Beauty and Conflict
...s one of the artist's obligations to create as perfectly as he or she can, not regardless of all other consequences, but in full awareness, nevertheless, that in pursuing other values -- in championing Israel or fighting for the rights of women, or defending the faith, or exposing capitalism, supporting your sexual preferences or speaking for your race -- you may simply be putting on a saving scientific, religious, political mask to disguise your failure as an artist. Neither the world's truth nor a god's goodness will win you beauty's prize…” Then would beauty be something so precious and elusive to some they would seek to find it in other measure? In a press release from April 2004 Kevin Kniffon, an honorary fellow in the anthropology department of the University of Wisconsin, and David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, cited three studies which explored the affect of non-physical traits on a person’s appeal. While the studies showed that upon first impression symmetry was the ideal for attractiveness, when more information was brought into the picture the results swayed to the side of the person’s character. "In each case, non-physical traits known only to familiars, such as how much the person was liked, respected and contributed to shared goals, had a large effect on the perception of physical attractiveness that was invisible to the strangers," says Wilson. This certainly would lead one to believe that there was more to beauty than the physical. Can the question of physical beauty versus ethereal beauty be answered by science? Beauty can definitely be defined as a cultural universal, however a single true definition of beauty remains illusive. Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” The essence of beauty is perhaps one of the most argued concepts. While one may find beauty in the symmetry ...