Beauty is the phenomenon of the experience of pleasure, through the perception of balance and proportion of stimulus. It involves the cognition of a balanced form and structure that elicits attraction and appeal towards a person, animal, inanimate object, scene, music, or idea. The opposite of beauty is ugliness, the experience of displeasure at some stimulus. Beauty - Beauty and aesthetics. Understanding the nature and meaning of beauty is one of the key themes in the philosophical discipline known as aest ...

Including:

• Beauty - Beauty and aesthetics
• Beauty - Theories of beauty
• Beauty - Mathematical Beauty
• Beauty - Effects of beauty in human society

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See also:

Beauty, Beauty - Beauty and aesthetics, Beauty - Theories of beauty, Beauty - Mathematical Beauty, Beauty - Effects of beauty in human society

Read more here: » Beauty: Encyclopedia II - Beauty - Theories of beauty

Understanding the nature and meaning of beauty is one of the key themes in the philosophical discipline known as aesthetics. The composer and critic Robert Schumann distinguished between two kinds of beauty, natural beauty and poetic beauty: the former being found in the contemplation of nature, the latter in man's conscious, creative intervention into nature. Schumann indicated that in music, or other art, both kinds of beauty appear, but the former is only sensual delight, whil ...

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Beauty, Beauty - Beauty and aesthetics, Beauty - Theories of beauty, Beauty - Mathematical Beauty, Beauty - Effects of beauty in human society

Read more here: » Beauty: Encyclopedia II - Beauty - Beauty and aesthetics

Benedetto Croce (February 25, 1866 - November 20, 1952) was an Italian critic, idealist philosopher, and political figure. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy of history and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal. His influence on Antonio Gramsci is quite notable. Benedetto Croce - Biography. Croce was born in Pescasseroli in the Abruzzi region of Italy. He came from an influential and wealthy family, and was raised in a very strict Catholic environment. Around the age of 18, he turned away f ...

Including:

• Benedetto Croce - Biography
• Benedetto Croce - The Philosophy of Spirit
• Benedetto Croce - History
• Benedetto Croce - Beauty
• Benedetto Croce - Selected Bibliography

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Animal Rights: God of All Things

All creatures, big and small, are beautiful creations of God. Very often, however, we tend to either ignore the "small" or exploit them for selfish reasons. This is where religion and spirituality can help - to restore to us a holistic perspective so that all of God's creations are given due respect.

Religious thought and spirituality serve a larger purpose only when they find positive expression in action. Theory without implementation is of no use. I fear that the concepts of religion and spirituality are being hijacked by humans for their own selfish purposes, leaving out all the other, equally if not more valid forms of life.

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Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs, both individually and grouped in sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is made and understood. Semioticians also sometimes examine how organisms, no matter how big or small, make predictions about and adapt to their semiotic niche in the world (see Semiosis). Semiotics theorises at a general level about signs, while the study of the communication of information ...

Including:

• Semiotics - Clarification of terms
• Semiotics - History
• Semiotics - Some important semioticians
• Semiotics - Current applications
• Semiotics - Branches
• Semiotics - Select bibliography

Read more here: » Semiotics: Encyclopedia - Semiotics

Aesthetics (also esthetics and æsthetics) is the subfield of philosophy concerning beauty and art. An aesthetic (also esthetic and æsthetic) is the philosophical theory of a particular school of philosophy concerning beauty and art; for example, "he despised the aesthetic of minimalism". Aesthetics - Aesthetics in History and Philosophy. Thinkers and sages over the world have pondered beauty and art for millennia, but the subject was formally distinguished as an i ...

