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The BIOLOGY of BEAUTY

The BIOLOGY of BEAUTY. ART & ORGANISM 2010. The Aesthetic Experience. WHAT is it? (how does it feel ?) WHERE do we find it? (anyplace? everyplace?) WHY do we seek it? (what needs are met?). The Aesthetic Experience. Initiated by a sensory experience

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The BIOLOGY of BEAUTY

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  1. The BIOLOGY of BEAUTY ART & ORGANISM 2010

  2. The Aesthetic Experience WHAT is it? (how does it feel?) WHERE do we find it? (anyplace? everyplace?) WHY do we seek it? (what needs are met?)

  3. The Aesthetic Experience • Initiated by a sensory experience • Selective attention to stimuli (“making special”) • Variable in intensity • Enhanced by being novel or deautomatized or decontextualized • contemplative focus - being “here and now” • Autotelic (intrinsically reinforcing)

  4. The Aesthetic Experience BIOLOGICAL – a phenomenon that has adaptive significance and can be characterized in terms of • Development • Ecology • Evolution • Physiology

  5. BEHAVIOR is ADAPTIVE (contributes to FITNESS) because it meets more-or-less urgent BIOLOGICAL NEEDS

  6. PLEASURE • PLEAURE is an evolutionarily derived aspect of experience that guides our behavior in a specific path. • It is the hallmark of an adaptive behavioral response

  7. What are the Extremes of Aesthetic Experience? • Pleasure can be addictive • Epiphany can be transformative • The desire for fusion can be dysfunctional

  8. EPIPHANY A change in consciousness, A paradigm shift

  9. Transformative Experience, Aesthetic Arrest “We may dance toward it and away, achieve glimpses, and even dwell in its beauty for a time; yet few are those that have been confirmed in that knowledge of its ubiquity which antiquity called gnosis and the Orient calls bodhi: full awakening to the crystalline purity of the bed or ground of one’s own and yet the world’s true being. Like perfectly transparent crystal, it is there, yet as though not there; and all things, when seen through it, become luminous in its light” (Joseph Campbell 1968:66 -- speaking of “aesthetic arrest”).

  10. Breaking Through: Creative Processes Evoked in the Service of Healing • Interaction of primary and secondary process

  11. To become one with the truth you seek • Pygmalion and The Romance of Fusion • Illusion embodied • Fusion sought • Magic manifest

  12. Extraordinary Experience • Ineffable: The experience defies expression; it cannot be described in words. • Noetic: It gives insight and knowledge into deep truths, which are sustained over time. • Transient: Lasts no longer than a few minutes and cannot be accurately remembered, though easily recognised if it recurs. • Passivity: It may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, like meditation, but once it begins it seems out of one’s control as if he or she were grasped and held by a superior power William James 1918

  13. “There are moments, and it is only a matter of five or six seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony ... a terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself, and the rapture with which it fills you. Dostoyevski

  14. The Aesthetic Experience Evolution: 75,000 year-old jewelry found in the Blombos Cave, South Africa

  15. Enlightenment Views of Man and Nature During the Enlightenment, Nature was studied as much for its own sake as for any allegorical or symbolic significance it had. ". . . the radical impact of scientific exploration on human perception . . . . undermined the notion that all human knowledge was relative to the observer and suggested that objective reality could really be observed."

  16. Where do we seek Aesthetic Experience? “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones . . . Shakespeare

  17. “If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” Vincent Van Gogh

  18. Where do we seek Aesthetic Experience? “To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour” William Blake

  19. All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon. The insignificant is as big to me as any, What is less or more than a touch? Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, Only what nobody denies is so. --Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," 647-655.

  20. SO ! If there are “tongues in trees . . .” And we can see a world in a grain of sand . . .” And “All truths wait in all things . . .” WHY do we relentlessly seek beauty, truth, and exert vast energies into creative works?

  21. Why do we seek Aesthetic Experience? Meeting Biological Needs:NEEDS are prioritized depending on biological urgency (Maslow),but all must be met if an organism it to survive and thrive . . .

  22. Why do we seek Aesthetic Experience? What needs are being met? Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. . . . There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. - Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

  23. Why do we seek Aesthetic Experience? What NEEDS are being met? • SELF-KNOWLEDGE • EMOTION • HARMONY • MYSTERY

  24. GNOTHI se AUTON But knowledge of the “thoughts and passions of all other men” is not the only reason to “looketh into” one’s self. Without confidence in the outcomes of our actions, we are helpless To be an effective, competitive organism, we would be wise to follow the advice of the Oracle at Delphi: “Gnothi se auton” (Know thyself)

  25. GNOTHI se AUTON SELF-KNOWLEDGE is obviously critical to the effective functioning of any organism – we must know the boundaries and possibilities of our abilities AS HUMANS, we also take the drive to self-knowledge to extremes BUT our abilities include understanding, creating connections, and discovering the resonances within ourselves and between ourselves and the universe . . .

  26. EMOTIONS Emotions energize our MOTIVES . . They are coordinated states, shaped by natural selection, that adjust physiological and behavioral responses to take advantage of opportunities and to cope with threats that have recurred over the course of evolution” (Nesse & Berridge 1997)

  27. INTRINSICPLEASURE PHI – an irrational number (1.618 . . .) that describes the relationships between a series of numbers often seen in nature (the Fibonacci series) Said to be intrinsically attractive, somehow resonating with our congenitally defined perceptual abilities

  28. INTRINSICPLEASURE PHI – an irrational number that describes the relationships between a series of numbers often seen in nature (the Fibonacci series) Said to be intrinsically attractive, somehow resonating with our congenitally defined perceptual abilities

  29. INTRINSICPLEASURE PHI – an irrational number that describes the relationships between a series of numbers often seen in nature (the Fibonacci series) Said to be intrinsically attractive, somehow resonating with our congenitally defined perceptual abilities

  30. INTRINSIC PLEASURE Specific ratios in “configurational stimuli” are intrinsically more “attractive” . . . They compel prolonged attention and positive affect

  31. Haeckel’s forams • Siphonophore

  32. ACQUIRED PLEASURE Socially constructed . . . Ambiguous feelings are interpreted by trusted caregivers and social referees . . . teachers . . .

  33. ACQUIRED PLEASURE MUSEUM and GALLERY: Socially constructing taste by calling selective attention to what has affected others . . .

  34. Intrinsic - invested? innate - acquired? hard-wired - learned fixed - flexible? . . . grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. (The Serenity Prayer). . .

  35. What greater delight is there than to behold the earth apparelled with plants as with a robe of embroidered works, set with Orient pearls and garnished with the great diversitie of rare and costly jewels. But these delights are in the outward senses.The principle delight is in the minde, singularly enriched with the knowledge of these visible things, setting forth to us the invisible wisdome and admirable workmanship of almighty God. --John Gerard, 1633, The Herbal

  36. THIS MAY ALL BE IN THE MIND . . . BUT the mind can be viewed as A SPECIALIZED ORGAN, evolved to guide us towards meeting our NEEDS

  37. HARMONY "accord between the structure of the universe, the canons of the social order and the good of the individual." All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood . . . (Pope)

  38. MYSTERY We need mystery! Knowing all answers is lonely and self-alienating. The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. (Albert Einstein)

  39. The Catalyst The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.(Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum) “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour” (William Blake)

  40. Perceptions of Nature Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est”

  41. Or for the Cygnus Nebula

  42. Perceptions of Nature Wu-Wei, “effortless action”

  43. Perceptions of Nature Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty . . . Bertrand Russell

  44. "Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens" --Ralph Waldo Emerson

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