What is Beauty?

[Mock Turtle]

No it's not. It's more than that. Beauty is a thing that is part of evolution. It plays a part in sexual selection, for one role it plays. It doesn't matter if one creature sees another as not beautiful. It's the one that do, that the existence of beauty is what it is for, and why it is. It communicates meaning. It's still Beauty. Regardless if you or I think so or not.

You can label it as such, but if symmetry and perhaps associated health and fitness, together with that which appeals more (those having the largest, brightest, most intimidating, whatever), then it is just something that will enable fitter offspring most likely, and we are just anthropomorphizing what we see. I doubt other species see beauty, since it is a human construct - and rather subjective.

 

[Windwalker]

I wonder how it would come across if those chemicals were unrespondent? Would the beauty become altered?

It would eventually lead to an existential crisis. "Why can't I see beauty in the world?" Without seeing Beauty, we are "as good as dead," as Einstein put it,

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”

- Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies​

 

[Windwalker]

Are you saying that beauty is something that is "out there" as something objective, and that a person may or may not perceive the beauty that is there, irrespective of perceiver?
It would seem to me that beauty is a term used in a personal, subjective response (the same as any other aesthetic judgment).

Dualistic terms of "out there" and "objective" vs. "subjective" or "in here", skew Reality. Any attempt to explain it, is primarily about overcoming the mental barriers the use of dualistic language creates, in order to see what is there at all times.

The existence of beauty is an objectively real 'thing', in that it seems universal in nature, perceived through the lenses of subjective experience. In other words, since it is something that is not solely one individual's experience, but the experience of nearly everyone, human and non-human alike, that points to something 'objectively' real. It is not just "in my head", anymore than the experience of love is. Everyone experiences it, unless there is some blockage which prevents that.

What someone perceives as beautiful, is shaped individually through their subjective lenses. But even those are not entirely subjective, in that those are influenced and shaped by one's culture, which is an intersubjective reality. Intersubjectivity, creates objectivity, or something beyond just that one individual's reality.

So yes, it is objectively real. But it cannot be looked at as a "thing", that has mass and form that can be measured scientifically, like a tree trunk. It's very much the same thing as "God". Many imagine God at the level of a mysterious forest creature, like a Bigfoot, that should leaves tracks as proof of its existence, if it were really real. But that way of thinking about it, is what itself creates the block from seeing it.

 

[Secret Chief]

Dualistic terms of "out there" and "objective" vs. "subjective" or "in here", skew Reality. Any attempt to explain it, is primarily about overcoming the mental barriers the use of dualistic language creates, in order to see what is there at all times.

The existence of beauty is an objectively real 'thing', in that it seems universal in nature, perceived through the lenses of subjective experience. In other words, since it is something that is not solely one individual's experience, but the experience of nearly everyone, human and non-human alike, that points to something 'objectively' real. It is not just "in my head", anymore than the experience of love is. Everyone experiences it, unless there is some blockage which prevents that.

What someone perceives as beautiful, is shaped individually through their subjective lenses. But even those are not entirely subjective, in that those are influenced and shaped by one's culture, which is an intersubjective reality. Intersubjectivity, creates objectivity, or something beyond just that one individual's reality.

So yes, it is objectively real. But it cannot be looked at as a "thing", that has mass and form that can be measured scientifically, like a tree trunk. It's very much the same thing as "God". Many imagine God at the level of a mysterious forest creature, like a Bigfoot, that should leaves tracks as proof of its existence, if it were really real. But that way of thinking about it, is what itself creates the block from seeing it.

So if a thousand people say a particular painting is beautiful and another thousand people say the same painting is not beautiful, what do you think that is because of?

 

[Windwalker]

I doubt other species see beauty, since it is a human construct - and rather subjective.

This would be incorrect. It's been known for quite some time that other animals perceive beauty. What role it plays in evolution however has been a matter of debate. More recently now, scientists are considering its role in ways that go beyond what science had previously assumed.

Now, nearly 150 years later, a new generation of biologists is reviving Darwin’s neglected brainchild. Beauty, they say, does not have to be a proxy for health or advantageous genes. Sometimes beauty is the glorious but meaningless flowering of arbitrary preference. Animals simply find certain features — a blush of red, a feathered flourish — to be appealing. And that innate sense of beauty itself can become an engine of evolution, pushing animals toward aesthetic extremes. In other cases, certain environmental or physiological constraints steer an animal toward an aesthetic preference that has nothing to do with survival whatsoever.

