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Author
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Topic: Aesthetics, a design predictor
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Steve Petermann
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posted 25. April 2004 03:29
Having been a mechanical and systems design engineer for over 30 years and having worked with many good designers, I can attest that good designers are interested in more than just function. While the function of a machine or system is of primary importance, all good designers are also interested in the aesthetics of their designs. This is even true when the economics of a project would seem to prohibit attention to the beauty, symmetry, harmony, flow, elegance, and general aesthetic appeal of a design. Designers are almost always willing to sacrifice at least some level of resource or function to make a design artistic as well as functional. These may be small things like a small change in shape or wasting a small amount of resource in the system, but good designers, for some reason, are compelled to do this.
Accordingly, if a designer is responsible for what we see in nature, I would expect to find aesthetic treatments that seem out of place, that don't seem to offer any fitness advantage. Expect to find beauty where it is not necessary. Expect to find some level of wasted resources that creates an elegance that it is not necessary for function or fitness. In short, look for artistic touches that seem out of place given natural selection.
Granted, some examples of this could be considered non-intentional, occuring by chance. However, if a designer is truly responsible for the complexity we see, the artistic touch should be ubiquitous and extraordinary. It will not create an unselectability to a significant degree but will also offer nothing else than its aesthetic appeal.
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Scott
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posted 25. April 2004 13:11
Hope this isn't out of bounds for this board, but it would seem to follow from this that either nature was made for man, or that man is made in the image of God.
From another perspective, the appreciation of beauty, or aesthetics, must confer some selective advantage. No doubt studies have been done on this?
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Janitor@MIT
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posted 26. April 2004 12:53
Seems to me that designers will indulge their “aesthetic impulses” in those very degrees of freedom that are not wholly dedicated to functionality “issues.”
Look at the furniture in your house. Its all the same basic design: a simple platform on “legs.” Emulating a very basic biological design. The function is to arrest the acceleration of gravity near rather than at the Earth’s surface.
But if your tastes in furniture are as “eclectic” as mine (uninhibited by the civilizing influence of a good woman and basically whatever you need that is on sale), your furniture can look as different as a Shaker chair from a Louis XIV armoire.
Simple design, simple function, affords the designer considerable latitude to express his “artistry.” (Which can be expressed many, many different ways. Designs of “pure functionality” impress me as much as a simple equation can move a mathematician to tears of rapture.) More complex designs make it more challenging to the designer, but a well articulated complex system is of itself something of a “beautiful” thing, even if it lacks any apparent “flair.”
I don’t mean to demean it at all, but I believe this “aesthetic impulse” is the nothing more than the higher expression of the instinct to survive. It is just as much a biological imperative as coming in out of the rain. We design to adapt.
We are not Homo sapiens! (It may be cynical to say so, but that’s absurd!) We are Homo faber. We are more doers than we are knowers. (Our “salvation” and our grief.) That is our most distinctive, specialized, adaptation—we adapt to adapt. And adapt ~ design.
Artiste-types, like van Gogh or Pei, e.g., have few “functional” restrictions upon their impulses, other than those imposed by the conventions or limits of the media they explore. Van Gogh uses oils on canvas, and all Pei has to do is enclose a (livable) volume. Whereas an automotive engineer, e.g., has far more restrictions imposed, but nonetheless, still has room to “express himself.” Other designs simply would have little aesthetic appeal to anyone other than a designer. This computer I’m using, e.g., appears to be little more than a coupla ugly boxes. But I still think a micrograph of its CPU circuitry is “beautiful” in its own right. Even though I know no such thought went into it. And therein lies the problem…
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Steve Petermann
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posted 27. April 2004 09:53
Janitor:
quote:
Seems to me that designers will indulge their “aesthetic impulses” in those very degrees of freedom that are not wholly dedicated to functionality “issues.”
