Beauty, a nascent property of cosmic intelligence, reveals itself in infinite finite manifestations as well as within the streaming river of cosmic consciousness of the cognition of the "I am that I am".

Beauty therefore is undefinable. It flows forever, only to be captured in the timeless moment of AWE where stillness meets the knowledge of self as the root cause of observation.

Beauty of light, beauty of breathing light in, beauty of breathing light out, beauty of the sphere of light that "I am", are the one, two, three of the divine trinity.

Beautiful light of the "I am that I am" is all that is real in its trinity, all else illusion as it passes fleeting by in a whirlwind of confusion.

There's a naive element in finding something unexplained beautiful, we can't quite explain it so we find the mystery as beautiful as any of the more objective 'beauty' (as in the colour or the arrangement). I do agree though that with knowledge comes analysis which seems to over-ride pure appreciation. It's possibly the same for a classically trained composer who very rarely appreciates a work for its beauty, and instead analyzes what he listens to, based upon his knowledge. However, we might find inspiration during the analysis and contemplate with a knowledgeable insight, inspiration of a different kind to the inspiration found in appreciating the stars simply as some kind of intrinsically beautiful spectacle.

It seems to me to be quite selfish of somebody to appreciate beauty without taking some inspiration from it and creating something as a response; so perhaps knowing more about what we see will cause us to be more creative, although it might cause us to have less creative imaginations.

Hi Doobah,

:)That naive appreciation has been termed asthetic arest, it is I think when the order of the object in question speaks to the order which is of your own nature. If you find something beautiful it must possess these things, order, rhythm and harmony, if you find something ugly it is due to a lack of one or all of these qualities. So my premise is that beauty , uglyness and the sublime are biologically determined. It is necessarily biologically based, as all meaning, all values and appreciations require a subject.

There is formula in everything beautiful, whether it be human-made or naturally occurring. Music or art are formulaic, whether they follow the simplest formula (such as the colours of the spectrum) or strictly adhere to theories of cadence composition etc. I would not doubt that there is a biological element to the appreciation of beauty, yet what I doubt is the non-visible elements of beauty being biologically ascertained; lets say that the stars are twinkling, we now know that is due to space-dust interfering with the light (or something like that...) yet I think it is these elements, like the beauty we see in emotions or intoxication, or when emotional or intoxicated. What I'm trying to say is that there's a random, invisible quality to real beauty, something that is not part of a strict formula of biology or composition, something that we appreciate the absence of.

As to the nature of something left unprecieved, of course it must then be left, unexpressed.

It is in fact impossiable for appreciation of anything not to be from a biological source, the physical world is without meaning in the absence of a conscious subject.

But we have words such as 'ineffable' or 'invisible', surely if we have these words then the non-existence of something, at least for humans and their perception/expression, is potentially described. We might even know what the absent things is. Let's take a super-model who we know has a mole on her face, a beautiful and 'biologically beautiful' aspect to her physical appearance, yet one day we see an image of the model in which the mole has been airbrushed out; we can appreciate the absence of the mole in this particular image, yet in a way the straightforward biological beauty is not what we admire, it is a case of novelty, we admire the absence of a thing in finding the image beautiful - even if only for a very short time until we become accustomed to the biological beauty in the airbrushed image.

But it is not without value, and meaning is merely a subconscious variant of value, is it not?

I think my example probably stems from an aspect of our appreciation of novelty rather than an appreciation of biological beauty - although we know the image is beautiful with or without the mole, a certain emotional response is achieved when faced with novelty, and although every mental function and symptom of perception is biological, I think that novelty is not quite part of the biological, regular concept of beauty you are purporting.

"Colour shines and wants only to shine. When we analyze it in rational terms by measuring its wavelengths, it is gone. It shows itself only when it remains undisclosed and unexplained. It causes every mercy calculating importunity upon it to turn into a destruction" (Heidegger).

Kooker,

Heidegger must be a romantic philosopher, they are the worst kind. He starts apparently with giving colour personificational highlights, such as, a will, it wants to shine does it? Undisclosed and unexplained sounds a lot like an oblivious state, beauty is not a testimony to ignorance.

The best kind . Beauty, not a testimony to ignorance, but a testimony to a frame of knowledge that moves beyond the quantifiable. Heidegger implies that a fragmented, empirical analysis of beauty, is not an analysis of beauty at all since the work of art stands as a whole. To dissect (a common practice that pervades our visual culture--perhaps rooted in Cartesian method) the work through various forms of criticism (e.g. post-structuralist) misses the point. To paraphrase, Heidegger stated that we must let the "language speak" in our "analysis" of art--not deconstruct it into meaninglessness. Hence, unweaving a rainbow in terms of its wavelength avoids its luster, just as analyzing the spurts of anapestic tetrameter in Hamlet as evidence of a Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic being played out in language misses the point.

The atoms that compose our bodies do not reflect the intensity of our being just as the atoms of Beauty fail to explicate it's beauty. Thus, we cannot point to the particulars of beauty as an understanding of its Beauty. Perhaps, then, we must take a Paterian approach to Beauty, and simply ask:

"What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are the original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do; and, as in the study of light, of morals, of number, one must realise such primary data for one's self, or not at all. And he who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or experience-metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or not, of no interest to him."

Doobah

In your logic you seem to be stretching for something intangiable. Your belief that the non-existence of something can be appreciated is unfounded. There is a difference between what is non-existent and what is unprecieved by a particular individual. This business of the absence of something being what is beautiful is again unfounded. If the co-related features of the models face would be thrown out of balance, and destroy it as a pleasing composition that would not constituted it in and of itself as something beautiful or ugly, it at best could be either a disruption or a compliment to any already existing order.

I suppose that the absence of a thing being beautiful is founded in biology after all; and that any appreciation of novelty is not the appreciation of beauty, it merely relates or influences the appreciation of beauty. So I do agree with your position.

However, I do not agree with your refutation; "the absence of something is beautiful" is not an unfounded statement, although it is likely relevant to biological orders of beauty as you state. In fact the absence of x is as important to the beauty of a thing as the presence of y; one can view the thing as having included everything, then facets were removed from the thing, and the thing became beautiful as a thing in it's own right - so the absence of many facets have made a thing beautiful.

Secondly, one could regard concepts as beautiful, although one might only ever perceive them in the imagination, perhaps as a product of information; in this case there is no objective thing regarded as beautiful, simply an imagination. Furthermore, the imagination might be beautiful, yet the object might be ugly; so the absence of the object allows the imagination to be beautiful. Finally, one could regard nothing as beautiful, or a black hole, or an empty dinner plate - all things require the absence of a thing in manifesting their beauty.