Download or read book Wonder the Rainbow and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences written by Philip Fisher and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why pause and study this particular painting among so many others ranged on a gallery wall? Wonder, which Descartes called the first of the passions, is at play; it couples surprise with a wish to know more, the pleasurable promise that what is novel or rare may become familiar. This is a book about the aesthetics of wonder, about wonder as it figures in our relation to the visual world and to rare or new experiences. In three instructive instances--a pair of paintings by Cy Twombly, the famous problem of doubling the area of a square, and the history of attempts to explain rainbows--Philip Fisher examines the experience of wonder as it draws together pleasure, thinking, and the aesthetic features of thought. Through these examples he places wonder in relation to the ordinary and the everyday as well as to its opposite, fear. The remarkable story of how rainbows came to be explained, fraught with errors, half-knowledge, and incomplete understanding, suggests that certain knowledge cannot be what we expect when wonder engages us. Instead, Fisher argues, a detailed familiarity, similar to knowing our way around a building or a painting, is the ultimate meeting point for aesthetic and scientific encounters with novelty, rare experiences, and the genuinely new.
Download or read book The Aesthetics of Wonder written by A. Ve Cuppiramaṇiyan̲ and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 1988 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This little work has been done on the aesthetics of wonder; the writers on Sanskrit poetics have had little to say about this most attractive sensation. This work examines, in great depth, the excitants of the sense of wonder and the various purposes for which poets harness it and presents the concepts, for the first time in the history of Sanskrit aesthetics, embellished with ddlectable examples drawn from the whole of Sanskrit literature. The crowning achievement of the author is the startlingly new discovery about the nature and the role played by wonder which will revolutionize the existing concept of the sensation. The most attractive and unusual feature of the book is the high readability achieved through a scintillating style of presentation distinguished by sparkling wit and humour. An epoch-making book which scholars and lay lovers of literature alike would love to read.
Download or read book Bridge to Wonder written by Cecilia González-Andrieu and published by . This book was released on 2022-04-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often difficult to describe beauty or even justify attempts to experience something beautiful. Yet if artists--whether painters or poets, actors or musicians, architects or sculptors--teach us anything, it is that the pursuit of beauty is a common feature among all humanity. As Cecilia González-Andrieu contends, these varied experiences with artistic beauty are embedded with revelatory and prophetic power that not only affects a single individual but allows for communal formation. Named one of America magazine's most promising young theologians, González-Andrieu seeks to engage art in order to reveal its religious significance. Bridge to Wonder proposes a method of theological aesthetics allowing readers to mine the depths of creative beauty to discover variegated theological truths that enable greater communion with each other and the One source of all that is beautiful.
Download or read book The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise written by Jadranka Skorin-Kapov and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation covers issues central to contemporary continental philosophy (desire, expectations, excess, rupture, transcendence, immanence, surprise). The proposed term desire||surprise captures the phenomenological-speculative character of the pair not yet and no longer. Non-obvious parallels between different thinkers are drawn, and the argumentation is organized around philosophical figures relevant in the sequence desire – excess –pause (rupture, break) – recuperation (surprise). The works of Levinas, Žižek, Bataille, Blanchot, Foucault, and Ricoeur are interpreted and positioned according to the proposed template of desire - excess - pause. The consideration of limit experiences involves authors fascinated by transgression, and the question of whether excess is immanent or transcendent. This discussion considers works by Nietzsche, Deleuze, Žižek, and Foucault. The analysis of surprise and the beginning of recovery after the pause considers works by Fink, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Lyotard, Dufrenne, Bachelard, and Seel. The provocative argument elaborated in this work is that surprise starts with indifference. Furthermore, the argument is that surprise begins where the concept reaches its ending, hence that the limit of speculative thinking at its ending is the limit of aesthetics at its beginning. The work of Hegel, Schelling and Jaspers are discussed in order to argue for the beginning of aesthetics there where knowledge ends. Philosophical thematic is contextualized via sections on artists such as Duchamp and Mondrian, and on some films, provoking interest of aestheticians working in art history and cultural studies departments.
Download or read book Arabic Poetics written by Lara Harb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing how an aesthetic of wonder underlies classical Arabic treatments of poetry, the Quran, and Aristotelian poetics, this fresh look at the question of literary quality, using the framework of aesthetic theory, is essential reading for scholars and students of Arabic literature, Islamic Studies, literary theory and Islamic art history.
