> Book: The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution > > "A lot of what counts as philosophy," he said, "is explaining and > justifying fundamental human intuitions," including "intuitions about > the beautiful and the ugly." The problem has been that philosophy > "doesn't ask where the intuitions come from. ... Human nature is a > traditional philosophic topic, but let's face it, a lot of it is > uninformed armchair speculation by people who just happen to be > geniuses: Hobbes, Mill, Kant.:\" > > > http://www.mercurynews.com/books/ci_11690473
Hey Marsha, Got it, read it. Interesting if somewhat pedantic. To a Darwinian everything is explained by evolution, just as to an MOQian everything is explained by Quality. But, I think anyone interested in the arts will find the book worthwhile. The following passage near the end especially appealed to me: "The oft-described spirituality of artistic masterpieces, their otherworldly quality . . . involves a feeling -- experienced by atheist and believer alike -- that standing before a masterpiece you are in the presence of a power that exceeds anything you can imagine for yourself, something greater than you ever can or will be. The rapture masterpieces offer is literally ecstatic -- taking you out of yourself. Theists may wish to attribute all this to the power of God, Darwinian humanists to the near miraculous power of human genius. Both will approach such works as suppliants: we yield to them, allowing them to take us where they will. " This juxtaposition of the humanist with the theist reminded me of Pirsig's conclusion in his SODV paper: "As Bohr might have loved to observe, science and art are just two different complementary ways of looking at the same thing. In the largest sense it is really unnecessary to create a meeting of the arts and sciences because in actual practice, at the most immediate level they have never really been separated. They have always been different aspects of the same human purpose." The same applies to the artists, scientists, theists, humanists and philosophers on this site. Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
