root at gatech.edu (Operator) writes:
> In article <1991Sep30.011017.9280 at acsu.buffalo.edu> lammens at acsu.buffalo.edu (Joe Lammens) writes:
> >I have the idea that aesthetics must have a biological basis, in the sense
> >that something aesthetically pleasing evokes different neural activation
> >patterns than something which is not. Is anything known about that?
>> Look into the Golden Section. Leonardo did some stuff with it. The
> greeks thought that the golden ratio was the most aesthetically
> pleasing ratio there was.
Unfortunately, that opinion was due to their favour of numerology
rather than anything we'd recognize as an aesthetic hypothesis. Mind
you, the "favour of numerology" represents a sort of aesthetics of
math, doesn't it?
So far as I know, Da Vinci and his fellows applied geometry to enhance
the `realism' of their art, but that strikes me as only one aesthetic
approach among several.
Does an elegant formula or good painting really stimulate a pleasure
center in the brain? Which one? (This is not rhetorical, if anyone
knows, please speak up---I'd like to hear it!)
Cam
