Imperfect beauty

      When I did that post on maths and beauty I forgot to put a chunk of the point I was making into it. However, as long as I don't mention it I think I can get away with it.
      Anyway, as you'll remember from my previous post, beauty is directly connected to mathematics. However, human brains are not completely logical, not in anyway perfect at pattern recognition. There are too many other things that taint are perception. So the question is, can we ever truly experience perfect beauty? If it was purely based on mathematics then there should be a perfect formula that creates truly perfect music and art, akin to Plato's idea of forms. If this were the case there would be a finite amount of beauty an object could have and it could arguably be measurable how beautiful something is. But that's not the case, because we are not pure mathematical beings. The more important question perhaps is whether a truly logical being could experience beauty, because if not then it would be simply impossible for anything to experience perfect beauty.

The draw of the sciences

You might remember a few weeks ago I wrote a post about why I enjoy the arts. This week I'm going to contrast this and explore my interest in the sciences.
It's worth noting that I have an annoyingly mathematical mind and find logic to be rather intuitive. This is useful when I'm doing maths, but tends to be of limited help in other pursuits, such as art (not that maths isn't in art, but I'll get to that later. If I remember) or holding a conversation. I would prefer a creative mind over a logical one, but as it is I just have to make creative use of logic.
My logical mind was a bit annoying to me for a while as I thought that beauty existed mostly in art, not science. Then I watched The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman. Feynman was a Nobel laureate in physics and is one of my favourite people. You should watch The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. In it he describes how the beauty of a flower is not just in how it looks, but also in the complexity of the processes going on inside it. A few days ago I applied this thinking to the world and visualised the processes going on everywhere. The movement of nutrients in plants, the heat transfer that creates huge weather systems, the beautiful chaos that determines the flight of a flock of birds and many other processes. Science is infinitely complex and ridiculously simple at the same time.
Science has the potential to be just as beautiful as art if it is seen in the right way. Likewise, science can be used to inspire beautiful art. And that is its draw.

Eyes

It's 20 past two in the morning and I've decided to start work on this post about eyes.

There are two main reasons for this: 1. I don't want to have to write something in 10 minutes on Sunday night to meet my weekly quota and 2. I have a feeling this post will be rather low quality, so by posting it at a ridiculous time in the morning I reduce the chance of anyone actually reading it. But obviously you are. Which makes you a little awkward. You know this post really won't be worth reading, it's just going to be the dull ramblings of a sleepless guy, with no form or structure? I mean perhaps you could skip this post. What would you lose? If you read it you'll probably just think less of my blog.

But you're still reading. I should mention it is now 10 to 3 (I get distracted quite easily) so this will be even lower quality than I originally intended. In fact it is perfectly possible that I will fall asleep on the keyboard and the remainder of the post becomes a series of m's.

Anyway, as I've already mentioned this post is about eyes. People with autism typically have difficulties with eye contact and I tend to avoid it with people I don't know very well. However I believe eye contact can be a very useful, powerful or emotional form of communication. I also find the eye to be the single most beautiful part of the body and I have been obsessed (not literally obsessed I should point out. Having to point out what's literal and not is a hallmark of having autistic readers) with them for years (is it really difficult to read sentences broken up with long bracketed messages?) and this can be seen by the fact that drawings of them adorn (how often do you get to use the word adorn?) my maths books. The unspoken connection can allow a flow of mutual emotion across a crowded room. The subtle twitch of an eyelid can unwillingly express more of a persons innermost thoughts than many hours of talking can.

Of course the innermost thought of most people I have this connection with is "Why is that weird kid staring at me?"

It is now quarter to 4 and I really should go to bed before sunrise. Once again I apologise for the post. Remember, I'm doing a post a week and we're only a quarter of the way through the year. If I don't get some ideas soon I'll resort to posting about toe-nails or something.