Beauty: Encyclopedia II - Beauty - Theories of beauty

Beauty - Theories of beauty

The earliest theory of beauty can be found in the works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras. The extant writings attributed to Pythagoras reveal that the Pythagorean school, if not Pythagoras himself, saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the golden ratio seemed more attractive. Some modern research seems to confirm this, in that people whose facial features are symmetric and proportioned according the golden ratio are consistently ranked as more attractive than those whose faces are not.

According to an ancient Indian definition, the beautiful is that which from moment to moment is always new. That is to say, it removes the mind from the world in which things grow old. But considering that the visual system allows us to see by extracting the stable, rather than changing, features of the environment on a momentary basis, this ancient definition seems hard to support.

Different cultures have deified beauty, typically in female forms. Here is a list of the goddesses of beauty in three different mythologies.

• Aphrodite - Greek mythology
• Lakshmi - Hindu mythology
• Venus - Roman mythology

Beauty contests claim to be able to judge beauty. The millihelen is sometimes jokingly defined as the scientific unit of human beauty. This derives from the legend of Helen of Troy as presented in Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, in which her beauty was said to have launched a thousand ships. The millihelen is therefore the degree of beauty that can launch one ship.

Beauty - Mathematical Beauty

Main article: Mathematical Beauty

Even mathematical formulae can be considered beautiful. e^iπ + 1 = 0 is commonly considered one of the most beautiful theorems in mathematics (see Euler's identity). The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote that "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare" in an allusion to the austere beauty many people have found in the reasoning in the geometer Euclid's Elements.

Another connection between mathematics and beauty which played a prominent role in Pythagoras' philosophy was the way in which musical tones can be arranged in mathematical sequences, which repeat at regular intervals called octaves.

The so-called "Golden Mean", represented by the greek letter Phi(Φ) and approximately equal to 1.618, has also been considered by many to be beautiful. It is also called the divine ratio and it is frequently found in nature. For example, in a nautilus shell, the ratio between each section is about 1.618.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Theories of beauty", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki