to evolve scenery and
special effects (much architecture)
you mentioned that you would like links and here is a few i stumbled
across:
The uses of Realistic Computer Images for Architects (this one is an
awesome paper that give a history and current usage of computers in
architecture) *i found it interesting*
http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/research/student/CompImagesArch/
Architecture News
http://www.archibot.com/
Another Archtecture News Page
http://www.arcspace.com/
Yet another mag
http://www.archizine.com/
Michael Durkin's Architectural Terms
http://www.masshomes.com/michaeldurkin/glossary.html
Art & Architecture Thesaurus (Research at the Getty)
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/index.html
Term Database - Architecture
http://www.archinform.net/start.htm?ID=ba31796e336782c9ca9cd11225f28336
Philosophy and Practice of Architecture
http://www.mgtaylor.com/mgtaylor/jotm/spring97/architec.htm
On The Evolution of Human Aesthetic Preferences.
http://www.shef.ac.uk/assem/5/chamberl.html
The Laws of Architecture From a Physicist's Perspective
http://www.math.utsa.edu/sphere/salingar/LifeandComp.html
Life and Complexity in Architecture From a Thermodynamic Analogy
http://www.math.utsa.edu/sphere/salingar/LifeandComp.html
http://www.math.utsa.edu/sphere/salingar/contr.arch.html
Truth, Beauty, and the User Interface: Notes on the Aesthetics of
Information
http://www.engl.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/papers/beauty/
from the theory of symbiosis - chapter 3 (transcending modernism)
http://www.kisho.co.jp/Books/book/chapter3.html
Asthetics & Visual Culture
http://www.augustana.ab.ca/~janzb/aesthetics.htm
Death by Architecture
http://www.deathbyarch.com/
Ed Cryer
> >
> I agree that symmetry, in part, CAN lead to visually appealing things.
> But some things of great beauty have no symmetry- like a cloudless star-
> filled night sky, a flower, a landscape.
>
> In the case of art and architecture, there are any number of purposely
> assymetrical works that are also beautiful, like paintings by Mondrian,
> or works by Carlo Scarpa (to name an architect).
>
> So while symmetry can be seen as something that instills an appreciation
> of beauty, it's not the only thing.
>
> Marcello
I think I agree whole-heartedly. Although I could talk about the fractal
geometry of a flower and other natural phenomena, I don't think that's it.
I'm no Platonist. Nature's beauty comes through to me as more than a
rationalisation of the processes involved; it's in the things themselves.
It's an unmediated appreciation. We're just coming into spring here in the
UK. We get the snowdrops, the crocuses, the daffodils, and then all of it
starts budding; the grass starts growing again, the trees get leaves, the
days get warmer. It's like it all comes to life again after dying last
autumn.
A Spanish-speaking friend of mine in Venezuela has been told by his teacher
that spring here in the UK is like a "patchwork quilt". I know what he
means. It all becomes beautiful again.
Back to architecture. What do you think of my tastes? I think the very
height was reached in 5th and 4th c BC Greece. The Parthenon, the statue of
Athene inside it, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the theatres built into
hillsides. High classical. Every now and then since we have had a classical
revival, a Palladian revival, but generally it has been downhill in terms of
beauty. There's some beauty in a Roman arch, but it's mostly functional.
There's some beauty in the Moorish style; those symmetrical patterns on the
tiles in the Alhambra. Suspension bridges I find beautiful.
There's a kind of 'over-ornateness' that has no appeal to me. The biggest
example I can think of is the Gaudi cathedral in Barcelona. A real
monstrosity. Then there's the Taj Mahal, although this is not too bad.
Ed
Mike Dubbeld
> In article <a71u9d$sp5$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>, mi...@erols.com says...
> > The ancient Greeks - particularly Pythagoras and Plato also believed in
> > a universal beauty in the form of harmony in the universe. They held
that
> > for example music that was harmonious was somehow connected to
> > Divine and dissonance/inharmonious music was not. Pythagoras found
> > a mathematical relationship in harmonious music (harmonics) and today
> > the study of these things is found in Music Theory. (I only know because
> > I have an interest in waves/vibrations/frequencies). They believe that
> > beauty was divinely connected and the soul needed to be purified by
> > this harmony/attune itself to its true nature.
> >
> > The expression 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' was more or less
the
> > same position that Protagoras (a Sophist) held under his famous
expression
> > 'Man is the measure of all things.' Meaning what is right to me is what
is
> > important and no one can tell me otherwise. It means everything is
> > subjective.
> > This is a position that Plato and Socrates basically trashed completely
> > making Protagoras look very foolish.
>
> In which works was this achieved?
For Pythagoras I suggest simply doing a search on the web for Pythagoras
because there are a number of free philosophical works you can download for
free. Divinity of number seems to come to mind as a search item.
However I got my specific information from "The Search for Personal Freedom"
by Cross/Lamm/Turk 5'th edition p50-53. The 5'th edition is
fairly old but they still publish this book I believe I saw it in a
university book
store last year. Also for Pythagoras on audio tape "Great Ideas of
Psychology"
by The Teaching Company Lecture 2 (of 48 1/2 hour tapes for 64$)
Lecture 2 Greek Philosophers and Physicians by Dr. Daniel Robinson at
Georgetown University who is a Professor of both Philosophy and Psychology
(and has a set of credits as long as your arm) exerpt -
"It was Pythagoras and his sect that reached them or less settled position
that the ultimate truth expresses itself in number. That is mere appearance
is a source of deception.
Whatever appears to us through our perceptual and sensory apparatus must be
fleeting, material, transitory; ultimately decomposable into dust and
rubbish. The Eternal Truths are found relationally. In the form of harmonic
relationships, rational order and number. It is said that the Pythagorean
teaching thought that all of reality springs from the first 4 positive
integers. Because one is the numerical source of a point. Two constitutes
the possibility of a line. Three constitutes the possibility of a plane.
Four constitutes the possibility of a solid. From out of these four primary
integers it's possible on the Pythagorean account for what they call the
Cosmic Soul to generate all of physical reality."
"It's also Pythagoras we are told who worked out the original theory of
harmony in music and
the harmonic scales. --- the human soul is tuned in a certain way. Tuned to
match up with precise mathematical relationships and music that is written,
composed and played according to these pure mathematical relationships will
be heard as harmonic. The reason it sounds right is because the harmonies
achieved by the right kind of music enjoy a hand in glove relationship."
The Teaching Company Course Great Ideas of Psychology (and all its
other courses on CD/Video tape)
https://www.teachco.com/ttcstore/products.asp?CourseID=660
Pythagoras associated beauty with harmony.
For Protagoras 'Man is a measure of all things' - another way of saying
'Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder' you are in luck. I found the Plaoto
Dialogue
Theaetetus at:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/theatu.html
It includes a hyperlink to its commentary also. Do a search on
"dog-faced baboon" at this Dialogue and you will find Socrates ridiculing
Protagoras and his 'Man is the Measure of all things' asking why Protagoras
does not use the dog-faced baboon as the measure of all things.
exerpt below:
Soc. I am charmed with his doctrine, that what appears is to each one, but I
wonder that he did not begin his book on Truth with a declaration that a pig
or a dog-faced baboon, or some other yet stranger monster which has
sensation, is the measure of all things; then he might have shown a
magnificent contempt for our opinion of him by informing us at the outset
that while we were reverencing him like a God for his wisdom he was no
better than a tadpole, not to speak of his fellow-men-would not this have
produced an over-powering effect? For if truth is only sensation, and no man
can discern another's feelings better than he, or has any superior right to
determine whether his opinion is true or false, but each, as we have several
times repeated, is to himself the sole judge, and everything that he judges
is true and right, why, my friend, should Protagoras be preferred to the
place of wisdom and instruction, and deserve to be well paid, and we poor
ignoramuses have to go to him, if each one is the measure of his own wisdom?
Must he not be talking ad captandum in all this? I say nothing of the
ridiculous predicament in which my own midwifery and the whole art of
dialectic is placed; for the attempt to supervise or refute the notions or
opinions of others would be a tedious and enormous piece of folly, if to
each man his own are right; and this must be the case if Protagoras Truth is
the real truth, and the philosopher is not merely amusing himself by giving
oracles out of the shrine of his book.
>
> >
> > Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is saying everything is subjective
to
> > the opinion of each individual. It is the view held by Existentialists.
> > If I say there are 8 planets around the sun - An Existentialist will say
> > that is reality to me. The opposing view of a modern Realist (Einstein
is
> > probably the most famous Realist) will say no - you are wrong. There is
> > 9 planets around the sun. My forgetting the 9'th planet makes that 9'th
> > planet no less real.
A search on Existentialism and Realism should do the trick for Beauty is in
the
eye of the Beholder or jus search on that.
