Incandescent Beauty

An argument that the world is too beautiful to explained by natural selection, which begins with another bird example:
A male flame bowerbird is a creature of incandescent beauty. The hue of his plumage transitions seamlessly from molten red to sunshine yellow. But that radiance is not enough to attract a mate. When males of most bowerbird species are ready to begin courting, they set about building the structure for which they are named: an assemblage of twigs shaped into a spire, corridor or hut. They decorate their bowers with scores of colorful objects, like flowers, berries, snail shells or, if they are near an urban area, bottle caps and plastic cutlery. Some bowerbirds even arrange the items in their collection from smallest to largest, forming a walkway that makes themselves and their trinkets all the more striking to a female — an optical illusion known as forced perspective that humans did not perfect until the 15th century.
It's art, the scientists reason, and the development of such an elaborate courtship ritual is not adaptive. So why do they do it?

The way the theory works, of course, is that it's a kind of accident; natural selection doesn't necessarily mean that changes are useful, it just tends to strip away the ones that aren't via extinction. If the birds are 'good enough' at surviving in other ways, these kinds of extravagances can survive. But this is only one example; it turns out that nature seems to strive for beauty in many other ways.

It's a point Hannah Arendt made some years ago. She pointed out that animals are quite ugly internally -- intestines and the like -- but not externally. She reasoned that there was something about life that strives to be seen as beautiful. That's interesting, especially since so much of life lacks eyes that see; but even starfish are beautiful, in their way. In fact, it extends beyond life. Galaxies certainly are beautiful, and they're almost accidents. Waves on the ocean; sunsets.

10 comments:

Ymarsakar said...

Galaxies and stars are not as they have portrayed it in cgi paintings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tgxTCDjvBI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyT1dsY0KtA

Some of you humans are getting dangerous close to the secrets of this multiverse.

Space isn't what sci fi and scientists have told the mainstream either.

Grim said...

That second link is very interesting, Ymar.

E Hines said...

it turns out that nature seems to strive for beauty in many other ways.

Does it really strive in that way? Or does it strive to encourage us poor, dumb humans to appreciate the things and living creatures around us? Is not beauty in the eye of the beholder, and are not our tastes taught in some sense?

Eric Hines

Grim said...

I said 'seems to' because it's an open question as to whether non-living nature can really 'strive' at all. If it does, and maybe it does, then it's a very different reality we live in than the one our science tries to model.

E Hines said...

Yeah, but my question concerned the directionality of the striving.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

I understood that, but I think the first order of business has to be to determine if any striving is actually occurring. Whether it's striving for the one thing or the other is posterior to whether it's capable of striving per se.

E Hines said...

I understood that, too. I was doing my usual of stipulating the first in order to explore the second.

Eric Hines

douglas said...

There's also the question of whether beauty is something that exists or something that is generated by our own perceptions. I know Aristotle would tell me that if the idea exists, then it existed a priori. But that doesn't answer the question of what beauty is. That people have differing perceptions of it doesn't help.

Studies have shown that the "most beautiful" faces are actually those that tend toward the average in physical dimension and proportion. So beautiful is that perfect spot that we all deviate from a little (or a lot)? or is it that we find the known and expected comforting and so "beautiful"? You can make a good argument for that- we tend to like things that are familiar, and often have great difficulty dealing with new, different things/place/looks. Of course, it could also be both.

My training in architecture suggests to me that we tend to like proportions that relate to the things around us and that we are familiar with, and the ancient Greeks seem to have agreed. The golden mean is really just a proportion that, because of growth rates, occurs in nature a great deal, in various ways. What's interesting to me about that is that we seem to be able to discern that relationship even though it's mathematically morphed and reproduced in different forms, but having a mathematical relationship. I suppose that reinforces the idea that beauty is something inherent in the universe that we can identify?

Hmmm.

By the way, if you like the golden mean, a fun book is Gyorgyi Doczi's "The Power of Limits".

raven said...

I have often wondered if the perception of beauty is a solely human trait, or if it could be used as a marker to define humanity. This line would cut through a lot of masquerading bipeds.

Blick said...

As Douglas hints, beauty may be considered as a sense of order -- in proportions, in compatible light waves, in compatible sound waves. There is a sense of order in the universe (natural laws) that the human mind has discovered. It is not too unusual that biology would also have the order that the physical world has. So human minds would also find the patterns of order.