Playing the Indian Card

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The Argument from Beauty

A bird sings outside my window.

We perceive bird song as beautiful, do we not? Indeed, we perceive nature as a whole as beautiful, don't we? This aesthetic response is recognizably the same response we get from a great work of art, which is to say, of designing intelligence. Indeed, what is beauty but the perception of an intelligent pattern, a design, in an object?

I submit that, if there were no design in nature, it would not be beautiful. It would appear to use like random noise, or random paint splotches on a wall.

Each sparrow is a message from God.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to disagree with you -- I believe in intelligent design -- but I never considered insects particulatly beautiful.

Steve Roney said...

What about butterflies?

As to other things, like tapeworms or fleas, consider this: True, in a sense these things are not beautiful. But only in a superficial sense. In the same sense, for example, that you could
say the paintings of Bosch or the writings of Poe or Aeschylus's
tragedies are not "beautiful." That is, they are disturbing, not
immediately pleasant to contemplate. Nevertheless, they too clearly have beauty in the sense sometimes called the sublime.

I submit that we get the same aesthetic rush from turkey buzzards, scorpions, and tapeworms. It is very different from our reaction to noise or paint blotches.

Anonymous said...

a song,, little girl,handcraft,moon,insect,,,what could be the common thing among all of them that let you decide,,beauty
what are the measurements that used to rate things and decide beauty.
is art a beauty?what about a piece of work,a paint that show death,,what about it,can death be a beauty?
who decide art?what makes it to be considered as an art?

bashar