> >
> > If you look in psychology you will find that there are a large number of
> > things that people like. Advertisers make practical use of this all the
> > time.
> > If beauty was totally subjective/there was no basis for a person
selecting
> > one product over another based on appearance - a lot of people would
> > be out of work. Things are arranged on store shelves so as to present a
> > pick me up/pleasant/inviting look. (for all you AI nuts I am sure you
can
> > write programs to distinguish this sort of thing). More over subjects
are
> > given things to look at and a camera with a high zoom lens trains on
their
> > pupils. Pleasing items were found to invoke a larger pupil indication a
> > selling winner. Also in psychology you can find optical illusions that
tend
> > to baffle people.
My psychology book is pretty old/probably out of print. It is Introduction
to
Psychology Exploration and Application by Dennis Coon. P89 refers to
'Pupilometrics' developed by Psychologist Eckard hess (Hess and Polt 1960)
exerpt:
'Hess has developed a technique he calls pupilometrics. Hess photographs the
eyes as they respond to diffiernt stimuli (under controlled light
conditions) and then measures the diamenter of the pupil. In this way he can
determine if one has responded pleasantly or unpleasantly to the stimulus.
The eyes are apparently not
only "windows to the soul" but also a door to the pocket book. Pupilmetrics
has been used commercially to select a pleasing packaging and effective
advertisements, and many a poker game has been won by a seasoned gambler who
has learned to watch the eyes of the other players.'
Lets go to Vegas!!!!!
I suspect a search on the above flag words should turn up something for you
there. I for one am going to get back to this! Pupil metrics. Reminds me of
the
TV show MASH where Hawkey complains about Charles winning at Poker
'The worst part is that he gets braver and smiles more when he is bluffing
and
you drop out and he has nothing......' Then it dawns on him what he just
said
that the clue to beating Charles is to see how much he smiles and they all
beat him!!!!!
For the Art study again The Search for Personal Freedom Volume 2 Chapter 17
The Renaissance (p22 The Last Supper /Colorplate 5 'David'. Chapter 22 Art
Baroque, Rococo) Volume II Stary Night Vincent Van Gogh Colorplate 4. But I
suspect if you do a search on the web on these things you will most likely
find art critiques on them as classical examples of artists original ideas
in painting to achieve specific perceptions.
The idea of Beauty being associated with the soul is central to yoga and in
fact
was stolen by the Greeks from India many scholars believe as well as myself.
Can't remember any any specific places related to Beauty. Health is
associated
with beauty and yoga thinks of the body as 'The body is a temple' - and as
such
it should well kept as a dwelling of God/place of worship. The soul is
associated
with energy (but the soul is not energy) and obstruction to energy in the
body
is manifested as disease/lack of energy/health. Purity of the body is an
essential
theme in yoga - as in eating only nutritious food and not junk food etc.
The idea is so central to yoga
I can not single out any particular source - right off hand I would go for
/Meditation and Mantras by Swami Vishnu Devananda (only about 10$ and
is in print at Borders/Barns and Noble last time I looked.)
Mike Dubbeld
bora sarnav
This question of yours is a good one and well asked...
However, to answer it, is not easy. Actually it is one of the most difficult
ones to answer. Because according to me, first, we have to understand the
greatest architect of all.... Of course if we possibly can....(Some call it
the god, some call it nature. Many others call it many other things...)
I guess this is why you choose to post it here. To a -supposed to be-
philosophical discussion forum..... At least where people should be taking
the questions seriously. And hopefully as serious as you take them....
Ok.. Here is a serious one...
Ask yourself this (it is not that i know the answer. I don't even have a
clue...) :
Suppose you were born in a lab where your whole life is fully controlled by
"the mad scientist"... Your enviroment is totally controlled until you
are -lets say- 20 years old. Until then you don't see anything but the walls
and the furniture of your room. You are being talked through a speaker and
the same voice always talks to you. You are being fed in the same, routine
way, since as long as you can remember. The enviroment that we live in today
is totally unknown to you. You are simply "bred" to the likening of the "mad
scientist".
Under these circumstances, would you have an understanding of a "beauty" of
your own ?
If you think you would, then given the circumstances, try to think one
example for each. One for a beautiful thing and one for a not beautiful
thing....
