The Hint of Beauty

Describe the image.

What elements of the picture contribute to its beauty?

What is beauty?

There are certain things people find beautiful the world over: plants, animals, landscapes, rocks, minerals, and the human body. Besides these commonalities, ideas of beauty change from culture to culture over time. Then there is the unseen abstract world that people find beautiful. This includes the world of math, logic, and physical concepts. Albert Einstein said, “The only physical theories that we are willing to accept are the beautiful ones” (Graham Farmelo, It Must be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science (UK: Granta Publications, 2002), p. 12).

Describe something you find beautiful.

Give examples of what different cultures find beautiful.

Why do you think people love to surround themselves with beauty?

What is elegance?

Elegance is defined as beauty that shows unusual effectiveness, grace, and simplicity. Mathematical proofs are said to be elegant for some of the following reasons: they are irreducibly succinct, have both form and function, are in some way surprising, appear unimprovable (that nothing could be added or taken away), and in some way inevitable (could not have been otherwise) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegance).

What is something you would call elegant?

Where does our sense of beauty and elegance come from?

A long-standing evolutionary explanation for beauty is that human beings are attracted to symmetry because symmetry signals health and fertility while asymmetry signals defect or disease. All cultures everywhere find symmetry pleasing. However, beauty seems to be influenced by culture.

Where do you think our sense of beauty comes from?

Is it possible to survive or thrive without beauty? Is beauty a need or desire?

If God created beauty, would this change your appreciation of beauty in any way?