Beauty

[BadgerJelly]

What does science have to say about beauty?

Open topic so throw your own theories in as well as articles you have read please.

[Watson]

Beauty is subjective. I'm not sure science can say anything? Unless I'm missing something.

[neuro]

On the other hand, Watson, the criteria for beauty appear to be somewhat shared.
Like with food, you are able to say WHY something tastes good and you like or dislike it, which suggests some criteria are there.

My suggestion is that beauty is linked to harmony and novelty, which appear to be two features we need in our experience and which give us pleasure. Something is beautiful for us when we find some kind of harmony in it, provided it is not so dull that harmony turns into monotony.

Hear the music.
It is nice that the next note be the right one (possibly even nicer when you know the suite and internally predict the next note and are rewarded by it being as you expected), but it is equally nice that the melody surprises you, the rhythm changes at times, unexpected dissonances appear, the tonality suddenly shifts from major to minor....

[owleye]

Is this a question that has to do with how science could help in determining objective measures to help judge beauty contests?

Or is this a question that has to do with environmental science, one in which it might inform of us about the beauty of nature, or of rainbows and sunsets?

What is it that the OP finds about this topic that is sufficiently compelling for science, with the potential of informing technologists in the "beauty" industry, to wish to weigh in on? Don't we have enough of that already in our drive to provide happiness pills? Our free will is already under siege as it is.

James

[BadgerJelly]

On the other hand, Watson, the criteria for beauty appear to be somewhat shared.
Like with food, you are able to say WHY something tastes good and you like or dislike it, which suggests some criteria are there.

My suggestion is that beauty is linked to harmony and novelty, which appear to be two features we need in our experience and which give us pleasure. Something is beautiful for us when we find some kind of harmony in it, provided it is not so dull that harmony turns into monotony.

Hear the music.
It is nice that the next note be the right one (possibly even nicer when you know the suite and internally predict the next note and are rewarded by it being as you expected), but it is equally nice that the melody surprises you, the rhythm changes at times, unexpected dissonances appear, the tonality suddenly shifts from major to minor....

This is the sort of response I was expecting.

[Watson]

a bunch of good points...........see above.

Yes the criteria is a shared experience, and we like and dislike, or find beauty in a variety of places and situations, but I don't see this as a comment from science, on beauty. Any commentary is going to be about the contrast between beauty/none beauty, the mechanism to identify beauty, emotions associated with beauty, etc.

What does science have to say about beauty?

So for science to say anything about beauty, science must have a definition of beauty, then science needs a question to answer? Like why is something visually beautiful, what happens in the brain in this case, or can the brain be tricked into the same sensation with a grape. So based on the OP I still think that science can not say anything, without more imput.

[BadgerJelly]

I relate this to an article I never actually got round to reading in New Scientist maybe 10 years ago.

As I did not read it in full I don't know what the conclusion was but what I did read was mainly referring to what makes a face beautiful? Many scientists believe that symmetry is a huge part of beauty but perfect symmetry is not very appealing and chaos less so. So I would expect beauty to lie somewhere between symmetry and asymmetry regarding facial features. That said when we look at some works of Art (Leonardo Da Vinci springs to mind) the use of geometry seems to play a very prominent role and this as Neuro mentioned can also be related to musical notes and harmonics. These are scientific and pleasing to the ear, or some would say sounds of beauty. Also bird song is beautiful and many other patterns in nature are beautiful and this could even be said (maybe just by me?) to include taste, touch and smell too.

Although it is relative I do believe if you look hard enough, or smell hard enough, you can appreciate the beauty in most things but some require more "work" or discipline to respond to the "inner" symmetry/asymmetry.

I think paintings and music gives us the best clues.

[Watson]

Yes I have heard something on that, when a face is to perfectly symetrical it looks to prefect and less attractive. And it is the slight variation away from symetry that we recognize as beautiful. Going to far in that direction is not so beautiful. So yes I agree, somewhere between, but closer to symetrical than not.

[BadgerJelly]

Also bird song is beautiful

Nearly forgot to mention that I feel a big par of beauty comes from complexity too. The bird song that never repeats itself twice is an amazing thing to listen too.

Maybe it would be quite accurate to say that beauty lies within a balance between symmetry and asymmetry along with a complex patterning within these confines? This makes me start to think about how we learn and the complexity of our brains. With more complexity in life in general I find much more interest so this idea of beauty and complexity could be a driving force in all human lives?