These biologists are not only rewriting the standard explanation for how beauty evolves; they are also changing the way we think about evolution itself. For decades, natural selection — the fact that creatures with the most advantageous traits have the best chance of surviving and multiplying — has been considered the unequivocal centerpiece of evolutionary theory. But these biologists believe that there are other forces at work, modes of evolution that are much more mischievous and discursive than natural selection. It’s not enough to consider how an animal’s habitat and lifestyle determine the size and keenness of its eyes or the number and complexity of its neural circuits; we must also question how an animal’s eyes and brain shape its perceptions of reality and how its unique way of experiencing the world can, over time, profoundly alter both its physical form and its behavior. There are really two environments governing the evolution of sentient creatures: an external one, which they inhabit, and an internal one, which they construct. To solve the enigma of beauty, to fully understand evolution, we must uncover the hidden links between those two worlds.
​

Source: How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution (Published 2019)

 

[Windwalker]

So if a thousand people say a particular painting is beautiful and another thousand people say the same painting is not beautiful, what do you think that is because of?

I touched upon that in my post. There are multiple contributing streams that shape what some find aesthetically pleasing. The external environment, the intersubjective environment (culture), and the subjective environment (individual experiences and traits). Even within someone's individual lifetime, what did not appear beautiful before, may appear beautiful later on, and vice versa.

The perception of beauty is a translation of experience. Translations are not math formulas. They are filtered through one's perceptions of truth and reality. Beauty is universal. The interpretation of it is not.

 

[Secret Chief]

I touched upon that in my post. There are multiple contributing streams that shape what some find aesthetically pleasing. The external environment, the intersubjective environment (culture), and the subjective environment (individual experiences and traits). Even within someone's individual lifetime, what did not appear beautiful before, may appear beautiful later on, and vice versa.

The perception of beauty is a translation of experience. Translations are not math formulas. They are filtered through one's perceptions of truth and reality. Beauty is universal. The interpretation of it is not.

So who or what would be the ultimate arbiter?

 

[Windwalker]

So who or what would be the ultimate arbiter?

It's the experience of Beauty that is the truth. The subject is. It is still Beauty, even if the subjects see it through different objects in different ways.

 

[Secret Chief]

It's the experience of Beauty that is the truth. The subject is. It is still Beauty, even if the subjects see it through different objects in different ways.

So what if, as in my example, we are referring to the same object? Do you consider it the truth (to me) if I say it is ugly and it is also the truth (to you) if you say it is beautiful?

 

[Windwalker]

So what if, as in my example, we are referring to the same object? Do you consider it the truth (to me) if I say it is ugly and it is also the truth (to you) if you say it is beautiful?

I would say you don't see what I am seeing in what I'm looking at. But you may look at something else, which I don't find all the appealing, and it takes you into itself and you lose yourself in Beauty.

Both are experiencing Beauty, through different filters, with different eyes. Everything in life is experienced this way. It's a prism of perspectives, which bends and refracts the light hitting it in different ways.

Bcause of this, our own perspectives of what is beatiful, what inspires or evokes the experience of Beauty itself, can change in our lifetimes. It's due to a shift in perspective. And even what you see as beautiful, and I don't, can change if we look at it through a different set of eyes.

Think of Beauty as energy. Whenever we plug into it, it lights us up. Different sets of eyes, require different outlets for their plugs to fit into. But those can be switched out or modified to fit into other outlets, or if really talented, a master plug that fits into all of the outlets. Some might call that Enlightenment, where you see Beauty in everything.

 

[Mock Turtle]

This would be incorrect. It's been known for quite some time that other animals perceive beauty. What role it plays in evolution however has been a matter of debate. More recently now, scientists are considering its role in ways that go beyond what science had previously assumed.

Now, nearly 150 years later, a new generation of biologists is reviving Darwin’s neglected brainchild. Beauty, they say, does not have to be a proxy for health or advantageous genes. Sometimes beauty is the glorious but meaningless flowering of arbitrary preference. Animals simply find certain features — a blush of red, a feathered flourish — to be appealing. And that innate sense of beauty itself can become an engine of evolution, pushing animals toward aesthetic extremes. In other cases, certain environmental or physiological constraints steer an animal toward an aesthetic preference that has nothing to do with survival whatsoever.

