From BBC’s new podcasting experiment I started to listen to the Radio 4 program In our Time, specifically the one concerning Beauty. Some great concepts on the Philosophy of Beauty, and in turn Art, reality and well everythign really.

Some concepts I picked up on from the program:

Art is created due to our desire to re-create beauty we see and experience around us. However this rasies the question about the nature of beuty, art and reality.

Aesthetic Beauty (i.e. sensible, perception of the five senses, via thought, objective) versus Moral Beauty (i.e. divine, abstract, via feeling, noble).

Plato - An object is beautiful to the extent that it participates in the Idea, or Form, of beauty.

Aristotle - Beauty is the gift of God

Is beauty inherent in the object or simply objective, as in the beholder?

Hegel - Beauty, Feeling, Knowledge have a rational, cognitive value. For through Religion, Art and Philosophy the members of a People can mutually recognize their feeling, beauty and knowledge. Essentially Art will dwindle in its effectiveness as we move closer to ‘reality’.

Excellent post concerning the apparent ability for Humpback Whale to remix, rip and sample other Humpback’s songs. Further that the songs are just as susceptible to themes, fashions and trends. The person where these claims originate from, Dr. Roger Payne says:

The songs have lots of interesting variations and even have rhymes. He made an interesting observation that the whale songs of the 60’s were much more beautiful than the whale songs these days.

Wikipedia adds:

The Humpback Whale is well-known for its long and complex “song”. The whale repeats patterns of low notes that vary in amplitude and frequency in consistent patterns over a period of hours or even days. The songs only occur during the mating season, so it is supposed that the song is used for courting. Also interesting is the fact that a whale’s unique song slowly evolves over a period of years —never returning to the same sequence of notes even after decades.

Quite interesting that whales only dig love songs. Wonder if the old whales go round thinking; new songs these days are just too damn loud, not like in my days, now that was funky amplitude.

Look forward to more on this.

Becks:

“England captain David Beckham has said he would consider becoming an astronaut and going to the Moon when he ends his playing career.”

Source

Dear oh dear. Is he going mental or as the report also mentions:

‘Speaking partly in Spanish and partly through a translator’.

Maybe he just got the words wrong, what he meant to say was:

“Yeah but actually, you know, actually”

Wrong very wrong