Download or read book Wonder and Exile in the New World written by Alex Nava and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2013-06-21 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Wonder and Exile in the New World, Alex Nava explores the border regions between wonder and exile, particularly in relation to the New World. It traces the preoccupation with the concept of wonder in the history of the Americas, beginning with the first European encounters, goes on to investigate later representations in the Baroque age, and ultimately enters the twentieth century with the emergence of so-called magical realism. In telling the story of wonder in the New World, Nava gives special attention to the part it played in the history of violence and exile, either as a force that supported and reinforced the Conquest or as a voice of resistance and decolonization. Focusing on the work of New World explorers, writers, and poets—and their literary descendants—Nava finds that wonder and exile have been two of the most significant metaphors within Latin American cultural, literary, and religious representations. Beginning with the period of the Conquest, especially with Cabeza de Vaca and Las Casas, continuing through the Baroque with Cervantes and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and moving into the twentieth century with Alejo Carpentier and Miguel Ángel Asturias, Nava produces a historical study of Latin American narrative in which religious and theological perspectives figure prominently.
Download or read book The Beauty of Chemistry written by Philip Ball and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Images and text capture the astonishing beauty of the chemical processes that create snowflakes, bubbles, flames, and other wonders of nature. Chemistry is not just about microscopic atoms doing inscrutable things; it is the process that makes flowers and galaxies. We rely on it for bread-baking, vegetable-growing, and producing the materials of daily life. In stunning images and illuminating text, this book captures chemistry as it unfolds. Using such techniques as microphotography, time-lapse photography, and infrared thermal imaging, The Beauty of Chemistry shows us how chemistry underpins the formation of snowflakes, the science of champagne, the colors of flowers, and other wonders of nature and technology. We see the marvelous configurations of chemical gardens; the amazing transformations of evaporation, distillation, and precipitation; heat made visible; and more.
Download or read book Wonder Strikes written by Steven E. Knepper and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2022-07-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Desmond argues that philosophy, religion, and art begin in wonder. Desmond is widely recognized for his original metaphysics and his provocative philosophy of religion. Desmond's extensive writings on aesthetics, art, and literature, however, have received much less attention. Wonder Strikes is the first book-length examination of these dimensions of Desmond's thought. It offers nuanced commentary on his treatment of beauty and the sublime; his accounts of tragedy and comedy; and his argument that, having asked "too much" of art in modernity, we now ask "too little." Desmond claims that art, philosophy, and religion must recover their ancient kinship and their shared roots in wonder if they are to counter the destructive instrumentalism of our time.
Download or read book Philosophy Begins in Wonder written by Michael Funk Deckard and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy begins with wonder, according to Plato and Aristotle. Yet Plato and Aristotle did not expand a great deal on what precisely wonder is. Does this fact alone not raise curiosity in us as to why this passion or concept is important? What is wonder's role in science, philosophy, or theology except to end thinking or theorizing as soon as one begins? The primary purpose of this book is to show how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century developments in natural theology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of science resulted in a complex history of the passion of wonder-a history in which the elements of continuation, criticism, and reformulation are equally present. Philosophy Begins in Wonder provides the first historical overview of wonder and changes the way we see early modern Europe. It is intended for readers who are curious-who wonder-about how modern philosophy and science were born. The book is for scholars and educated readers alike.
Download or read book Wonder and Other Essays written by R. W. Hepburn and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wonder written by Sophia Vasalou and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wonder has been celebrated as the quintessential passion of childhood. From the earliest stages of our intellectual history, it has been acclaimed as the driving force of inquiry and the prime passion of thought. Yet for an emotion acknowledged so widely for the multiple roles it plays in our lives, wonder has led a singularly shadowy existence in recent reflections. Philosophers have largely passed it over in silence; emotion theorists have shunned it as a case that sits awkwardly within their analytical frameworks. So what is wonder, and why does it matter? In this book, Sophia Vasalou sketches a "grammar" of wonder that pursues the complexities of wonder as an emotional experience that has carved colorful tracks through our language and our intellectual history, not only in philosophy and science but also in art and religious experience. A richer grammar of wonder and broader window into its past can give us the tools we need for thinking more insightfully about wonder, and for reflecting on the place it should occupy within our emotional lives.
Download or read book Colour Light and Wonder in Islamic Art written by Idries Trevathan and published by Saqi Books. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique investigation into the aesthetics of colour in Islamic art revealing its deeper symbolic and mystical meanings. The experience of colour in Islamic visual culture has historically been overlooked. In this new approach, Idries Trevathan examines the language of colour in Islamic art and architecture in dialogue with its aesthetic contexts, offering insights into the pre-modern Muslim experience of interpreting colour. The seventeenth-century Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, represents one of the finest examples of colour-use on a grand scale. Here, Trevathan examines the philosophical and mystical traditions that formed the mosque's backdrop. He shows how careful combinations of colour and design proportions in Islamic patterns expresses knowledge beyond that experienced in the corporeal world, offering another language with which to know and experience God. Colour thus becomes a spiritual language, calling for a re-consideration of how we read Islamic aesthetics.