Then, when you are 20, suppose they take you out and you meet with the
world. The world which everybody except you have been living in....You see
things which you have never seen before... Flovers, the sky, stars. You feel
the wind on your face. You see childeren, dogs and cats.. You fell the
rain.... You see a lot of other people, each looking different.. YOU SEE A
LOT OF BUILDINGS EACH LOOKING DIFFERENT...For the first time, you hear
someone singing a song ... You see the first painting of your life... And
you are twenty years old......
Which of them would seem more beautiful than the other ? And why?
The answers should give you some hints, in your quest to understand
"beauty"..... They give some hints to me.....
Then however, i can't hold myself but ask the question : "What if that mad
scientist is the "god" himself ?"
Cheers,
Bora Sarnav
Leonardo Dasso
Indeed. In the same way that we find sugar "sweet" because it activates
certain receptors in our taste buds that trigger the sensation we call
"sweet", there must be some structures in our brain that when stimulated by
certain objects trigger the sensation"beautiful". This is of course a more
complicated story, but nonetheless, that would seem the way things work.
regards
leo
Marcello Penso
says...
>
> >
> > Or is it that there may be a 'beauty' neuron, like the long sought for
> > 'grandmother' cell?
>
> Please don't play simplistic, you know better, this is a complex issue,
> more than just a few neurons are involved.
How do you know?
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/catsdogs.html
>
> > And if so, is it engaged immediately upon sensory
> > input, or is it engaged after the brain as broken down the sensory input
> > into its constituent parts (lines, shades, colors, static and moving
> > parts in the case of vision). Or is it engaged after a few more seconds
> > of prefrontal lobe processing?
>
>
> Read your books.
>
I have, but the ones I have don't deal with the perception of beauty. The
deal with perception a bit, but not as deeply as I would like.
I'll check into your sources.
Marcello
Wordsmith
"Beauty is that which pleases upon apprehension."
--St. Thomas Aquinas
Wordsmith :)
Ed Cryer
>
> Apart from symmetry, are their other patterns this author talks about,
> which could be thought of a stimulating appreciation on our part?
>
> Marcello
Some thoughts on "pattern" - a la Plato
If you talk about different patterns and then ask what they have in common,
it's their "pattern-ness", "being a pattern". So what higher hierarchy does
"pattern" belong to?
Consider a table. When is a table not a table? A chair for example. If we
took a chair and put food on it and sat on the floor around it, would it be
a table? Or rather a chair serving as a table? What if we took a piece of
hardboard and laid it on bricks in the middle of the room. Would this be a
table, or just some construction serving as a table?
Can we tell a table from a chair? Yes. By something other than its function?
Yes. It's to do with its form.
When you follow the hierarchy upwards to a higher category, and arrive at
something whose form cannot be assigned to one, then the question arises
"How did we get to know this form?". Plato would say that we cannot have
arrived at it empirically, so we must have an apriori concept of it in our
mind. And then how did we get that there? It certainly wasn't in this life.
So there are eternal forms of things which we have seen before birth. We
recall them in this life.
According to Plato, our aesthetic sense of beauty arises when we perceive an
item in this life that approximates most closely to the eternal form for its
kind. All objects strain towards fulfilling their form as closely as
possible. Some get closer than others.
So beauty, by this view, is approximation to perfection. And perfection is
not of this world.
Mortimir
> In article <3C934CD4...@fuzzysys.com>, mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
> says...
> > Marcello Penso wrote:
> > >
> > > In article <3C92A44E...@fuzzysys.com>, mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
> > > says...
> > > > Marcello Penso wrote:
> > > > >
Perhaps I can assist you on this particular matter. Sir Frederick is overly
hung up on a *HUGE* faith commitment in science, realism, reductionism,
materialism, corpuscularianism, etc. While all of those things have proven
quite handy, it seems, Sir Frederick often exhibits a lack of philosophical
perspective on them. Therefore, he often communicates here with a false
sense of superiority, thinking he has everything figured out in terms of
models, hypotheses, and the above things I mentioned. I would encourage you
to take his remarks much more lightly, as I have yet to see him say anything
here that amounts to more than "I have a dogmatic faith in science, and if
you do not, you must be much lesser than me." He usually throws in the word
"medieval," as well. Furthermore, he tends to cut conversations short when
someone insists on having him defend his faith. (<sarcasm><rhetoric>) I get
the impression that he already knows everything and we should consider
ourselves fortunate to be in his presence during a thread for as long as
he's willing to tolerate our extreme lack of understanding
(</rhetoric></sarcasm>).
