Elizabeth’s Journal

Beauty, Part II

Never did publish any comments re the last seminar I attended on Beauty, given by Philip Bobbitt, a law professor at UT (and much, much more).

I arrived about twenty minutes late, unfortunately, but it was still very enjoyable. I have much less to say about it, though, than the last one. Probably to everyone’s relief!

Philip said at one point that the law has the capacity for beauty in that it allows for the role of the consciousness. I didn’t write any more about this and thus can’t expand on it (at least not the night before I go on vacation). He also said that beauty is what makes us human. Again, no expansion there.

I do remember that I got to make the statement that closed out the seminar that night. I observed that beauty is almost a thing for connoisseurs, and that beauty can be anywhere, in any profession. The reason it’s for connoisseurs is that recognizing beauty nearly always requires an appreciation of the rules, whatever they may be, that are applicable to the context.

For example, there might be two examples of computer code that both accomplish the same end result as far as the user can see. But to the people who write that code, one might be an “elegant” or beautiful solution, and the other a clunker. Yet no one who knows what to look for, or what to appreciate, in coding will recognize the beauty. Same for writing a legal contract, or performing a surgery.

Some things are beautiful because they follow the rules so precisely, yet other things are beautiful because they break the rules. To recognize either requires an understanding of what the “rules” are.

Unfortunately, I get to attend only one further session; this Wednesday I’ll be in Utah, and next Wednesday I’ll be at my book group where the book for discussion was selected at my house last month. The last session is 5 Mar, and the speaker will be Mike Starbird, mathematics professor.

Posted by elizabeth at February 18, 2003 11:12 PM