There are design goals in every design project. Those goals may be more or less defined and more or less strict. You are correct that good designers will work within the degree of freedom they have to include aesthetic treatments. No good designer I know will sacrifice a design goal for the sake of art. However, they will expend unnecessary energies and resources(relative to the design goal) to make their designs aesthetically appealing. I have personally done this many times in the machines and systems I have designed. In every project I have been involved with my personal and manufacturing resources have been "unnecessarily" utilized for the sake of "art". The other good designers I know do the same. The cost of these treatments is, however, never significant. That would violate one of the design goals. They may be very small but any good designer can spot them. In machine design this might be as simple as spending a little extra time getting proportion aesthetically pleasing or using an appealing(yet still functional) surface treatement. In system design this might be as simple as spending "unnecessary" time making software code elegant. The point is that this aesthetic effort is not necessary for the design goals.
Janitor: quote:
I don’t mean to demean it at all, but I believe this “aesthetic impulse” is the nothing more than the higher expression of the instinct to survive. It is just as much a biological imperative as coming in out of the rain.
Possibly. The question that would have to be addressed is why the artistic impluse wouldn't be de-selected. One would think that nature would de-select those individuals who would expend vital resources to pursue their art. Wouldn't early hominids be better off in survival endeavors than spending time with cave art. I suppose the artistic impulse could have some psychological adaptive advantage or be a non-adaptive biproduct of other fitness oriented adaptations.
Whatever the case, the point of my supposition is that discovering ubiquitous aesthetic treatments in nature would be evidence that a designer is involved. Since unguided, non-intentional processes will have no aesthetic intent, one might find an occasional unnecessary aesthetic but they would be rare rather than common.
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andyg
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posted 27. April 2004 15:56
quote:
Accordingly, if a designer is responsible for what we see in nature, I would expect to find aesthetic treatments that seem out of place, that don't seem to offer any fitness advantage. Expect to find beauty where it is not necessary. Expect to find some level of wasted resources that creates an elegance that it is not necessary for function or fitness. In short, look for artistic touches that seem out of place given natural selection.
Your ideas seem to ignore the fact that we can find aesthetic beauty in things that are designed (like fountain pens or fountains) and things that are not designed (like clouds, the Grand Canyon or snowflakes). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Is the angler fish more or less beautiful than the zebrafish?
What does this say about design elements in these two fish? How is our particular perception of beauty indicative of the presence of design or non-design?
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Steve Petermann
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posted 28. April 2004 11:45
andyg: quote:
Your ideas seem to ignore the fact that we can find aesthetic beauty in things that are designed (like fountain pens or fountains) and things that are not designed (like clouds, the Grand Canyon or snowflakes).
Well it is really a metaphysical question whether or not clouds or mountains are the product of design or not, but that is a side issue.
quote:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Is the angler fish more or less beautiful than the zebrafish?
True, a sense of beauty is subjective. From a design standpoint, however, both could be considered extremely beautiful, functionally and aesthetically. They both exhibit remarkable functionality, symmetry, elegance, harmony, etc. Although we may have an emotional revulsion to the angler fish, that is perhaps on difference grounds than design.
If the issue you are raising is that of definition or explication of beauty, it is a valid one. This question does, however, show up in science quite often particularly once one gets out of the physical sciences. But even there a tacit sensibility to beauty, simplicity, and elegance is often utilized. Stephen Weinberg in his book _Dreams of a Final Theory_ says:
quote:
The physicist's sense of beauty is supposed to serve a purpose, it is supposed to help the physicist select ideas that help us explain nature. p. 133. ...we demand a simplicity and rigidity in our principles before we are willing to to take them seriously. p. 148.
But he also says the simplicity that plays this central role in theoretical physics is:
quote:
..not the mechanical sort that can be measured by counting equations or symbols. p.134.
and quote:
There is no logical formula that establishes a sharp dividing line between a beautiful explanatory theory and a mere list of data, but we know the difference when we see it. p.148
The question this raises is how to deal with the tacit or intuitive sense in science. I think Michael Polanyi's epistemology can offer some clues. He claimed there are two types of knowledge, tacit and explicit. With tacit knowledge we "know more than we can say". This would correlate to what Weinberg is saying that he "knows the difference" when he sees it. Polanyi then claims that often, particularly in science, the task is trying to explicate that tacit sense. This becomes the task of creating abstractions to correlate somehow with what he calls the "integrated whole" that is the object of tacit knowing.
