Wich is the sense of beauty?

[TheMastersSon]

By "tool to be used to seek bigger purposes" I mean, for example, Miguel Hernández poetry, half of which was written to represent the republican party in Spain's civil war (same happens with Rafael Alberti), or Rossellini's Rome, open city, wich wants to show Italy's situation under the fascist period. I meant mostly that in my expression: artistic works that try's to serve a cause or a purpose.

I think in the authors' minds, their political causes were much more substantial and beautiful than their own fictional works. So again the eventual purpose of beauty was to advance or facilitate more and larger beauty. :)

Edited November 12, 2017 by TheMastersSon

[Mudran]

For me the purpose of beauty is quite often underestimated, because people often think in numbers and purposes, so beauty looks like something extra, a luxury one can live without. But I think the opposite is truth. I think that the hidden purpose of beauty is joy, it can get me out of depression, when too many negative thoughts can take over - like another positive force to other things connected to joy, like success.

 

But on the other hand there are people who prefer functionalism - which I wouldn't describe as beautiful, for them the perfection is the beauty I guess and without it they have depression, so I don't know if they have their kind of beauty, maybe a different one.

[PkSanTi]

"(...) the hidden purpose of beauty is joy". I agree with you a hundred per cent. I am also a hedonist of beauty; it is a source of happiness and joy and the rest is secondary and accidental. The books we read, the films we watch, art in general is nothing but the most singular source of joy and pleasure. And that is the wonder of literature in particular. Pictures, films, they show us images, more or less precise or abstract. In that way, there are just little different of the actual images our eyes see; even in abstract art, when we never saw the things that are painted, we do see shapes and figures constantly in the world. To sum it up, its pretty reasonable that we can feel images. But symbols we can't see or feel; yet a precise combination of them, that alone have nearly no aesthetic value, becomes a joyful and marvellous experience. And it is always joy what makes it memorable. There's again the Silesius example: if he had said "the aesthetic phenomenon has no reason", we would had forgotten his words pretty quickly. But when he sais

 

the rose is without why; it blooms because she does

 

we feel a wonder, because it's simply beautiful, even when it says nothing different in content than the first more rigid enunciation. So yes, I agree with you: all of this is the experience of joy.

[skyquest32]

One of the things I wonder the most is wich is the sense of beauty. My life has been my memories, my thoughts and experiencies; but, mostly, she is the books I've read, the verses on my memory and the rare algebras of mysticism and philosophy.

 

As I think of those man, with whom I with my eyes speak (the baroque image belongs to Quevedo), I can not think of anything else other than beauty. I do believe it is the most fundamental and unaccountable phenomenom that we come across as human beings. Angelus Silesius wrote: "the rose is without why; she blooms because she does"; beauty here is justified by itself. We find examples of this on Coleridge, on Clare, in the medieval english and scottish poems. Others thought that beauty hides in surprise and irreverence: on this guild we see Joyce, Dylan Thomas, perhaps even Blake. At last, others thought art, wich is beauty, had to serve practical purposes, and wrote to praise revolutions and ideas: those are many russians and spanish writters.

 

To you, what is the purpose and sense of beauty? Do you agree with one or several of the positions I sketched above?

Art is the reason for life and probably the justification for its continuation. Beauty and aesthetic discernment are the highest virtues. It is the process that creates the tension that creates. The truth of the storm. Creation is also an act of discovery. There is no meaning besides what is made, and given. All is void, yet life has meaning. Intelligence and wisdom grants true Innocence and that is Beautiful. Goodness, is in Life. Life is Beautiful, the building the breaking down and reconstructing, in many configurations and aspects. The act of uncovering and forgetting to experience anew once more. A true Artist is closer to the nature of the gods than any priest. That is, if he is truthful.

Edited November 26, 2017 by skyquest32

[twowolves80]

http://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/images/2014/september/Courtney-Fire-reflected-in-Bass-Lake-Darvin-Atkeson.jpg

 

Ah, Solstheim...wait, that's California??! lol

 

First, to define what the sense of beauty is, you have to define what constitutes--what makes up--beauty that can be sensed. So what is beauty? Beauty, imo, is the subconscious recognition of harmony. All of nature is fractal, and operates according to Mandelbrot sets (no, really--have you seen a tree? This was on Scientific American Frontiers). I think we somehow are able to perceive on a subconscious level when we recognize a particularly harmonious x (insert subject matter). Neurologists have already done studies on the golden ratio as applied to the human face, and found that phycially "beautiful" people are more closely aligned to this golden ratio.