These biologists are not only rewriting the standard explanation for how beauty evolves; they are also changing the way we think about evolution itself. For decades, natural selection — the fact that creatures with the most advantageous traits have the best chance of surviving and multiplying — has been considered the unequivocal centerpiece of evolutionary theory. But these biologists believe that there are other forces at work, modes of evolution that are much more mischievous and discursive than natural selection. It’s not enough to consider how an animal’s habitat and lifestyle determine the size and keenness of its eyes or the number and complexity of its neural circuits; we must also question how an animal’s eyes and brain shape its perceptions of reality and how its unique way of experiencing the world can, over time, profoundly alter both its physical form and its behavior. There are really two environments governing the evolution of sentient creatures: an external one, which they inhabit, and an internal one, which they construct. To solve the enigma of beauty, to fully understand evolution, we must uncover the hidden links between those two worlds.
​

Source: How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution (Published 2019)

Opinions are not facts. How do you pull apart the bigger, brighter, etc. from it being beautiful - if the animal just reacts to these former properties?

 

[Secret Chief]

I would say you don't see what I am seeing in what I'm looking at. But you may look at something else, which I don't find all the appealing, and it takes you into itself and you lose yourself in Beauty.

Both are experiencing Beauty, through different filters, with different eyes. Everything in life is experienced this way. It's a prism of perspectives, which bends and refracts the light hitting it in different ways.

Bcause of this, our own perspectives of what is beatiful, what inspires or evokes the experience of Beauty itself, can change in our lifetimes. It's due to a shift in perspective. And even what you see as beautiful, and I don't, can change if we look at it through a different set of eyes.

Think of Beauty as energy. Whenever we plug into it, it lights us up. Different sets of eyes, require different outlets for their plugs to fit into. But those can be switched out or modified to fit into other outlets, or if really talented, a master plug that fits into all of the outlets. Some might call that Enlightenment, where you see Beauty in everything.

Thank you for your enlightenment.

 

[Windwalker]

Opinions are not facts.

That's your opinion.

 

[Mock Turtle]

That's your opinion.

Well you didn't quote the sceptics in your quoted piece.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The Beholder is a creature from the Dungeons & Dragons universe.

Somewhere from there then, lol.

 

[Rival]

These may form an interesting experiment in 'beauty' for some:

Spoiler

 

[Windwalker]

Well you didn't quote the sceptics in your quoted piece.

It was telling you what scientists are looking at. And if you read the article, you would see what other opinions said. Unlike you, I just don't dismiss it as mere opinion. I read the article.

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

These may form an interesting experiment in 'beauty' for some:

Spoiler

It's like a children's book and National Geographic rolled into one.

 

[Mock Turtle]

It was telling you what scientists are looking at. And if you read the article, you would see what other opinions said. Unlike you, I just don't dismiss it as mere opinion. I read the article.

I read enough to see that it was just an opinion:

It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, but within the scientific community, Prum’s ideas have not been as warmly received. Again and again, he told me, he has asked other researchers for feedback and received either excuses of busyness or no reply at all. Some have been openly critical. In an academic review of Prum’s book, Gerald Borgia, one of the world’s foremost experts on bowerbirds, and the ethologist Gregory Ball described the historical sections as “revisionist” and said Prum failed to advance a credible case for his thesis. Once, over a lunch of burritos, Prum explained his theory to a visiting colleague, who pronounced it “nihilism.”

And this, from the comments, tells that he has enough critics:

A critical review of Prum’s “The Evolution of Beauty” in Evolution – Why Evolution Is True

 

[Windwalker]

I read enough to see that it was just an opinion:

It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, but within the scientific community, Prum’s ideas have not been as warmly received. Again and again, he told me, he has asked other researchers for feedback and received either excuses of busyness or no reply at all. Some have been openly critical. In an academic review of Prum’s book, Gerald Borgia, one of the world’s foremost experts on bowerbirds, and the ethologist Gregory Ball described the historical sections as “revisionist” and said Prum failed to advance a credible case for his thesis. Once, over a lunch of burritos, Prum explained his theory to a visiting colleague, who pronounced it “nihilism.”

And this, from the comments, tells that he has enough critics:

A critical review of Prum’s “The Evolution of Beauty” in Evolution – Why Evolution Is True

Great. There are critics of it. So what? That makes it unworthy? Only views which fit well within established orthodoxy are credible? You think all scientists are free from fear of upsetting the apple cart, and those who do upset it must be crackpots? To me, what you quoted shows just how challenging it is for some to deal with, not that it lacks veracity.

His is not the first argument for this I've seen. It was just the first one that came up in a search for it the other day. I find it more reasonable than those who claim things like love and beauty are just pointless freebees tossed in by evolution, which have no real evolutionary purpose.

It's hardly satisfying to many. It smacks of this reductionistic religion of philosophical materialism which reduces everything down to the machine level, "love is nothing but chemicals", and "consciousness is nothing but brain" sorts of myopic perspectives. To me, those sorts of responses sound as faith-based as Creationists trying to explain away the fossil record.

Why are you so quick to dismiss it, may I ask? Why do you think beauty exists in nature?