Rebirth of Value: Meditations on Beauty, Ecology, Religion and Education. 

Chapter 1 On Beauty

Frederick Turner

State University of New York Press, 1991

"The special evolutionary truth is that our capacity to perceive and create beauty is a characteristic of an animal that evolved. Beauty is thus in some way a biological adaptation and a physiological reality: the experience of beauty can be connected to the activity of actual neurotransmitters in the brain, endorphins and enkephalins."

(Pg 5)

In this book Turner begins the discussion of beauty. "Beauty" and aesthetics, has long been a source of debate in the artistic community.  In the modernist era, aestheticism became a dirty word, and even today it is not seen as valuable to make "beautiful" art. There is a belief that beauty is not only subjective, but also trite. What is beautiful becomes the last thing that "high" art cares about, and in this book Turner begins to question why.

Turner opens this discussion by saying that if art and science were more connected, we could not help but see beauty as natural and beneficial, and a key part of the artistic process. 

He points out that "beauty", while we discuss it as a completely subjective, actually has more objectivity to it then we tend to mention. He discusses things such as the color wheel, and the color combination preferences that tend to be associated with it, or the visual detail-frequency preference system, which makes humans prefer pictures and scenes with a balanced hierarchy of dense textures and small details to large details and composition. Things such as this, or preferences for certain musical tonalities, or certain types of story narrative, are scientifically catalogued as having a evolutionarily preference by humans. Although there is a lot of variation in this information, it does indicate that the forms of art are not arbitrary. Because these ideas of beauty are innate, that means that if we pay attention to them as artists, we have the capacity to broaden and deepen our artistic communication.

He goes on to state that if beauty was only an adaptive sense, then only certain members of our species would have a tendency towards it. But as all beings have a sense of beauty, therefore it must be something that benefits our whole species. In this case beauty must be a real characteristic of the universe. He backs this up by stating that there are certain movements in the sciences that indicate that the universe does have a deep theme or tendency. 

Beauty, according to Turner, is the highest integrative level of understanding. It allows us to go with the greater tendency of the universe, to be able to model what will happen and adapt to or change it. According to him, the overarching structures of the universe are as follows. Firstly, that there is a unity in multiplicity. Everything that exists in turn makes up a greater whole. Two, that there is complexity with in simplicity. Everything around us is very complicated, and yet is governed by very simple, basic laws. Thirdly, creativeness and generativeness: Each new moment is new and has genuine novelty. Fourth, Rhythm. We are all made up of vibrations, from the chair you are sitting on to the cookie you eat. Fifth: Self-similarity. Fractals! Smaller parts of the universe resemble bigger parts of the universe in shape and structure. 

All of these processes create patterns with familiar characteristics, and he argues that because of this, there is a deep theme or tendency of all nature, which in turn shows that beauty is an underlying form of the universe. Our own evolution is an example of the principle of the patterns which are universally created, and because of this we are programmed to connect with things that are inherently beautiful and continue them as art.

Regardless of wether I believe Turner's arguments or not, I could probably stand just looking at and making beautiful things forever...