Including:

• Aesthetics - Aesthetics in History and Philosophy
• Aesthetics - Aesthetics in the Arts
• Aesthetics - Visual arts
• Aesthetics - Music
• Aesthetics - Performing Arts
• Aesthetics - Literature
• Aesthetics - Gastronomy
• Aesthetics - Aesthetics in the Sciences
• Aesthetics - Information Technology
• Aesthetics - Digital Aesthetics
• Aesthetics - Mathematics
• Aesthetics - Neuroesthetics
• Aesthetics - Aesthetics in Engineering
• Aesthetics - Industrial Design
• Aesthetics - Architecture
• Aesthetics - Urban Life
• Aesthetics - Landscape Design
• Aesthetics - Schools of Aesthetics

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What Is Art? (1897) is a nonfictional essay by Leo Tolstoy in which he argues against numerous aesthetic theories which define art in terms of the good, truth, and especially beauty. In Tolstoy's opinion, art at the time was corrupt and decadent, and artists had been misled. What is Art? develops the aesthetical theories that bloomed at the end of the eighteenth century and during the nineteenth century, thus criticizing the realistic position (held since Plato that regarded imitative position as the highest value ...

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Simplicity is the property, condition, or quality of being simple or un-combined. It often connotes beauty. Simple things are usually easier to explain and understand than complex ones. Simplicity is freedom from difficulty or hardship or effort. According to Occam's razor, all other things being equal, the simplest theory is the most likely to be true — hence the importance of the concept of simplicity in epistemology. Accor ...

Including:

• Simplicity - Simplicity in the philosophy of science
• Simplicity - Simplicity in language
• Simplicity - Quotes

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Undine (from Latin unda "wave") may refer to several things. According to a theory advanced by Paracelsus, an Undine is a water nymph or water spirit, the elemental of water. They are usually found in forest pools and waterfalls. They have beautiful voices, which are sometimes heard over the sound of water. According to some legends, undines cannot get a soul unless they marry a human man. This aspect has led them to be a popular motif in romantic and tragic literature. Undine ( ...

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The Amber Room (German Bernsteinzimmer, Russian Янтарная комната) in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoe Selo near Saint Petersburg is a complete chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. Due to its singular beauty, it was sometimes dubbed "The Eighth Wonder of the World." It was created in the begining of 18th century in Prussia. Soon after its creation, it was given by the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm I, to his then ...

Including:

• Amber Room - Creation
• Amber Room - Looted by Nazis
• Amber Room - Disappearance and mystery
• Amber Room - Destruction theory
• Amber Room - Reconstruction
• Amber Room - Fiction
• Amber Room - Notes

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In contemporary usage, picnic can be defined simply as a pleasure excursion at which a meal is eaten outdoors, ideally, taking place in a beautiful landscape. Image:Picnic.jpg Formerly, picnic meant a potluck, an entertainment at which each person contributed some dish to a common table for all to share. The first usage of the word was traced to a 16th century French text, describing a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. A theory has it that the word picnic is based on the verb piquer which means 'pick' or 'peck' with the rhymin ...

Including:

• Picnic - Language
• Picnic - Law
• Picnic - Related historical events
• Picnic - Picnics in the fine arts
• Picnic - In literature
• Picnic - In film
• Picnic - In music
• Picnic - Links

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Some mathematicians are of the opinion that the doing of mathematics is closer to discovery than invention. These mathematicians believe that the detailed and precise results of mathematics may be reasonably taken to be true without any dependence on the universe in which we live. For example, they would argue that the theory of the natural numbers is fundamentally valid, in a way that does not require any specific context. Some mathematicians have extrapolated this viewpoint that mathematic ...

See also:

Mathematical beauty, Mathematical beauty - Beauty in method, Mathematical beauty - Beauty in results, Mathematical beauty - Beauty in experience, Mathematical beauty - Beauty and philosophy

Read more here: » Mathematical beauty: Encyclopedia II - Mathematical beauty - Beauty and philosophy

Charles Peirce (1839–1914), the founder of the philosophical doctrine known as pragmatism, preferred the term "semeiotic." He defined semiosis as "...action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs." ("Pragmatism", Essential Peirce 2: 411; written 1907). His notion of semiosis evolved throughout his career, beginning with the triadic relation just describ ...

