In sum, this study further extends our knowledge about the influence of art expertise on aesthetic appreciation.įor the past 100 years beauty has been marginalised in Western art and regarded as a problematic notion in a range of cultural contexts. As no differences between art experts and laypersons were found regarding memory recognition of new and old patterns, this effect is not likely due to differences in memory performance. We found this both for liking and for interest ratings. Also, laypersons rated all other types of patterns higher than asymmetric patterns, while art experts rated the other patterns similar or lower than asymmetric patterns. While art experts rated asymmetric patterns higher than laypersons, as expected, they rated face-like patterns lower than laypersons. Nevertheless, we found profound differences in aesthetic preferences between art experts and laypersons. While it has already been shown that symmetry preference decreases with art expertise, it was still unclear whether an already established relationship between art expertise and preference for abstract over representational art can be similarly found as a preference for abstract over representational patterns, as these are non-art objects. To this end, we utilized abstract asymmetric, symmetric, and “broken” patterns slightly deviating from symmetry, as well as more representational patterns resembling faces (also symmetric or broken). representational patterns are modulated by art expertise. This study set out to investigate whether and how aesthetic evaluations of different types of symmetric, as well as abstract vs. A more thoroughgoing challenge would question the way in which ornament was defined during the period of modernism, recognizing its role as a carrier of meaning. Consequently, its defence of ornament as a re-assertion of the legitimacy of the feminine ultimately perpetuates rather than undermines stereotypical associations of the feminine with the sensuous, the superficial and the irrational. Yet this feminist espousal of ornament largely fails to challenge the modernist conception of ornament as decorative embellishment devoid of meaning, differing from it only by giving ornament a positive rather than a negative valuation. In their defence of ornament, these theorists have exposed the derogation of the feminine implicit in the devaluation of ornament, which has traditionally been conceived as a feminine domain. While ornament during the period of modernism was much maligned as inessential, superficial, deceptive and irrational, it has been rehabilitated by a number of feminist theorists in recent times such as Norma Broude and Naomi Schor. If doing and understanding science can show this sundering of the sublime from the beautiful to be in error, science also gives evidence of transcendence.
Scholarship in theological aesthetics has recently argued that the modern and postmodern elevation of the sublime over beauty is merely a preference that reveals a bias against transcendence-against God. This linkage of beauty in science with truth and the sublime runs counter to most aesthetic theory since Kant. Fourth, where beauty is perceived, feelings of the sublime often also follow upon further contemplation. Third, the search for beauty often guides scientists in their work.
Second, science discovers beauty and the sublime in the theories that are developed to explain natural phenomena.
First, science reveals beauty and the sublime in natural phenomena. The aesthetic phenomena considered here are as follows. If the Creator is an artist, how and why natural scientists study the divine art work can be understood using theological aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The various aesthetic phenomena found repeatedly in the scientific enterprise stem from the role of God as artist.