Dear Keith and Chuck,
I carefully used the word “Aesthesis” and not Aesthetics. Aesthesis is a human state of mind from which a field of inquiry derives. That field is Aesthetics. This field is so rich that even contaminated the Past. Every course on Aesthetics will start in Plato although it was only “invented” more than 2000 years after. I will not pretend that by invoquing Baumgarten, I was not also thinking about the field, one of the famous “Ics” Mathematics, Ethics, Poetics, Politics, (and not so famous Erics). It was clear that Feynman’s story had nothing to do with Aesthetics in that (grandiose) sense. In the 1750’s science was slow but it would accelerate soon and from Lavoisier to Darwin a lot of what is our modern world is was forged then.
Baugarten’s decade was really rich to an extent almost never seen before. apart from the frightful Lisbon Earthquake, right on the middle of the decade, coexisted at the time there apparently different sensibilities: Rococo (dying), Neo Classicism (emerging) and Romanticism (being born).
I will classify Baumgarten under Neo Classicism, he writes in Latin and chooses a Greek word to name his "science of sensible knowledge”.
I agree with Keith, that Aesthetics should not be the waste bin for left overs of any kind of knowledge, especially the one we yet don’t know to be rational about. Aesthetics is very rational, analytical field of inquiry about processes by we come to know without rationalization. Aesthetics evolved to be a field of inquiry in which Art is one of the main objects of study, simply because Art produces objects that are made especially for sensible perception whereas others are not (made for sensible perception). In the same decade, Edmund Burke (I would classify him as pre Romanticist) introduced the notion of Sublime and, very rationally, defined it as something causing a sense of awe that our mind is unable to entertain any other thought. Sublime rests as a supreme object of Aesthetics and is not a left over of any kind. It is here where I find quite impossible that Feynman ecstasy may be comparable to his limited-artist friend’s. The pleasure Feynman may experience in probing the flower in its functional, biological even chemical true existence results from his “musical” relation with logic and knowledge that should not be confused with “music”. There is a consonance, an harmony in good scientific explanations that may conduct to a pleasant feeling. I am using the word “music” because it refers to the muses, purely inspirational deities. What Feynman’s very-limited-artist friend is saying is that what he experiences before flower is pure “music” with no other further thought. Although very limited as an artist, Feynman’s friend is right.
However, I was interested in imagination, but that will have to wait.
Cheers,
Eduardo
> No dia 20/10/2015, às 00:08, Keith Russell <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
>
> Dear Chuck and Eduardo,
>
> The real issue here, for me, is what Baumgarten means by ³rational²
> knowledge. We tend to forget the historic distinctions between rational
> and empirical knowledge such that when we talk about the scientific method
> we collapse them together such that initial empirical evidence (gained
> through the senses in relation to observed phenomena in the real world) is
> then sorted/organised/theorised using rationality. In Baumgaretn¹s time,
> rationality was chiefly treated as abstraction devoid of sensory content
> and hence science was going nowhere fast.
>
> The danger is that we treat aesthetics as the left over bits of sensory
> knowledge that we don¹t yet know how to be rational about. It is a lot
> like tacit knowledge where the fact of the knowledge is treated as WOW
> while the content of the knowledge is treated as secret.
>
> Cheers
>
> keith
>
> On 20/10/2015 9:07 am, "PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD
> studies and related research in Design on behalf of Charles Burnette"
> <[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Or, so I believe,
>> Chuck
>>> On Oct 19, 2015, at 9:44 AM, Eduardo corte-real <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>> Aesthesis deals with with non rational knowledge. That¹s why Baumgarten
>>> invented the word. It means that is not "science knowledge (that) only
>>> adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower". It is
>>> precisely the part of science knowledge that is not scientific that adds
>>> excitement, mystery and awe.
>
>
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