Note: Feel free to run with the idea of complexity here in regards to anything whilst keeping beauty in mind for future retrospect.

[neuro]

About science and beauty:

1. science vs. beauty.

My impression is that consistency and harmony (understanding, being able to put things together, finding a unifying clue, etc.) are among the main targets of brain activity. Whenever inconsistencies, unexpected, contradictory or conflictual clues are presented to the brain, you see activation of the inferior prefrontal cortex (IPFC) and attention is awakened, spontaneous reactions are blocked, and "decisions" (not necessarily behavioral, but also emotional, cognitive, etc) are made.

The story of decisions being made 6 s before you realize it only is partly true: that occurs when you have to arbitrarily decide to push the right or left button, and such action is preceded by neural activity which can be detected and allow the examiner to "predict" (60-80% success) what your choice will be. But just think of a baseball player: he decides in a fraction of a second, based on information which was not there in advance, and that is IPFC activation: if it occurs a moment too late with respect to the activation of the premotor cortex, the bat swings, otherwise the bat can be stopped (6 seconds???)

This suggests that solving contradictions is an important aim in brain function, and humans have half of their head filled by prefrontal neural stuff the other animals only marginally possess!! (that's why we can plan many behaviors based on different types of motivations and aims, and on different temporal scales, and fit everything together)

This also suggests that, in order to sustain brain activity toward this aim, reward circuits must be activated when consistency is achieved - which would nicely explain the pleasure of understanding, solving a conflict, conciling ideas in a general picture, finding consistency and feeling harmony.

Interestingly enough, such a pleasure parallels the difficulty of the task: no contradiction at all, no conflict, little pleasure in achieving consistency. This might well explain why perfect symmetry, full geometrical precision, simple repetitive music, etc. are just dull and not pleasurable.

This may also explain why some degree of complexity, or at least multiplicity (ambiguity, indefiniteness, several possible readings, distinct cognitive and emotional aspects, etc.) contribute quite a lot to the pleasurability of an image, a music, an experience, an activity.

This much as regards a "scientific" (?) approach to beauty, possible cireria for beauty, and why it is pleasurable.

2. beauty vs. science

An equally interesting aspect regards the contribution of beauty to science.

Ask any scientist, and they will confirm to you that, in the face of complex data and several possible explanations, they would tend to prefer a theory simply because it is more "beautiful" than the others: this implies it is consistent, it points to some general organizing principle (harmony) and is as essential as it can be (nothing useless), i.e. it does not include any unnecessary assumptions or hypotheses (Occam's razor).

And looking back, most of the times the most "beautiful" theory has turn out true ("scientifically true" I mean, i.e. temporarily accepted until disproved or proven incomplete)

[BadgerJelly]

Whenever inconsistencies, unexpected, contradictory or conflictual clues are presented to the brain, you see activation of the inferior prefrontal cortex (IPFC) and attention is awakened, spontaneous reactions are blocked, and "decisions" (not necessarily behavioral, but also emotional, cognitive, etc) are made.

I find this VERY interesting! I would have expected the opposite effect. Then again how rigid does this appear to be? How much data is there?

The 6 s thing I realise is not true for every action/decision we make. Never the less it does elude to the area I was trying to express in the other thread in my metaphorical manner with the "brain maze". That of "default mode networks" - just thought to myself about what I wanted to say next ... TOO MUCH. Just realised I need to buy myself a Dictaphone because I find it so much easier to walk and talk/think and order my thoughts.

btw every you say here is pretty much like my own thoughts but just expressed better than I can. SERIOUSLY need to learn some terminology before I can push my ideas into the scientific community :S

Either that or build myself an MRI scanner :P

It would be so handy to have an MRI scanner that could be strapped to someones head ALL day and that didn't inhibit motion at all. What is the best sort of hardware around at the moment for this?

This also suggests that, in order to sustain brain activity toward this aim, reward circuits must be activated when consistency is achieved - which would nicely explain the pleasure of understanding, solving a conflict, conciling ideas in a general picture, finding consistency and feeling harmony.

Interestingly enough, such a pleasure parallels the difficulty of the task: no contradiction at all, no conflict, little pleasure in achieving consistency. This might well explain why perfect symmetry, full geometrical precision, simple repetitive music, etc. are just dull and not pleasurable.