 

By itself, this means nothing. Yay. We see beauty in harmony and patterns. Woo.

 

But wait--if we can perceive it there through the subtle sense of the aesthetic, then we can perceive it in other places, too. In nature, in other people, in their personality. All of it is just information being taken in by our brains, and as it tries to make sense of the chaos, it looks for patterns (part of the amygdala, I believe). If some of those patterns are particularly "in-sync," or harmonious, the brain perceives that harmony as beauty.

 

So...what does that do for us?

 

The important part is what it's not stating explicitly: Humans have the ability to perceive fractal patterns in nature as "beauty," which means that the way we think about reality is fundamentally flawed if we only think of it as finite--we live, we die, end of story. I don't think that's really the end, though, imo, not because of a need for meaning, but because all of nature is declaring the patterns that show life just endlessly repeats over and over on the macro-level, and we're too focused on the micro to see it. A sort of, can't see the forest from the trees. Energy is never destroyed, it simply changes phases and form. And all we are is walking balls of information and energy.

 

This failure to see the forest from the trees is only because we're not recognizing our senses for what they are fully capable of actually perceiving, and what the brain is capable of processing. Therefore, our perception of reality is limited to a linear probability tree of causality and effect. I'd like to believe it doesn't have to be this way if we train ourselves to increase our perception, and increase the amount of information the brain can process. Basically, the more we become aware of the fractal nature of nature itself, and become attuned to perceiving its rhythms, the more we are aware of this harmonious energy, and the more we sense "beauty."

 

And the more "in-sync" with nature we are, the more we harmonize with reality, the more likely we are to experience instances of synchronicity that harmonize with us, i.e., good things come our way because we are calling to that energy through energetic harmony.

 

All of nature repeats over and over, using the same structures and formations of physical matter, there's bound to be repetition (perhaps why people have dopplegangers?) of those same archetypes, from the very tiny to the unfathomably large. Same goes for energy, and all the act of perception is, is energy-transfer (don't believe me, look up the Schroedinger's Cat paradox). The very act of perception fundamentally and dynamically changes reality, setting it one way or the other (this too, was proven). Reality can be thought of as a sea of potential energy in this respect, as the potential isn't set until it is perceived, and if we perceive that a system is particularly harmonious, we "sense" that it is beautiful.

 

In essence, we become a part of the furnace of creation that all of reality is. And reality is really very strange.

Edited December 12, 2017 by twowolves80

[skyquest32]

Beauty is more than that, pattern recognition is incidental, it requires true discernment and configuration.

 

Its about much more than harmony, sometimes its also about contrast and dissonance creating tension, two opposing artistic elements coming together and creating a synergy. A third thing that is one, yet the two original elements remaining in dissonance.

 

Without tension there is no creation. There is no simple imposing of patterns because you wish it so, without doing something. In perfect harmony and comfort there would be no evolution in any direction artistic or otherwise.

 

It is true that most things originating from the same source core have innately literally and metaphorically, elements of the other, but that dose not make them in harmony on every level. That is childish delusion and sloppy thinking. Illogical.

 

Reality would collapse and there would be nothing.

 

It just means there are optional links because of the cohesiveness that is innately required. Newagers stop there and don't consider the reality of the patterns. Which might as well be fire for them.

 

Opposites do attract, but only as Opposites, and only for the purpose of creation, experimentation and curiosity seeing a lesser element contained within magnified. A conditional resonance.

 

Bear with me I have a point here and its not necessarily religious:

 

When a certain guy said love your enemies, well ''many say this'', it could be argued they are also talking about kinky sexual attraction or a fetish that could just as easily be about control as well as loss of it. Great vanity as well as masochism on both sides.

 

It could also be about Artistic creation or science and synthesis temporary or otherwise. If it were permanent, the joining, both of the original elements would need to die for the third, if not then that's not the case. Then they could still cling to each other but with a realized link while still in uncontested dissonance. Maybe they love each other, but they don't lie to each other, or themselves about what it all means and they act, each according to there own nature.

