> [Platt] > What do you say is the criteria for establishing relative value in > aesthetics? > My criteria is what I see and hear. > > [Krimel] > Which is exactly why I am not interested in aesthetics and do not think > that philosophy, science or politics should be judged by purely aesthetic > criteria. Rather they are to be judged on a pragmatic basis, according to > what works.
[Platt] Well, you may be missing something. "The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle." -- Albert Einstein Or, as David Gelernter said, "Strangely enough, beauty is also a truth-and- rightness meter, and science and technology could not exist without it." But, they could be wrong. [Krimel] I am certainly willing to reconsider. Especially when I find anti-Randian liberialisms like this coming from Einstein: "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving..." I believe what both men are talking about is exactly what you previously claimed not to understand about how physicists see things. Beauty in this sense refers to elegance of thought, harmony of concepts and simplicity. It has to so with seeing the connections between apparently disparate things. It is why it in not scientists who are missing an aesthetic sense so much as romantics who find ugliness in what they are unwilling or unable to understand. Come to think of it perhaps it is the whole idea of understanding that is beautiful and failure to understand that is ugly. But as I said this is not my thing so I could well be missing it. 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/