This may also explain why some degree of complexity, or at least multiplicity (ambiguity, indefiniteness, several possible readings, distinct cognitive and emotional aspects, etc.) contribute quite a lot to the pleasurability of an image, a music, an experience, an activity.

Its like you read my mind. I find it difficult sometimes not to get manic or confounded by the beauty of things.

[Dave_Oblad]

Hi,

Wow, great topic and I have so much to say that I can't organize it all.

I'll start with a simple observation of myself. Back in school, if the teacher has beautiful, I picked a desk up as close to the front as possible and was mesmerized by the lady and gave complete attention to her and everything she said. I always got good grades under such circumstances. If the teacher was an old cantankerous crone then I sat at the back, disinterested in her and her subject matter. Of course my grades were poor in those such classes.

So should all teachers be selected based on beauty? To some extent, this also seemed to apply to male teachers, so it wasn't strictly sexual attraction.

I can't say I've personally met many beautiful people, but of those that I have, I'd have to agree about the beauty being skin deep thing. My wife wasn't beautiful nor even very pretty, but she had a beautiful mind. Her way of looking at the world was simply amazing. That's what I fell in love with and why I married her.

As for general beauty, we all seek a certain level of perfection and physical beauty would seem to be a desirable trait sought after. For some reason we equate beauty with superior. Our instincts seek out someone we perceive as superior from others probably to ensure superior traits in our children. So beauty tends to win in selection of a mate, from a competitive point of view.

Then there is the Beauty of Nature. Not just in it's visual presentation but, for me, in how it all connects together. All the way from Cosmology to Biology. There is so much to appreciate out there and so few folks seem to be able to open their minds to the wonder of it all. I wish so often to share what I can see. To open minds to the grandeur of what's around them. But so many can't see beyond supper time or are wearing blinders. It can be very depressing.

Anyway, got to run soon, this will be an interesting thread to follow.

Best wishes,
Dave :^)

[BadgerJelly]

So should all teachers be selected based on beauty? To some extent, this also seemed to apply to male teachers, so it wasn't strictly sexual attraction.

YES. I think your comment below about your wife says it all though. For instance I remember a girl at college who was HOT ... spoke to her for 5 minutes and never looked at her the same way again ...

I think happiness is beautiful and misery ugly. Teachers at school I liked the best loved to teach and/or loved their subject. I just feel very privileged to be able to see the beauty in everything. What is interesting I think from a psychological point of view is that when we see beauty we still look for the "flaws". Look at any painting, woman, piece of music etc .. some bits you find more appealing than others. Lets say you see the beauty in 5 different paintings but your focus is mainly on one particular area over the others. If you cut and pasted the bits that you liked the most from each painting those particular parts would lose there beauty. The contrary juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness is what makes it work.

Saying that I can think of one song where the pieces of beauty are brought together to make the whole thing very enchanting - "Bohemian Rhapsody". This I feel is going with what Neuro mentions about complexity being part of beauty.

[BadgerJelly]

Not had time to watch this yet but seems relevant :

Beautiful Equations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDQmIZTvFaI&feature=related

[kangs79]

Beauty is subjective or in the eye of the beholder. Many types of programming that influence our views cultural, social, biological or chemical. Culturally there is a certain physical and behavioral profile that is considered beautiful. Socially we get use to certain people that we eventually find beautiful. Biologically and chemically every organism has a certain genetic programming that defines something as beautiful. Involving all our 5 senses. Example: Certain birds are attracted to only a specific type of display that defines the parameters of health for that species.

[owleye]

Beauty is subjective or in the eye of the beholder. Many types of programming that influence our views cultural, social, biological or chemical. Culturally there is a certain physical and behavioral profile that is considered beautiful. Socially we get use to certain people that we eventually find beautiful. Biologically and chemically every organism has a certain genetic programming that defines something as beautiful. Involving all our 5 senses. Example: Certain birds are attracted to only a specific type of display that defines the parameters of health for that species.

You begin with a statement that beauty is subjective, and subjective to an individual subject. Yet you then go on to make a case that beauty goes beyond the individual subject? Are you not contradicting yourself?

James

[kangs79]

Beauty is subjective or in the eye of the beholder. Many types of programming that influence our views cultural, social, biological or chemical. Culturally there is a certain physical and behavioral profile that is considered beautiful. Socially we get use to certain people that we eventually find beautiful. Biologically and chemically every organism has a certain genetic programming that defines something as beautiful. Involving all our 5 senses. Example: Certain birds are attracted to only a specific type of display that defines the parameters of health for that species.