 

I know its hard to consider many ways of thinking form different perspectives objectively but try to follow. It may, or may not be to your betterment to consider new ways of seeing.

[Mudran]

First I'm so glad the detabe does continue, it feels somehow empty when everything is explained and there is no secret to reveal :)

 

I thought it was perfect explanation with harmony, but when I was sharing this with others I got this reaction too - that beauty is not harmony. Then I replied, that the author said, that perfect harmony can be found in something else than harmony itself. Question is if that is the same meaning like contrast. This can be the point of understanding different words and giving them slightly different meaning, because beauty is something else than harmony after all in basic understanding.

 

I'm not sure about the example of loving enemies - I thought it was about true understanding, because love allows true understanding of all motives, which leads to freedom, so the original meaning was another saying "love=truth will set you free", but in the terms of positive in negative situation it can fit. On the other hand isn't it the same like seeking harmony in disharmony? Or is it about love= positive force prevailing hate=negative force, so it is not searching for the path of harmony=god's or nature's will, but prevailing world around you? But if you avoid negativity around you by searching for positive path, isn't it prevailing by avoiding also? And if you cannot really change the world around you, isn't it better to avoid it?

 

I agree with easy explanations making things worse because it can lead to binding yourself against your nature - like search harmony everywhere when you feel pain and it doesn't help you, but isn't it the same like religious: thank god for pain because it leads to something better, yet you suffer, cursing god because anyway you don't understand?

 

so can harmony fit the same way like contrast or is it really something else?

 

I'm sorry, it is debate about something else, but one leads to another :)

[PkSanTi]

Okey, I'm back folks. I am travelling and though I read the forum periodically, I seldom have the opportunity to write anything. I have some statements to make about Mudran's opinion, which was, I think, quite fruitful, since it gave us plenty to talk about.

 

I'm having a hard time understanding beauty the way you described it. The reasons are pretty much the following:

 

I: Beauty has being conceived in different ways through time and space. Greeks saw it as harmony; many didn't -and don't-. But we all humans have a common internal constitution -brains, organs and so, unless we still think some races are under-developed, which is wrong...-. So, if how we perceive beauty depends on our brains and those "scientific" bases you quoted, how do we explain the different conceptions of beauty there were and are? It is a contradiction. (I might add: that's the problem of giving science too much credit. Science is, in deed, a great, marvellous thing, but there's plenty it can't tell us. There's a difference between being scientific and scientificist; I think myself of the first group.)

 

II: "Humans have the ability to perceive fractal patterns in nature as "beauty," which means that the way we think about reality is fundamentally flawed if we only think of it as finite". This is bad reasoning, even with the further explanations you gave us. That we see harmony, and that we perceive harmony, has nothing to do with the world. I insisted, on other post, on Schopenhauer's and Kant's explanations of reality (which are true for anyone who can reason properly): our consciences form the outside world. This is not silly idealism: time, space, causation and such, are categories that exists a priori in our minds, in such a way that, given the case of a mind that has nothing to see or perceive, but only thoughts to think off, would understand and work under those concepts. Proportion, causation, space, time, we place in the world; but the world itself knows nothing about them. The world has no harmony: you could say, if you look at Schopenhauer's and Kant's theory in a very simplified way, that we create it.

 

III: The last argument I'd give is the following: harmony arguably does not exist in many things that one may say are beautiful. Let's take the example of poetry, and read those verses Dylan Thomas wrote on the death of his father:

 

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

curse, bless me now with your fierce tears I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night;

rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Where is the harmony there? One might say in the rhythm of the verses, and that would be a fair point, but what happens on the case of free-verse? Whitman's rhythm has no harmony, nearly no relation on the rhythm of a verse with the following. (I'd like to talk more about it, and I could give many examples, but I know little of english metric system on poetry, since I talk and write in spanish). Where is the harmony on Silesius' statement: the rose is without why, it blooms because it does? I insist that the rhythm point is fair, but arguable and weak. Since there are beautiful things that lack of harmony, harmony is not the source or sense of beauty. (See, harmony can easily be perceived on the physical word, but when it comes to writing, lyrics and verses is a tricky thing...).