See also:

Semiotics, Semiotics - Clarification of terms, Semiotics - History, Semiotics - Some important semioticians, Semiotics - Current applications, Semiotics - Branches, Semiotics - Select bibliography

Read more here: » Semiotics: Encyclopedia II - Semiotics - Some important semioticians

Applications of semiotics include: It represents a methodology for the analysis of texts regardless of modality. For these purposes, "text" is any message preserved in a form whose existence is independent of both sender and receiver; Its concepts and methods are highly portable, and have enriched our understanding of many disciplines, e.g., biology, anthropology, computing, engineering, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, and psychology; It can improve ergonomic design in situations where it is important to ...

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Semiotics, Semiotics - Clarification of terms, Semiotics - History, Semiotics - Some important semioticians, Semiotics - Current applications, Semiotics - Branches, Semiotics - Select bibliography

Read more here: » Semiotics: Encyclopedia II - Semiotics - Current applications

Semioticians classify signs and sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted (see modality). This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be the individual noises or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. To coin a word to refer to a thing (see lexical words), the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their language. But that word can transmit that meanin ...

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Semiotics, Semiotics - Clarification of terms, Semiotics - History, Semiotics - Some important semioticians, Semiotics - Current applications, Semiotics - Branches, Semiotics - Select bibliography

Read more here: » Semiotics: Encyclopedia II - Semiotics - Clarification of terms

In the eighteenth century, music was considered to be so far outside the realm of aesthetic theory (then conceived of in visual terms) that music was barely mentioned in William Hogarth's treatise, The Analysis of Beauty. He considered dance beautiful (closing the treatise with a discussion of the minuet), but treated of music only insofar as it could provide the proper accompaniment for the dancers. In the nineteenth century, in the midst of the great revolution in taste known as romanticism, there arose the view that music should an ...

See also:

Aesthetics of music, Aesthetics of music - History, Aesthetics of music - Bad music, Aesthetics of music - Source

Read more here: » Aesthetics of music: Encyclopedia II - Aesthetics of music - History

Some of the earliest caricatures are found in the works of Leonardo da Vinci, who actively sought people with deformities to use as models. The inventor of caricature as an independent art form was, according to seventeenth century sources, the Bolognese history painter, Annibale Carracci. A writer calling himself Mosini recorded Annibale's 'theory' of caricature as being the ultimate antithesis of beauty: 'una bella... perfetta deformità.' Like beauty in art, Annibale held, it was based on selection and synthesis. The artist ...

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Caricature, Caricature - A Brief History of Caricature, Caricature - Notable Practitioners

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There is a general aesthetic among high energy physicists that the more symmetrical a theory is, the more "beautiful" and "elegant" it is. According to this aesthetic, the Standard Model gauge group, which is the direct product of three groups (modulo some finite group) is "ugly". Also, reasoning in analogy with the 19th-century unification of electricity with magnetism into electromagnetism, and especially the success of the electroweak theory, which utilizes the idea of spontaneous symmetry breaking to unify electromagnetism with the weak ...

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Grand unification theory, Grand unification theory - Motivation, Grand unification theory - Ingredients, Grand unification theory - Proposed theories, Grand unification theory - Current status

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The birth of Galois theory was originally motivated by the following question, which is known as the Abel-Ruffini theorem. "Why is there no formula for the roots of a fifth (or higher) degree polynomial equation in terms of the coefficients of the polynomial, using only the usual algebraic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and application of radicals (square roots, cube roots, etc)?" Galois theory not only provides a beautiful answer to this question, it also explains in detail why it is possible to solve equations of degree four or lower in th ...

See also:

Galois theory, Galois theory - Application to classical problems, Galois theory - The permutation group approach to Galois theory, Galois theory - First example — a quadratic equation, Galois theory - Second example — somewhat trickier, Galois theory - The modern approach by field theory, Galois theory - Solvable groups and solution by radicals, Galois theory - The inverse Galois problem

Read more here: » Galois theory: Encyclopedia II - Galois theory - Application to classical problems