Beauty is a complex topic that has garnered enormous attention over the years. It has also been a source of controversy. It has gotten its own nicknames.
One of the most common uses of the word ‘beauty’ in the twentieth century is in the context of gender. Women are perceived as beautiful, and men respond to adult females with feelings of attraction. Likewise, brightly colored objects are considered beautiful. However, in the past, these qualities were not the standard of beauty, as they are today.
As with other aspects of life, the true definition of ‘beauty’ can be a little ambiguous. Some philosophers associate it with pleasure, while others think it is a subjective state. And while there are many differences of opinion amongst the experts, some of the most recognizable concepts are the same.
The classical notion of beauty is a symmetrical arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole. This idea was embodied in classical and neoclassical architecture, music, and sculpture. It is not a matter of design, but rather a matter of relations between the parts. Similarly, it is not just a matter of colour, but rather a matter of perception. For example, the same object can be perceived as different colours at noon, or at midnight.
The classical conception of beauty is sometimes expressed in mathematical ratios and ratios of weight. It has also been argued that the most beautiful object is a compound. A compound is a combination of two or more components, such as two spheres, or two circles. The object might be considered beautiful because it has symmetry, or it might be deemed beautiful because it is composed of several elements, such as diamonds and sapphires.
The modern view of beauty, on the other hand, is based on the notion that beauty depends on an interaction between the subject and the object. It gives more weight to the observing subject than to the object itself. This concept, in turn, has a number of obvious hedonism-like implications. It is also a skewed version of the concept, as it ignores the unseen beauty of nature.
Another example of a theoretically elegant but misnamed function is the search for the optimal molecule-to-molecule formulae for producing the ‘best’ beauty. In a recent book, The Abuse of Beauty, author Arthur Danto argued that this was a dubious claim. Fortunately, he also demonstrated that the best formulae are not perfect, so the idea that there is only one such formula is not entirely true.
Other controversies have centered on whether or not beauty is an objective or a subjective state. The eighteenth-century philosopher Hume was one who believed that beauty was a subjective state. Aristotle’s ideas on beauty are scattered across a number of works. In the nineteenth-century, Berkeley formulated his theory of beauty by defining it in the context of pleasure. He wrote in 1732: “A thing is beautiful if it pleases the sight of the eyes. But to say that a thing is a beauty is to say that it is of the highest possible value.”
The modern view of beauty also ignores the fact that mathematics seems to have an inherent “beauty” in itself. A modern definition of beauty is a combination of the aesthetic, practical, and social aspects of life.