It looks pleasing to look at. It is what many people would call aesthetic.
Aesthetics is a very popular concept in today's social media, but not many know
There are three approaches to aesthetics:
(all of this was found on https://www.britannica.com/topic/aesthetics)
(1) the study of the aesthetic concepts
The study of the aesthetic concepts is an analysis of the “language of criticism”. It has a dual purpose “to show how (if at all) these descriptions might be justified, and to show what is distinctive in the human experiences that are expressed in them.”
(2) philosophical study of certain states of mind—responses, attitude, emotions—that are held to be involved in aesthetic experiences
The key to the aesthetic realm lies in a certain “disinterested” attitude, which we may assume toward any object and which can be expressed in many contrasting ways. More recently, philosophers—distrustful of Kant’s theory of the faculties—have tried to express the notions of an “aesthetic attitude” and “aesthetic experience” in other ways, relying upon developments in philosophical psychology that owe much to G.W.F. Hegel, the Phenomenologists, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (more precisely, the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations [1953]).
(3) The philosophical study of the aesthetic object.
The third approach to aesthetics does not require this concentration upon art. This approach reflects the view that the problems of aesthetics exist primarily because the world contains a special class of objects toward which we react selectively and which we describe in aesthetic terms. The usual class singled out as prime aesthetic objects is that comprising works of art
Aesthetics is something measurable, but it is harder to explain than something like a logical study topic such as mathematics. Aesthetics does not have a certain what is beautiful and what is not, as we all have different opinions and views on them. What I may find aesthetically pleasing, someone else may not find it that way.
1. What do you find as an aesthetic?
2. Is that a way to universally measure beauty?
3. Why do you think it has become even more of a hot concept in social media today?
I know many of us have a visual bias, but beauty is a much wider phenomenon. As Keats said, truth is beauty. Music may be beautiful. People may possess beautiful characters. Acts of kindness are beautiful. A mathematical proof may be beautiful. Etc.
ReplyDeleteGenerally I agree with John Dewey, who said beauty is rooted in ordinary experience:
"The sources of art in human experience will be learned by him who sees how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the onlooking crowd; who notes the delight of the housewife in tending her plants, and the intent interest of her goodman in tending the patch of green in front of the house; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals."
I agree i think that personal experience has a lot to do with beauty; however, if you look more in depth into the science behind beauty you can see that it has a lot to do with symmetry. Theres something called the golden rule that will explain it mathematically.
ReplyDelete1. What do you find as an aesthetic?
ReplyDeleteI tend to find destructive things, like abandoned building, as my aesthetic.
2. Is that a way to universally measure beauty?
I don't think so. People are too different to use aesthetics as a measurement.
3. Why do you think it has become even more of a hot concept in social media today?
Because social media has allowed people to share parts of themselves with the rest of the world (pictures, status updates, aesthetics, etc.)