Beyond all of that, I am short on time, but I will give you a quick comment
or two on my current thinking regarding aesthetics. I have tended to regard
aesthetics as mere metaphysics. I cannot think of a way to objectively
judge something without first putting forth a subjective criteria. For
example, one migh suggest that architecture is to be judged in terms of the
difficulty inherent in its construction. So, a lean-to hut is somehow
lesser than a 110 story building, by that criteria. Although, how does one
prove that difficulty in construction is the best criteria? In the end, I
think all of these value-judgments amount to the same sort of thing that
determines for me that I hate Britney Spears (sp?) and love Sonny Rollins,
speaking of their music, of course. It isn't that Rollins is somehow truly
better (though I wish I could find a way to argue that), but rather that *I*
like him better.
Oh well... nice posting with you...=)
Mortimir
>
> I'm assuming you mean that beauty is an object of the mind and therefore
> a phantasm? In other words, Kant's writings about aesthetics in his CPJ
> are pies in the sky?
>
> Or is it that there may be a 'beauty' neuron, like the long sought for
> 'grandmother' cell? And if so, is it engaged immediately upon sensory
> input, or is it engaged after the brain as broken down the sensory input
> into its constituent parts (lines, shades, colors, static and moving
> parts in the case of vision). Or is it engaged after a few more seconds
> of prefrontal lobe processing?
>
>
Buddha Thu
symmetry, and why science can only render us structure, according to
Thomas Kuhn the history of science is a social endeavor. And the
reason why science can only give us structure is because we ourselves
live in a superstructure that makes it possible. We can never get out
of it.
It is for this reason, according to Hermann Weyl, that science can
only render a description of the world up to its isomorphic
equivalence and no more. This is not something good, on the contrary,
it is a powerful paradox to the limitations of science. For science as
it exists on its empirical foundations cannot justify itself. It
cannot confirm its truths by checking behind its sense contents to see
if it is true. For in order to do this, the scientist would need to
look behind his sense contents toward the world, and of course that is
impossible. He will always be limited by his sense contents. What he
sees is always what he will ever see. Once he sees it, he is seeing
it. He cannot see unseen things.
In the end, we cannot see the world, only your sense contents of the
world. So what is left is intuition. Laws that give us a conjectural
spirit of what the world might be like, and not any sure guarentee of
what it really is. It is an epistemlogical type of intuition, and not
an ontological type like Bergson's.
And of course, I guess you might say it gives a mystical feeling. The
laws, the numbers that give us an ***intuition*** of a brief moment of
certainty and beauty, and then fades away. That is the point of
creativity and novelty in the universe. But unlike Kant's
transcendental aesthetic, this type of intuition does not hold
universally nor foundationally. It holds for only a split moment in
time.
When Isaac Newton was around, he thought the beauty of the laws
expressed in his equations were indicative of something eternal,
universal and for the entire universe.
Karl Popper said no, that this is too ambitious. The universe is too
creative. The laws only hold for the entire universe for only a brief
moment in time.
Later on, some say that even this might be too ambitious. Laws do not
hold for the entire universe. Laws are really only good for a certain
location and for a certain moment in time. Provided of course that we
can isolate the causal conditions for this location at this point in
time. But even this might be too ambitious.
The lesson here is that creativity within the universe is not just a
human thing. It is a world thing as well.
ug...@hotmail.com (squirrel) wrote in message news:<90cfff26.02031...@posting.google.com>...
The Immortalist
whatever works, USE and abuse whatever -=method=- that helps you
search through the (possibility space) [space of possibilities],
skepticism, religion you know all the bullshit memes, use them then
throw em away, dont catch their disease just make some fast cash offen
their beuty and roll over and relax
Budd...@hotmail.com (Buddha Thu) wrote in message news:<781e1cec.02032...@posting.google.com>...
Ed Cryer
"The Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9353ae8c.02032...@posting.google.com...
> poppyCock (it's beautiful man)
>
> whatever works, USE and abuse whatever -=method=- that helps you
> search through the (possibility space) [space of possibilities],
> skepticism, religion you know all the bullshit memes, use them then
> throw em away, dont catch their disease just make some fast cash offen
> their beuty and roll over and relax
>
perhaps, you mean it in the sense of Wittgenstein's famous phrase about
pulling the ladder up after you. If so, maybe I'm being a bit unfair.
As for myself I can't help but search for regularities to live with. O.K. so
maybe it's something to do with my personal psychology, but still, that's
how it is with me. Another thing as well. I can't just accept "What is is".