You begin with a statement that beauty is subjective, and subjective to an individual subject. Yet you then go on to make a case that beauty goes beyond the individual subject? Are you not contradicting yourself?

James

No, it's not a contradiction because all these "beyond the individual subjects" are actually different for every individual. Example: Everyone is part of a different part of society with varying cultural and social situations. Biology differs in every individual and chemical recognition changes with biology.

[owleye]

Beauty is subjective or in the eye of the beholder. Many types of programming that influence our views cultural, social, biological or chemical. Culturally there is a certain physical and behavioral profile that is considered beautiful. Socially we get use to certain people that we eventually find beautiful. Biologically and chemically every organism has a certain genetic programming that defines something as beautiful. Involving all our 5 senses. Example: Certain birds are attracted to only a specific type of display that defines the parameters of health for that species.

You begin with a statement that beauty is subjective, and subjective to an individual subject. Yet you then go on to make a case that beauty goes beyond the individual subject? Are you not contradicting yourself?

James

No, it's not a contradiction because all these "beyond the individual subjects" are actually different for every individual. Example: Everyone is part of a different part of society with varying cultural and social situations. Biology differs in every individual and chemical recognition changes with biology.

Is there any sense in which separate individuals would assess the same things as beautiful because they share the same criteria for beauty? For example, might not sunsets and rainbows be considered beautiful by most people? How about orchids and roses? Or consider, for example, beauty pageants, where the assumption is that beauty can be judged. Do you think the selection of the winners of beauty contests is random, based solely on who gets the most votes, each voter being a random variable that would pick out some arbitrary feature of a candidate for approval -- for example, hair color, some preferring purple, size of the foot, some thinking it needs to be huge, or length of fingernails, some believing they need to be very long?

Finally, what do you make of the interesting idea from the poets that beauty is captured in youth (or truth)? Or what about elegance, a mark of beauty, sometimes observed in certain mathematical proofs. If beauty is strictly in the eyes of the beholder, the word itself would have no real value. Why consider something beautiful at all when you can't count on others agreeing with you?

I would grant that beauty is a subjective judgment, but I shouldn't think it was so subjective that there wasn't anything to it. Moreover, I would grant that other sensations, say those of taste, might be so subjective that we don't expect agreement, much as we don't expect our taste in the various flavors of ice-cream to be universal. However, in the case of beauty, wouldn't any judgment you have be such that you would expect others to agree with you, and think it kind of weird when they don't? Indeed, you would probably think there is something radically wrong with someone when in the most typical cases (say a sunset or bouquet of roses) they would find it ugly.

James

[glamceleb]

i think science has to do with the genes from both parents, because noone is a like and the combination of genes from both parents has to do with how the baby look
IN GUYANA, THERE IS A SAYING .............. UGLY PEOPLE MEK NICE PICKNEY(children)

[BadgerJelly]

IN GUYANA, THERE IS A SAYING .............. UGLY PEOPLE MEK NICE PICKNEY(children)

Love it! XD

I don't rate surface beauty above the deeper beauty of nature myself. I think on a human level there is ascetic beauty that holds fast. Understanding sensually "ugly" things gives them ascetic beauty that is not readily available unless you are willing to look for it ... weird that we need to dig deeper to find this though in many situations.

[sara20]

In my opinion, there is a general sense that is evolved in humans and most likely many other more social complex organisms ( if not all organisms) and that has everything to do with attraction and passing on gene pools. Many features humans consider beautiful across populations are a direct correlation of fertility and health, so as long as we humans like to deny such facts that we dislike, we are going to be confused by many events we end up witnessing in our lives. Get used to it, if you aren't necessarily beautiful, try to do your best to have some other asset that will increase your and your 'community's' survival or you won't really be that attractive to many out there. And no attitude pls!

[kangs79]

I'll end it with this a person who looks for beauty within any thing will usually find it. Therefore beauty exists within everything the only problem with a human perspective is that not everyone can find that beauty. Once a being evolves to the level of seing the beauty within all things that being will become one with the universal spirit. That oneness will lead to blissfulness.

[BadgerJelly]

I'll end it with this a person who looks for beauty within any thing will usually find it. Therefore beauty exists within everything the only problem with a human perspective is that not everyone can find that beauty. Once a being evolves to the level of seing the beauty within all things that being will become one with the universal spirit. That oneness will lead to blissfulness.