Now in the case of the physical sciences this explication can occur through reductive symbology and correlation. Weinberg would obviously not be willing to entertain or accept a beautiful or simple theory based solely on that tacit sensibility. He would and should probably require much more, i.e. empirical support, good "fit" with other theories, etc.
However, there are cases in science where explication may not be forthcoming. Bohm ran into this with his theory of Implicate Order. His view was a holistic one(holographic) which did not readily lend itself to reduction and explication. In fact this seems to be a problem for many areas where this tacit sense of a "integrated whole" is like a gestalt, where the whole is more than the explicated sum of the parts. Perhaps the problem of explication is not in-principal intractable in these instances, but rather it is a problem of extreme complexity.
So the question for science is what to do when explication is not forthcoming for whatever reason?
Regarding "unnecessary" aesthetic treatments in biological organisms as evidence for design, this may be the case. Perhaps it is not possible to explicate what these are, but for those who are trained, they may "know them when they see them".
If that is the stopping point, perhaps it could not be considered science. However, if unnecessary aesthetic treatments are found to be ubiquitous in nature, perhaps it does form a strong rhetorical argument for design.
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 14. May 2004 02:51
Aesthetics is such subjective principle as is pointed out in the two previous posts. Even considering particular function and ergonomics after the design would seem to be highly subjective.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite Beverly Hillbillies episodes where the family discovers a pool table near the kitchen in their new mansion and concludes it is the most efficient ‘dining room table’ ever invented. What a clever designer to have thought to include rails where plates and cups cannot slide off, glass holders at all four corners and on the sides, and the designer was most thoughtful to include sticks that could be readily used as “pot passers.”
I think that ID is quite proficient in detecting counterflow and showing design in tissues and artifacts. But don’t we leave our field when we begin musing anything at all about a designer or design methodologies?
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gregory the grey
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posted 14. May 2004 06:00
Aesthetics may be simply a subjective principle to some people (and thus easy to ignore), yet it still qualifies as a branch of philosophy and therefore IMHO relevant to the IDM in terms of the Philosophy of ID. However, this requries there to be official philosophers of ID in order to enter the conversation. That is, it's not fair to just write it off as 'metaphysics.'
Yes, I agree with Jerry Don Brauer:
quote:
"don’t we leave our field when we begin musing anything at all about a designer or design methodologies?
Q: What field do you feel you must therefore 'leave' (in order to muse) and to what field do these questions belong?
In my area of study and research, talk about 'designers' and 'design methodologies' is simply an old conversation in somewhat new clothing. Maybe that's just not the case with other disciplines in the academy today.
S. Peterman, Janitor@MIT and andyg raise their concerns about important differences between human-made design (e.g. fountains, fountain pens, etc.) and non-human-made design (e.g. clouds, Grand Canyon, snowflakes, etc.), which I have tried to highlight here and elsewhere. The warning to these three, however, is that it doesn't seem to matter to most ID-ists very much about human-made things (generally speaking) so they probably won't yet talk about it.
gtg
[ 14. May 2004, 08:10: Message edited by: gregory the grey ]
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 14. May 2004 11:59
Field: The science called intelligent design, of course.
ID is a science based on teleology but governed by the methodological naturalism inherent in the scientific method and there is no room in a science for gods, spirits, designers, creators, demons, angels, fairies or leprechauns.
If Idists continue to muse on designers (most do not, fortunately), its detractors will continue to refer to the discipline as stealth creationism, which it is not as practiced by the majority of us out here.
As to your latter comment, this is why we use the term ‘intelligent.’ Clouds and mountains are designed by natural processes. Skyscrapers and cars are carefully put together by intelligence.
