tumbledry

Neuroscience and Beauty

Between my finals in neuroscience, physiology, and prosthodontics, my brain has been working on an interesting, rather troubling exercise: understanding beauty. Lord knows why my mind gets preoccupied with the ideas it does. Nonetheless, here I am: I can’t wrap my head around the concept. I am, in many ways, a prototypical nerd; as such, an unknowable system or domain irks me. Cf. the aforelinked article:

The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the computer, and as we’ll see, this intimate relationship has altered his view of the world. He sees the world as a system which, given enough time and effort, is completely knowable. This is a fragile illusion that your nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleasant one that gets your nerd through the day.

See where the problems begin for me? Beauty is not a finite system with rules, it is not completely knowable. The idea is so broad. What other adjective conjures very specific imagery on such a wide variety of topics? Math, painting, music, sculpture, landscapes, animals, humans.

To some, a perfectly bored engine block is beautiful. To others, it is a lawn of fresh cut grass on a late summer evening. Still others find their true beauty aurally. And of course, for large swaths of males succumbing to their limbic systems, nothing is more beautiful than the graceful contours of a woman’s torso.

Because beauty is how we describe something else, not something intrinsic in that other thing, maybe it is based on emotion. I would propose that, just as loss, joy, and betrayal produce emotions, there is an emotion for beauty: peaceful satisfaction.

A step on the path toward my understanding, I hope.

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