I can't just say to myself "Space, time and matter started in a big bang.
Full stop". Call it t0. No. I start thinking about t-1. And there we are
into metaphysics.
Ed
Buddha Thu
> human thing. It is a world thing as well.
A few more things to add here.
In the Renaissance, the naturalistic painter Leonardo da Vinci broke
with one of his Platonic contempories Michelangelo. Michelangelo
believed that art expressed the mystical beauty behind the images or
imitations. Take a look at the Sistine Chapel. It is extremely
metaphorical.
Da Vinci was also a scientist as well as an artist. He believed that
the true role of the artist is to depict nature in its greatest
detail, sort of like a model. It was more than a metaphor, it was an
exact and detail replica depicting his scientific and natural
understanding of it.
In this, to understand nature is to re-create it within its most
perfect imitation. The Mona Lisa is an astounding example to his
philosophy, and it held up to the modern period when the scientist's
understanding of the world also changed. Look at George Seurat and the
beautiful "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte"–1884.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/eurptg/28pc_seurat.html
It depicted not only Seurat's creativity, but also the detailed
atomism expressed through his "pointalism." In this, it was an
expression of the Newtonian world of colors, optics, light and general
physics. The same can be said of Monet and his Impressionistic style.
This was not just art depicting the creativity of the artist, but of
the creativity of nature and how science saw it at the time.
In a way, the scientist is like the artist, except he does not put the
paint brush in his own hands. He is not trying his best to imitate
nature on canvass to get a better understanding of it. He instead puts
the paintbrush in God's hands and lets God depict it Himself. The
scientist just merely sets up the initial conditions for God to
re-create himself. This is the key difference between the natural
understanding through art and ***"imitation",*** and the scientific
understanding that is through science and ***"experimentation." ***
Chris Horner
I dont think symmetry can do the job, you say, there are things that arent
symm. which we regard as beuatiful .Thre also things we esteem in art and
nature that we either dont think of as beautiful (Goya's pics of the horrors
of war), or need to strtch the word to breaking point to cover - in fact,
'stimulating', ''sublime' etc are often better terms. Kant thought b. was
both subjective (in us) AND more than personal taste: he thought we have a
shared, thus not arbitrary response in the presence of cetain forms that
invite sort of 'vibration' betwen our understnding and our imagination. May
i moderstly suggest my chapter on art in 'Thinking Through philosophy' [CUP]
(C Horner/E westacott 2000. for an introductory discussion...
Chris
"Marcello Penso" <m.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16ff1b87...@netnews.worldnet.att.net...
Mark Erasure
I think
> > that the question is whether us humans share certain universal criteria of
> > beauty, ie, whether certain things are found beautiful across different
> > people and different cultures. I'd say probably yes, as criteria such as the
> > golden rule are found pleasant by most people, and some experiments have
> > been conducted where certain faces were shown to people of different
> > cultures and the same faces were found "beautiful" by most people.
> > I have a book that I read some years ago and that in one of the chapters
> > deals with this concept -though there must be an abundant literature dealing
> > with the issue. The book I have is "The culture of Hope --a new birth of the
> > classical spirit" by Frederick Turner.
> >
> > regards
> > leo
>
> Good point. But even if he perceive things in similar ways (having
> similar brains and basic sets of experiences which are common- having
> parents, seeing a sunset, etc.) is beauty a cross-cultural concept,
> exclusively mental in nature? If so, how is it stimulated by experience?
> How does an object generate 'the beauty response'?
>
> Certainly there must be something in the object which causes us to
> respond in that way. After all, we normally use beauty as a descriptive
> term to a limited set of things, experiences, events, people, etc.
In a debate on music someone suggested that there is no inborn /
universal way for humans to experience the emotion/s that the composer
intended, that it was all a matter of cultural training. To 'prove'
his idea he used the following supposed fact; an African tribe had
lived strictly in dense jungle for so long that, brought into the open
and witnessing a Rhino walking toward them, they perceived the rhino
not as advancing but as GROWING.
As to the first part, it seems to me that if there is one form of art
whose expressions would carry universal human understanding that
transcends culture it would be music. Surely certain general aspects
of the emotionalism in music are extensions of vocal sounds which
everyone makes and comprehends... from a baby cooing to a woman crying
'rape!' (or whatever). Harmony and dissonance would also seem things a
person who hadn't heard music would pick up on (on a basic level)
pretty quickly.
I think I got in on this discussion too late. :-)