Hi Platonist Guitar Cowboy Well, one could refer that definition of beauty back to the One, maybe that's what plotinus does. Instead of the many coming out of the one, the one comprises the many. A work of art is a whole of parts, compete.
But practically speaking.... When I see a beautiful painting it seems to be well-made, well crafted, just right". Homer was good at that. Also, it's complete, nothing need be added. Similarly with music, there is a "whole" that seems complete when the music is done. Composers used to slam this in your ear with a series of parting phrases. Movies also seem to tie up the whole by zooming out to give a more panaramic view at the end. Novelists seem to know when they've completed things and begin a sense for the ending. In my limited experience at writing poetry I have learned to end the poem with a sense of wholeness by either freferring back to the beginning or zooming out as in the movies. In the fdollowi9ngf poem of mine, I refer back to the beginning of the poem, and that wraps it up, saying it's ciomplete. Salzburg A vase of flowers on a table Is touched by a spring breeze As she opens the door and leaves for school, Just as she opened the grand piano Before playing a Mozart sonata To see the steel strings Strong and tight, not like her soft hands As gentle as can be on the keyboard. The hammered steel and the warm wood inside filling the room with music, and Mozart within the music and the music within her being. But with the last note it is quiet. I reach over and straighten an imprecision of the flowers. - Roger Clough If you wish to unsubscribe from these occasional postings, simply reply with unsubscribe in the subject line. Roger Clough, [email protected] 10/10/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-09, 10:24:27 Subject: Re: On Beauty On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Platonist Guitar Cowboy The definition of beauty that I like is that beauty is unity in diversity. Hi Roger, As I mentioned, I think its very hard/perhaps impossible to tie down like that, even though I think I can grasp what you mean. For instance, concerning the definition you mentioned: is that diversity harmoniously completing itself, starkly contrasting itself, even in conflict with itself to appear unified on some other level? Picking up the last: you can have a narrative pitting protagonists against each other say in a film with heavy conflict. And their conflict produces a more convincing unified whole that is beautiful. Then take the wholeness of humans or machines on this planet and look at the conflict of war. Placing now aside, that people "die physically" in wars and not in fiction (there are many stuntmen that have died...) and pretending all were fiction to exercise more aesthetic, instead of moral, judgement: in both cases you have diversity as conflict and a wholeness (protagonists/whole film against vivid description of humanity in war). Still, Its really difficult to answer whether one is more beautiful than the other in some absolute sense, or to pin down properties or hierarchies that would make this so. But show a person both films you've made, and they will prefer one over the other. In other words, we know it when we meet it, or we see it in past or future through introspection. So employing fuzzy metaphors instead of defining it: it is a wild animal hard to catch, but universally present and always easily accessible. m? ? Roger Clough, [email protected] 10/9/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-08, 11:58:53 Subject: Re: On Zuckerman's paper Hi Stephen, Bruno, and Jason, Do I understand correctly that comp requires a relative measure on the set of all partial computable functions and that for Steven "Both abstractions, such as numbers and their truths, and physical worlds must emerge together from a primitive ground which is neutral in that it has no innate properties at all other that necessary possibility. It merely exists." If so, naively I ask then: Why is beauty, in the imho non-chimeric sense posed by Plotinus in Ennead I.6 "On Beauty", not a candidate for approximating that set, or for describing that "which has no innate properties"? Here the translation from Steven MacKenna: http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/beauty.htm Because, what drew me to Zuckerman was just a chance find on youtube... and seeing "Infinite descending chains, decorations, self-reference etc." all tied together in a set theory context, I didn't think "Wow, that's true" but simply "hmm, that's nice, maybe they'll elaborate a more precise frame." I know, people want to keep separate art and science. But I am agnostic on this as composing and playing music just bled into engineering and mathematical problems and solutions, as well as programming and the computer on their own. I apologize in advance, if this is off-topic as I find the discussion here fascinating and hate interrupting it. Mark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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