Baby kubrick

[motherengine]

is there an aesthetic sense inherent in humans? i am not talking about the fact that an infant may cry if john merrick peeps over the edge of its crib and smile if brad pitt does which i think has more to do with symmetry, but more a sense of 'seeing dad in this particular angle is more attractive to me than that one' or are these different aspect of the same mental function?

[Aquagem]

is there an aesthetic sense inherent in humans?

 

Aesthesia originally meant "aware of the outer world through stimulation of the senses". Hence, anesthesia -- "unfeeling." In this broad sense, we all have such an inherent capacity. Somewhere along the line (don't know where) the word came to be associated not only with awareness, but a sense of value associated with beauty in all its guises. In that sense, music, sculpture, art, and all sorts of activities producing hedonic (pleasurable) responses have an aesthetic streak.

 

Howard Gardner, in The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, used a criterion of identification for an intelligence that required it be present in all, or virtually all, cultures, and that it be prized by its members. Music, for example, is one such trait, as is the use and cultivation of language. Based on that approach, there is strong circumstantial evidence for aesthetic sensibility.

 

(When anyone asks me why I love science above all other studies, my answer is instantaneous -- "Because science reveals the beauty of nature beyond any other human activity!" Usually they walk away, muttering softly.)

 

Any more, I expect to find that there are both innate (genetic) and cultural (extragenetic) components to any widely distributed human preoccupation. I think the scales have tipped (justifiably) in this direction and away from brute force behaviorism as a result of overwhelming evidence from many disciplines over the past half century. Given that, and the universal distribution in human culture of aesthetic sense, the most interesting question in my mind is where it originates in the brain and whether or not it has some demonstrable function in promoting survival at a basic level of animal operation.

 

For example, David Attenborough, the "grandfather of the nature film" and still-active producer of amazing views of the biological world, made one program on music. In that, he posed the question, "Are we the only animals that make music (meaning, humans)?" If you can find this in a video rental or public library, by all means see it -- it's aesthetically rich and aesthetically informative. The case he makes very well in the film is that, yes, there are other animals who "sing". Bird songs are actually songs, as are those of whales. And there is a fantastic scene of one of the great apes (I forget which one right now) doing an incredible, swinging, morning aerial dance and singing at the top of its lungs, answered from around the horizon by others of his species.

 

The functions of music (and maybe the rest of our aesthetic sensibilities) are two: to announce territory and to attract mates (surprise!). As I once wrote in a biology paper, "The birdsong is in time what bright plumage is in space". Both of these functions originate in the limbic system, where survival and reproduction are programmed into the organism as absolute imperatives. It isn't hard to imagine that our sense of beauty arises, first and foremost, from the reward circuits associated with pleasure, prominently sexuality, and distibuted and associated with all in our lives we come to think of as "beautiful".

 

We have learned to turn almost anything into something beautiful, just for the sake of the pleasure it gives us. I was reminded of the draw of aesthetics just last night at a piano and cello concert, watching a breathless audience in a rapture of delight to hear the sound of water and the song of whales in harmony with human instruments. Aesthetics, like all emotional responses, run deep in our minds, and course through our veins.

[IrishEyes]

Aquagem,

You really MUST agree to write a few Hypographies for us. If I ask you three times nicely, will you consider it?