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Janitor@MIT
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posted 14. May 2004 12:31
Sorry, Gregory the grey, but it doesn’t particularly matter to me what matters to the IDers. (And they seem to concur, what matters to me doesn’t particularly matter to them. LOL)
And Jerry D. Bauer, can something be both universally true and trivial? Such as that all experience is “subjective”? Or that "Aesthetics is such subjective principle..."?
Notice Fig. 3 in http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0204/0204044.pdf and compare to [1.3] http://genetic-code.narod.ru/triplet-e.htm (Be patient; that round trip to Russia takes time.)
They both portray the same thing. Yet I find Karasev’s cube far more appealing aesthetically. It certainly is more colorful. And certainly appears more complicated. Anyone else share my impression? Maybe it’s because Jimenez-Montano’s cube looks like a shed that’s being blown over in the breeze and Karasev’s has a sturdier jewel-like appearance.
In the “Frozen Complexity” topic I cited an article by a computer artist http://www.leeds.ac.uk/fine_art/milos/papers/frozen_complexity.pdf and he seems to be saying that cognitively challenging symmetries and patterns are not “subjectively” aesthetic. They are “universally” attractive (literally attracting attention). (“Symmetry” is literally “common metric,” not unique or subjective, something that has a mathematically and physical precise description, I suppose, independently (“objectively”) of whatever we may make of it.) And by “cognitively” I do not mean to say “perceptually,” because he seems to argue for the distinction.
One of the studies Rankovic refers to involves the symmetries of the human face. Now, on the face of it (LOL), a human face is not a terribly complicated thing (maybe through familiarity). It could be that its comparatively simple symmetry may appealing not for what it reveals, but what it promises, the promise of something far more complicated (and therefore intrinsically challenging, appealing, attractive, interesting) that is behind the visage.
A perceptually challenging pattern isn’t necessarily aesthetically appealing. I cited the example of a VLSI chip micrograph, which I doubt few people (even their creators) consider an object of beauty. Maybe because it’s symmetries and patterns are difficult to perceive upon a more or less casual inspection. They are not what immediately attract attention. It typically lacks anything but the simplest local and global symmetries. Lots of rectangles. OTOH I do not share Rankovic’s appreciation of Pollock. (Call me a “Philisitine,” but I think the tarps my house painters threw away were as artistic.)
But different aspects of the same subject appeal to different people. In Micah Sparacio’s topic “Science of Consciousness 2004” he appears to be more interested in the “subjectivity” of experience than I was. I was more interested in the difficulties of the construction of “shared experiences” from subjective experiences (a communications problem).
(The “hidden symmetries” of the genetic code, so clumsily disguised in Crick’s artlessly rendered translation table, are fascinating to me. Which explains the odd references at the top. See how some intriguing mathematical symmetries, palindromes and parities, are easily erased by thoughtless scientific and engineering conventions
http://www.medscimonit.com/pub/vol_10/no_4/4184.pdf Seems to me that these patterns are the very ones that we should take pains to preserve in our representations.)
A page full of symmetries. Sorry no pretty pictures http://sbl.salk.edu/~jason/spacegroup.html
And just for the entertainment value:
“Every morning in the early part of the above-cited month, on my coming down to breakfast, your (then) little brother William Edwin, and yourself, used to ask me, “Well, Papa, can you multiply triplets”? Whereto I was always obliged to reply, with a sad shake of the head: “No, I can only add and subtract them.”
“http://online.redwoods.cc.ca.us/instruct/darnold/fortran/Activities/Quaternions/Quaternions.pdf
[ 14. May 2004, 16:46: Message edited by: Janitor@MIT ]
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Steve Petermann
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posted 14. May 2004 17:43
Jerry: quote:
Field: The science called intelligent design, of course.
ID is a science based on teleology but governed by the methodological naturalism inherent in the scientific method and there is no room in a science for gods, spirits, designers, creators, demons, angels, fairies or leprechauns.
