[MD] The Edge 2006 Annual Question

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ian:

You asked:

> What is your dangerous idea - something barely conceivable that
> might turn out to be true and significant in a big way ?

Herewith my submission:

Transcend It All With Beauty

First, beauty transcends time. It belies assumptions of growth and 
progress. Are today's buildings more beautiful than the Parthenon? 
Are today's churches more beautiful than Chartes? Are today's dishes 
more beautiful that Greek vases? Are today's musical compositions 
more beautiful than Mozart's? Beauty doesn't evolve and improve with 
time. The paintings by unknown early humans in the caves of Lascaux 
have never been surpassed.

Second, beauty transcends society. It imposes no duties or 
obligations. No one can sue you for choosing one color over another, 
one song over the next. While government may ban certain works of art 
or use them for propaganda purposes, it cannot prevent you from 
seeking and responding to beauty. Further, beauty doesn't depend for 
its presence on social or cultural contexts. It is not relative to  
time or place. Though the objects one considers beautiful may  
differ, the feeling beauty inspires is universal, known by everyone, 
everywhere.

Third, beauty transcends thought. It is never true or false. It just 
is. Like the universe itself, it has no intellectual meaning beyond 
its own presence, and has no purpose other than to delight. Unlike 
intellect, it assumes nothing, presumes nothing, explains nothing, 
solves nothing, teaches nothing. It doesn't ask questions or supply 
answers. Yet it breathes fire into the physicist's equations and 
reveals truths beyond our understanding. Above the realm of ideas, 
beauty rules. The aesthetic experience at its highest intensity 
breaks through thought's dependence on patterns, distinctions and 
divisions, and in a memorable if but fleeting moment, lays bare the 
mystic unity of all. 

Finally, beauty transcends the specter of death and joins us with the 
eternal. As Rollo May put it: "We hear the songs of angels in a 
symphony, we bow a moment to communicate with infinity, and then 
return to digging potatoes" . . . or writing about metaphysics. 

Platt