Been there and done it, got the T-shirt ;)

I don't like the term "universal spirit" though. I would prefer to say I "saw" shit and was beyond bliss or awe ... there really are no words to describe (And yeah I know that sounds cheesy!)

most doctors refer to it as "mania"

Mania is an abnormally elated mental state, typically characterized by feelings of euphoria, lack of inhibitions, racing thoughts, diminished need for sleep, talkativeness, risk taking, and irritability. In extreme cases, mania can induce hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms.

I had the first five of these but none of the others. I have never had such clarity before in all my life so if this was what people class as insanity then I wish I was insane again!

Personally I think I was sane in this episode but now I am insane again along with the vast majority of human being on Earth.

[kangs79]

most doctors refer to it as "mania"

Mania is an abnormally elated mental state, typically characterized by feelings of euphoria, lack of inhibitions, racing thoughts, diminished need for sleep, talkativeness, risk taking, and irritability. In extreme cases, mania can induce hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms.

I believe I see your problem you are viewing this universal oneness as some extreme feelings of euphoria. If you use a level headed and simple approach on everything you will understand this oneness feeling. This oneness feeling lies within the normal everyday simple life and not in the crazy chaos of illness. Beauty lies in simplicity not in extreme fantasies.

[DragonFly]

Beauty is the truth of a formula revealed.

[BadgerJelly]

kangs79

I have no problem trust me ;)

[Marshall]

What does science have to say about beauty?

Open topic so throw your own theories in as well as articles you have read please.

I'm not an expert in the evolution of human behavior but I think some components of one's sense of beauty and response to beauty would confer reproductive advantage in a paleolithic hunter-gather setting, and that as a result probably some aesthetic responses are to an extent genetically hard-wired.

the response to beauty is to some extent immediate, without thinking. Something beautiful gets one's attention before there is any time for concepts or reflection. So I imagine that in a hunter-gather context it could be an advantage to:

recognize a fertile tract of land, with healthy wellnourished animals as a good place to hunt
recognize a beautifully made flint spearhead
notice a woman who makes more symmetrical baskets than the other women
recognize a well-balanced tool or weapon as beautiful (valuable)
recognize a healthy graceful wellspoken woman
(especially if she gathers fine ripe pieces of fruit and her father makes beautiful spearheads and arrows)
recognize that a man is a good dancer and that he brings home plump rabbits rather than ugly scrawny ones, or maybe that he makes nice-looking huts.

It was probably a good to ally oneself with families that gather especially beautiful stuff and make especially beautiful stuff. More of your children would live to adulthood. You should know to value certain qualities immediately without thinking about it. This could have been the grounds of our sense of beauty

To distinguish and value what is excellent without needing any intervening concepts could have conferred advantage simply because stoneage people mightn't have had a lot of verbal concepts, so they had to rely on pre-rational instinctive perceptions of value. I think at some stage, paleolithic maybe, that could have had such reproductive advantage that it gradually become hardwired.

But then you would get a huge amount of cultural overlay on top of that. The genetic instinctive stuff is bound to have been overwhelmed and engulfed by subsequent culture.

I still think some of my responses to natural beauty are pre-rational and unlearned. Trajectories.patterns of stars. the way a bird flies, or water flows. I still think there is something deep that I didn't learn or get taught from our culture. But it's hard to know

[BadgerJelly]

How badly we want something depends upon its relative beauty then?

So we are attracted to beauty but some people are more inclined to enjoy the relation to the non-beautiful in order to enjoy the height of beauty more.

The route to beauty then in life is to either surround yourself with beauty, yo-yo between beauty and non-beauty or maybe a combination?


Above you've basically described beauty as a force of attraction. This is what I was getting at with the birds of paradise ref. There is an interaction between the entities of the hunter gatherer and the stone/hand axe. This is neurological interaction of concepts in the human brain. Different brains are attracted to different rocks and differing successes of use would take place in a group of humans.

This gives us the interactions both in the outside world (human and rock) and the inside world (neurology).

Anyway I'm struggling to get my head in order here so I'll return later ....

[mrmcbubbles]

Everything is objective. We just need to look for this objective nature of beauty in us rather than outside of us. Even though we recognize that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", perhaps because of its complexity and variability, we still mistakenly try to look for the objective nature of beauty outside of us. So when we don't find it there, we simply declare beauty's nature "subjective". It's easier to make some "sense" of it this way. But it's essentially giving up on the problem.