 

Those are the points I would make on the consideration of beauty as harmony. Greetings to you folks, hope it won't be long till I can write again and continue talking with you.

Edited January 6, 2018 by PkSanTi

[twowolves80]

II: "Humans have the ability to perceive fractal patterns in nature as "beauty," which means that the way we think about reality is fundamentally flawed if we only think of it as finite". This is bad reasoning, even with the further explanations you gave us. That we see harmony, and that we perceive harmony, has nothing to do with the world. I insisted, on other post, on Schopenhauer's and Kant's explanations of reality (which are true for anyone who can reason properly): our consciences form the outside world. This is not silly idealism: time, space, causation and such, are categories that exists a priori in our minds, in such a way that, given the case of a mind that has nothing to see or perceive, but only thoughts to think off, would understand and work under those concepts. Proportion, causation, space, time, we place in the world; but the world itself knows nothing about them. The world has no harmony: you could say, if you look at Schopenhauer's and Kant's theory in a very simplified way, that we create it.

Not buying it. At all. Beauty is subjective. Fractal mathematics and the way the brain works are finite and quantifiable. The human brain developed through evolution to identify patterns out of the chaos of information that were beneficial in some form. Just because we may still be hazy on what exactly the purpose of beauty is, it still serves some function because nature never wastes.

 

All of creation exists to do one thing: Transfer energy from one point to another. That's it. Nature seeks efficiency above all else, and most fractal patterns in nature evolved to take advantage of this precept: Maximize growth, minimize energy loss. Mathematically, it must balance on both sides of the equation for a statement to be true. We live in a binary, fractal reality that is nothing more than a hologram. The brain itself is holographic in nature as proven by the research of Karl Lashley in the 1920s, David Bohm in the 60s and his Bohmian Mechanics, and Standford Neurophysiobioligst, Karl Pribram.

 

If all of reality is a hologram, then, this suggests that beauty is a form of energetic potential that our brains perceive and home in on. Beauty, therefore, is intrinsically tied to logic and creativity. If our brains store memories as holograms (across the entire surface of the brain as nerve impulses, as proven by Lashley and expanded upon by Pribram), that suggests that beauty is tied also to how the memory of it is stored.

 

And Kant and Schopenhauer can take a flying leap. They deal with philosophical concepts, not with mathematical certainty. Math is eternal, and will be around long after Kant's words fade into dust. I speak specifically about the physiological process, and reason behind, the sense of beauty, not simply beauty for beauty's sake, with no understanding of the why.

 

These are facts. Time is infinite. The universe is, for all practical purposes, infinite (it's more of an infinite moebius loop in terms of physical size). Time is also fractal, as proven by the Banach-Tarski paradox. The physical world is fractal as proven by Madelbrot. Fractal patterns appear in everything. And we know they exist in actuality because the mathematics behind them says they do--this isn't a mental exercise, this is physical form given shape by the laws of mathematics. Therefore, it makes sense that the human brain evolved to find some quantifiable, though hitherto unknown, reason for being able to perceive beauty. Nature wastes nothing. Nature is not inefficient except by design. Nature, like water, seeks the path of least resistance when evolving, so this "energy transfer" of us perceiving beauty must have some evolutionary purpose. There is a reason for everything, even if we can't see the forest from the trees.

[TheMastersSon]

That last part contradicts the first:

 

"Fractal mathematics and the way the brain works are finite and quantifiable."

 

...

 

"These are facts. Time is infinite. The universe is, for all practical purposes, infinite (it's more of an infinite moebius loop in terms of physical size). Time is also fractal, as proven by the Banach-Tarski paradox."

 

 

Time is relative not fractal or infinite. Unless you're claiming Einstein was wrong, and after almost a century we still haven't found any evidence that he was. Relativity made the longstanding Aristotelian model of cosmology obsolete, since the ancients also mistakenly believed time was eternal and unchanging. It was what created the logical need for a first or pre-existing cause, i.e. a Supreme Being or God that pre-existed everything etc. In a relative universe only one God is possible and his only possible location is between your left and right ears. The simple truth is that "the" (actually YOUR) universe extends at least 14 billion light-years in all directions -- from YOU.

Edited January 6, 2018 by TheMastersSon