Ken said
>It seems to me that the point Chris makes is not that averages move, but that many issues affect the validity of research.<
Sorry Ken, but I was saying exactly what you think I didn't say.
The researchers reported by Glenn last week used the term "beauty in averageness" suggesting, with experimental data to support them, that we are attracted to forms that are close to some "average" point (I would prefer to say a point of balance) in the range of options that we are used to.
I don't think there is any suggestion that this "average" follows the rules of mathematical averages, I put it in quotes to indicate that it's a kind of rhetorical gadget.
But even if you accept this theory, you have to note that many things happen to change the range of options and the "average" will thus jump about in consequence (whether it's a mathematical average or just the rhetorical version). We tend to use simpler ideas to explain this like "fashion", "growing old" or "seeing something on the telly"
Anyway I think the whole thing is a bit pointless. If anybody wants to build an "average aesthetics difference engine" and use it to predict the exact shape of the most appealing ketchup bottle ever* please carry on. I don't eat ketchup anyway.
*don't imagine for a minute that somebody isn't thinking along these lines, I've met a few and they frighten me.
Best wishes from Sheffield
Where I'm pleased to find beauty in the strange as well as the familiar
**
Chris
***************************************
"Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed
Whence camest to dazzle our eyes?"
Octopus (Arthur Clement Hilton)
|