Pick your Look: Standard - Rising Blue - Retro Curves
RajeshGoli.com
- Thoughts on Technology and life...
Reason :: A Thing of Beauty..
I once had an argument with one of my friends, Sandeep, about the nature of beauty. He was of the opinion that beauty was symmetry and vice versa. The most symmetrical object in the three dimensional world that we live in is a sphere. You can rotate a sphere by any amount in any direction, it will look the same. Therefore a sphere is perfectly symmetrical, but is it the most beautiful? Consider a real life approximation of a perfect sphere, take an ordinary cricket ball, is it exquisitely beautiful? Let us compare it with a less symmetrical object, a cube. So is a a cricket ball more beautiful or is a ice cube more beautiful? An Ashoka tree can be very beautiful, but is it symmetrical? So, it is quite apparent that symmetry is not the key to beauty.
I tried to make an encompassing theory to the 'symmetry hypothesis'. Generically, socially accepted norms of 'good' tend to be a set of ideas that, taken together are good for the sustenance and propagation of human race as a whole. A martyr is a 'good' socially even though he dies making him 'bad' as a precedent to human society because him dying furthers a greater cause, a cause of a larger number of people that will be affected for 'good' by his death. Why not define beauty in similar terms? Beauty would then quite simply be anything that amplifies whatever is 'good' to human society as a whole. So people with fat in accumulated in places that make the probability of their survival higher than others would be more beautiful. People with symmetrical faces would be more beautiful because they would be good bet for a better next generation. Quite simply, beautiful people will be people who have good potential for sustenance and propagation of the human race.
The theory fits the bill very nicely until we start looking outside human species. A cheetah cub is very beautiful, but, is it good for either sustenance and propagation of the human race? I would not bet my money on that. What if we extend the theory to make it look like "whatever is beautiful is 'good' for sustenance and propagation of the life as a whole on planet earth"? It is easy to deal death blow to this theory too, Why isn't a roach beautiful? Cockroach is good for sustenance of life on this planet, after all it has survived longer than most other species on this planet. Further, why is a rainbow beautiful? Why are northern lights so enchanting? They aren't helping in either sustenance or propagation.
The only theory I came to agree on is, beauty is something that fires the right neurons in my brain. That is a bit anti-climatic isn't it? For, beauty can be relative. Moreover 'beauty fires right neurons' is something like saying 'universe started with big bang singularity', it is just a useless definition. Useless and ludicrous, it wont stand a chance outside my head. So I'm back to square one, what is beauty? Why does it to matter to humans who supposedly have capacity for rational thought?
Created on 29th March 2005
- There were some errors in your input
Add Article Comment
Articles
Portfolio
Styles
Support this site!
