Åsmund Folkestad at Extra Medium Please:
Over several years now, a single question has refused to leave me: what is beauty? Triggering it was a series of aesthetic experiences so intense that I count them among the most significant moments of my life. They felt supercharged with meaning, yet what they meant I could not tell. After a couple years of scratching my head, I still cannot claim to understand them. Nevertheless, I believe I have taken a step towards understanding what beauty is.
Many a great tome has been written by philosophers on beauty. I wish I had read them. However, all I’ve read is one of these Oxford University Press booklets: “[Subject]: A Very Short Introduction”. Why then should you bother to listen to me? I will give you three reasons.
First, while certainly interesting, I am not most compelled by the philosophical route to this question. Instead, I find the evolutionary perspective most illuminating. This shifts the question, however. I’m a theoretical physicist thinking about black holes for a living, so again, why should you bother listen to me? This leads me to my second reason…
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