Download or read book The Aesthetics of Uncertainty written by Janet Wolff and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract:
Download or read book Beauty and the End of Art written by Sonia Sedivy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beauty and the End of Art shows how a resurgence of interest in beauty and a sense of ending in Western art are challenging us to rethink art, beauty and their relationship. By arguing that Wittgenstein's later work and contemporary theory of perception offer just what we need for a unified approach to art and beauty, Sonia Sedivy provides new answers to these contemporary challenges. These new accounts also provide support for the Wittgensteinian realism and theory of perception that make them possible. Wittgenstein's subtle form of realism explains artworks in terms of norm governed practices that have their own varied constitutive norms and values. Wittgensteinian realism also suggests that diverse beauties become available and compelling in different cultural eras and bring a shared 'higher-order' value into view. With this framework in place, Sedivy argues that perception is a form of engagement with the world that draws on our conceptual capacities. This approach explains how perceptual experience and the perceptible presence of the world are of value, helping to account for the diversity of beauties that are available in different historical contexts and why the many faces of beauty allow us to experience the value of the world's perceptible presence. Carefully examining contemporary debates about art, aesthetics and perception, Beauty and the End of Art presents an original approach. Insights from such diverse thinkers as Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Arthur Danto, Alexander Nehamas, Elaine Scarry and Dave Hickey are woven together to reveal how they make good sense if we bring contemporary theory of perception and Wittgensteinian realism into the conversation.
Download or read book Evolutionary and Neurocognitive Approaches to Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts written by Colin Martindale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, well-known scholars describe new and exciting approaches to aesthetics, creativity and psychology of the arts, approaching these topics from a point of view that is biological or related to biology and answering new questions with new methods and theories. All known societies produce and enjoy arts such as literature, music and visual decoration or depiction. Judging from prehistoric archaeological evidence, this arose very early in human development. Furthermore, Darwin was explicit in attributing aesthetic sensitivity to lower animals. These considerations lead us to wonder whether the arts might not be evolutionarily based. Although such an evolutionary basis is not obvious on the face of it, the idea has recently elicited considerable attention. The book begins with a consideration of ten theories on the evolutionary function of specific arts such as music and literature. The theory of evolution was first drawn up in biology, but evolution is not confined to biology: genuinely evolutionary theories of sociocultural change can be formulated. That they need to be formulated is shown in several chapters that discuss regular trends in literature and scientific writings. Psychologists have recently rediscovered the obvious fact that thought and perception occur in the brain, so cognitive science moves ever closer to neuroscience. Several chapters give overviews of neurocognitive and neural network approaches to creativity and aesthetic appreciation. The book concludes with two exciting describing brain-scan research on what happens in the brain during creativity and presenting a close examination of the relationship between genetically transmitted mental disorder and creativity.
Download or read book The Sublime in Modern Philosophy written by Emily Brady and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy (with a focus on Kant), nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world.
Download or read book Aesthetics written by Bence Nanay and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of art, beauty, and taste. It doesn't just consider traditional artistic experiences such as artworks in a museum or an opera performance, but also everyday experiences such as autumn leaves in the park, or even just the light of the setting sun falling on the kitchen table. It is also about your experience when you choose the shirt you're going to wear today or when you wonder whether you should put more pepper in the soup. Aesthetics is everywhere. It is one of the most important aspects of our life. In this Very Short Introduction Bence Nanay introduces the field of aesthetics, considering both Western and non-Western aesthetic traditions, and exploring why it is sometimes misunderstood or considered to be too elitist - by artists, musicians, and even philosophers. As Nanay shows, so-called 'high art' has no more claims on aesthetics than sitcoms, tattoos, or punk rock. In fact, the scope of aesthetics extends far wider than that of art, high or low, including much of what we care about in life. It is not the job of aesthetics to tell you which artworks are good and which ones are bad. It is not the job of aesthetics to tell you what experiences are worth having. If an experience is worth having for you, it thereby becomes the subject of aesthetics. This realisation is important, because thinking about aesthetics in this inclusive way opens up new ways of understanding old questions about the social aspect of our aesthetic engagements, and the importance of aesthetic values for our own self. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
