Beauty

Up until now I have been trying to establish the importance of reason, which is the human ability to perceive the non-material but very real logical structures of the universe we inhabit. It occurs to me to ask if those logical structures exist before they are thought of. For instance, did language exist before there was a language? Certainly there was a potential for language as living creatures very early on learned to vocalize. Birds sing, cattle bellow, elk trumpet. Hadrosaurs were a very successful and diverse type of herbivorous dinosaur. In their variety they were notable for the strange shapes of their heads which are now thought to have been echo chambers for amplifying their vocalizations. We might imagine that without cars, trucks, jet planes, leaf blowers and ghetto blasters that the cretaceous would have been a peaceful and serene time. Apparently not, with herds of gigantic dinosaurs calling to one another from miles apart. Again take note- once a behaviour is learned the behaviour influences physical change. Although they may not have had language in the sense that humans do, nevertheless the vocalizations had meanings intelligible to all members of the included group. Obviously, no hadrosaur coffee klatsch ever convened with the idea of starting down the road toward evolving a language, so we can't really say that the thought created language. But why did the hadrosaurs make such a big deal about bellowing, whistling, shrieking, for each others delectation, if that's what they did?

An evolutionist would try to explain these anatomic and behavioural features in terms of DNA, an incredibly complex molecular structure that transcribes proteins of unbelievable subtlety. The difficulty is explaining how such complexity came to be. The evolutionist has in his quiver two arrows. Random mutation and natural selection. Random mutation means that code errors will occur from time to time. Most of these will be detrimental, but a few will be beneficial. Natural selection means that the good ones will persist into the future and the poor host with the detrimental mutation will perish. Not mere death, but extinction. Cruel nature selects. Stick out your neck with some wild and crazy idea and you'll get it chopped off, chop chop.

But I have another theory. The theme of these posts is largely, how do we know what we know? And I have followed Plato in theorizing that not only do we have our usual five senses, of sight, hearing, etc, we also are able to know things through our minds, which can 'see' by the light of pure reason. I would like to propose we have another way of knowing things, and it's a way that Plato didn't particularly like. The poets raised his ire, who he accused of being liars and twisters of the truth. Many poets do distort the truth, as do many philosophers. Even nature fools us. For instance, our senses tell us unequivocally that the earth we stand on is solid and immovable, while the sun and moon are smallish objects which rise on one horizon and set on the opposite. So our eyes tell us. Similarly, the stars and planets are mere pinpricks of light that roam the night skies. Truly, human beings have venerated these celestial presences as far back as we have been human. But it took reason to demonstrate, and a long, arduous process of reasoning, that the earth is not only moving, but that it is but a tiny fragment of moist rock orbiting a star which is itself only one of billions upon billions of suns. The geometers of Plato's era started us down that road when they calculated the circumference of the earth, and Plato, a geometer, was probably contemptuous of the myths telling of gods cavorting in the sky.

What poets and artists and musicians deal with- at least they did until the twentieth century when they came unhinged- is beauty. Art isn't exactly based on reason, even though all arts are built on a highly rigorous logic, and it isn't exactly based on the senses, even though each art works through one or more of the senses. In this way, beauty is a lot like logic. It manifests itself through matter, but matter itself is not beauty. But it is unlike logic in that we perceive beauty directly. When we see a blazing sunset we don't need mathematical calculations to tell us we are witnessing something beautiful. It doesn't matter to our appreciation of the sunset that the earth revolves around the sun. We don't have to know about nuclear fusion to enjoy the sight of the sunset. When we hear a beautiful piece of music we don't need to know anything about sound waves or decibels. Perhaps knowing something about key signatures enhances our appreciation but only to the composer is that sort of knowledge essential.

This kind of beauty gives us pleasure, but not the kind of pleasure that comes from eating a tasty meal or copulating with a lover. Aesthetic pleasure is experienced through the mind more than the body. Our stomachs are soon filled, our debaucheries soon leave us depleted. Attempts to extend those pleasures much beyond their natural uses leads to a diminishing sense of fulfillment. The glutton grows fat and diabetic, the roue needs more and more perverse stimulations to achieve arousal. Those unable to attain the desired pleasurable feelings through food, sex, or other means often turn to chemicals. For these people the mind becomes the enemy. It craves satisfactions they are unable to gratify and so it must be destroyed. Drugs that deaden the pain or conversely deliver ecstatic feelings become a necessity.

But the pleasure we derive from observing a beautiful sunset never diminishes but enhances us. We feel drawn toward something. We may not know precisely what it is we are drawn to, but we know it is a good thing, that we are better for it. We also know that someone who can't appreciate the beauty of a sunset lacks some essential element needed to be fully human.

Western thought of the last few centuries has lost faith in the value of our capacity to perceive beauty. It is a train of thought that denies even the existence of anything other than material objects, and therefore every explanation for the observed world must refer to those material objects.

For the next few posts I will try to refute that view.