Does There Exist Something Called Beauty?

Like its sister absolutes: truth, ultimate reality, and eternity, beauty exists as a deeply felt, very inspiring, and a super allure in human life.

We look at a diamond and are transfixed by its sparkling, transparently fluid light flash. We connect it to its absolute purity and mystifying transcendence. In simple language, we call it beautiful. So, there are elements, which put in proper proportions and forms create beauty.

But beauty does not lie only in physical phenomena. It also lies in some ideas. The idea of democracy is beautiful because it is absolutely fair and noble and meant for universal use. Newton’s law Of Gravitation is a beautiful law because of its simplicity and universality.

Does nature need beauty? Scientists like Einstein, while looking for a theory of a physical phenomenon, would be guided by beauty, among other criteria. By beauty was meant logical simplicity, harmony with other phenomena, structural simplicity, symmetry, universality, and easy verifiability. He believed that nature at a grand scale possessed these attributes. Such a qualifying criteria can only be supported by faith and not by scientific rationale at this point of our knowledge of the universe.

It is obvious that perception of beauty is a human phenomenon, we do not know if beauty is necessary for the universe to exist?

Man’s life is richer because he sees beauty in many physical phenomena and forms, in equality of all human beings, order in the universe, truth, simplicity, human spirit, God, and many more things. So, the idea of beauty is here to stay and its refinement and enlargement should meet our best endeavors.

Suffern, New York, 2.25.11 www.kaulscorner.com