If Idists continue to muse on designers (most do not, fortunately), its detractors will continue to refer to the discipline as stealth creationism, which it is not as practiced by the majority of us out here.
But isn't the first task of science basically creating abstractions(Quine called them posits) that represent ensembles of data. Then the scientist attempts to draw correlations between those abstractions such that it fits the data. Those correlations represent a theory. If the theory is a good one, it will fit the data well and be able to predict subsequent data.
If the data of biological systems seems to point to an abstraction we might call a designer, is the scientist supposed to reject that, a priori? For what reason? The next step would be to further delineate that abstraction in more detail to see if it could fit the data and make accurate predictions. If it did then the correlation is a good one and the theory has merit. Having worked with many designers over the years, I can predict very accurately the way inexperienced designers will work and the way experienced designers will work and their design artifacts. I can do that because I have an abstraction of those kinds of designers. It fits the data. This knowledge of human designers affords a readymade set of absractions that might apply to design in general, at least in this environment. The only way to know if an abstraction of a biological designer will work is to construct one and test it.
This method is already used in Darwinian theory. Terms like mutations, selection, genes, proteins, etc. are all human abstractions that when correlated correctly may fit the data. Granted, the more complex the abstraction, the greater challenge there is in supporting a theory because other alternatives may seem to fit the data as well. This is particularly true in higher level sciences like cognitive science, psychology and sociology. It is also true of areas in physics like cosmology and even fundamental physics. Example: Is an electron a zero sized particle, a Planch sized string of energy, or warped space? It is unlikely will ever be able to directly test for those posits, but if correlations regarding them are systematically sound, indirect evidence supports them, and they make sound predictions, they will be considered adequate, even if they are not reified.
The challenge of positing a designer is to create a model of that designer that fits the data well and makes predictions. If there are ways it can be falsified then all the better. If that investigation turns out to be too underdetermined, so be it. That doesn't invalidate the theory, it just makes it intractable. But that's true of a lot things in science.
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gregory the grey
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posted 15. May 2004 09:54
Hello Jerry,
Perhaps you've missed my point about the difference between human-made things and non-human-made things when it comes to applications of intelligent design theories. Most non-social scientists miss this major distinction, since it mainly doesn't apply in their familiar scientific surroundings. E.g. When you hire an architect to build your house, you assume that he or she is an 'intelligent' builder, or at least you try to hire someone more intelligent or creative or perfectionistic or inexpensive to suit the needs of your project. Thus, to a person discussing human action, the concept of 'intelligent,' used generally, is not often questioned and should be considered uncontroversial when it comes to the topic of the evolution of social things (ugghh). Other concepts may of course be openly entertained at this point as well.
quote:
"this is why we use the term ‘intelligent.’ Clouds and mountains are designed by natural processes. Skyscrapers and cars are carefully put together by intelligence." - Jerry D. Brauer
O.k., I can go along with using 'put together' as somewhat synonymous with 'design,' and not fuss too much about it. Everyone is allowed their own salad bowls of linguistic terminology to go with their version of ID's family. But a tricky point for the IDM (e.g. W. Dembski and others believe intelligent design's revolution would be first and foremost in Biology) seems to be that it also claims to be able to 'prove' (according to the EF) that 'natural processes' are intelligent and designed too. This is where a 'designer' would have to be more capable than humans are at making cars to have 'designed' (intervened, specially created, etc.) all things that we see and hear in nature.
Skyscrapers and cars are not officially of interest to most ID theorists, as I said above, but which you didn't address. The interdisciplinarity of the IDM is impressive, but apparently it must also admit it strengths and weaknesses, applicabilities and inapplicabilities, relevancies and irrelevancies whenever it can. I think this may actually need to be done more, rather than to risk false positives when it comes to theories of ID themselves (i.e. not just the EF).
Steve,
Though I like how you've brought into this thread the reality of actual 'designers' (sometimes inexperienced) who currently work in the world 'designing' things, I must admit now I'm getting a bit confused about whether you're hoping to basically 'prove' the existence of an ultimate Designer of life (including humans), or to rather suggest that what the designer actually 'designs' is beautiful? If it's a model that fits the data of what (human) 'designers' do and also makes predictions, then doesn't that shift the balance of design theory away from biology and into other sciences or philosophies? Otherwise, I think this discussion could get spun back into self-rotation and mired in the processes and processionals by which things are 'designed' or 'made beautiful.' Perhaps that would be an o.k. diversion too.
gregory the grey
p.s. hidden symmetries...hmmm
[ 15. May 2004, 10:01: Message edited by: gregory the grey ]
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 15. May 2004 14:42
Steve:
I can agree that abstractions and posits are a very real part of science. The scientific method calls them observations and the next logical step is hypothesis.
And let me state up front that I see your reasoning here. Design, by definition, dictates that there must have been a designer. And the scientist should not reject that a designer cannot be known or surmised a priori; but this does not logically extrapolate into a premise there exists positive evidence about the identity of a designer or its methodology of design, does it?
I would agree that, as scientists, the Idist would be remiss to simply ignore evidence that might point to the identity or design methodologies of a particular designer. But we must insure that this evidence is real evidence and not some construct of human imagination because at this point we leave methodological naturalism.
I certainly won’t ‘dis’ your assertion that abstraction is a viable scientific observation, because to do so would be challenging the methods of much of Einstein’s and Hawking’s work which was based on just that: abstraction.
But both of these guys left abstraction early on to go directly to mathematical theory and I foresee that you may have a problem once you want to carry the abstraction forward in the method. But, by all means, if you feel you can do this, or can even suggest a manner in which this may done, then I am glad to offer constructive criticism and any ideas I can come up with to propel your ideas forward.
The risk to ID comes about by considering this may not be possible. Because if it is not possible, then efforts to describe the designer might be misconstrued by detractors of ID as further attempt to infuse religiosity into science and this does us no good.
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 15. May 2004 15:10
Hello Gregory:
However that architect builds my house it will be an intelligent design because intelligence was used to arrive at whatever was arrived at. The only other possibility would be that the house arose by natural processes, such as thermodynamics, uniformitarianism or catastrophism.
My point is, there is really no such thing as degrees of intelligence (in this case) and if there is then this is another subject separate from the matter of distinguishing ID from an entity that obtained its existence via natural process.
I do agree that ID seems more relevant to the issue of biological systems as proteins are much more easy to calculate than motorcycles or sweaters and OoL is generally the subject in these discussions. However, I don’t understand what you mean by: “But a tricky point for the IDM (e.g. W. Dembski and others believe intelligent design's revolution would be first and foremost in Biology) seems to be that it also claims to be able to 'prove' (according to the EF) that 'natural processes' are intelligent and designed too.” Natural design is the antithesis if intelligent design. What does the EF ever ‘prove?’
What are the strengths and weaknesses in ID that you refer to? And how could false positives occur using the EF. One hears this a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a non controversial example of how this would occur.
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Steve Petermann
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posted 16. May 2004 11:00
gtg: quote:
Though I like how you've brought into this thread the reality of actual 'designers' (sometimes inexperienced) who currently work in the world 'designing' things, I must admit now I'm getting a bit confused about whether you're hoping to basically 'prove' the existence of an ultimate Designer of life (including humans), or to rather suggest that what the designer actually 'designs' is beautiful?
I have never felt that there there are such things as proofs or disproofs for the existence of a designer or teleology. This always ends up an issue of experience, inference, and faith. However, I do think that science should follow the data, wherever it goes.
gtg: quote:
If it's a model that fits the data of what (human) 'designers' do and also makes predictions, then doesn't that shift the balance of design theory away from biology and into other sciences or philosophies?
I suppose a biologist could truncate the exploration of biology to non-intentional processes, even when they do not seem adequate, but why should she do that?
gtg: quote:
Otherwise, I think this discussion could get spun back into self-rotation and mired in the processes and processionals by which things are 'designed' or 'made beautiful.'
I don't follow.
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