Re: What is beauty?

[Hong Lam Vu <vuh000@goofy.zdv.Uni-Mainz.de>]

Hi ba'c Tua^'n va` ca'c ba'c me^ sa('c dd.e.p,

I've heard about a research on sexual behaviour, whose result claims that
men choose their mate on the principle of the fitness for reproduction. I
think that the underlying philosophy of this "evolutional imperative" is
nothing short of Darwinism.

May be average is THE result of the evolutional process. But because the
evolution is an open process, average may be always under change. The
question is whether the evolution is linial, or zig-zag, or etc.

1 year ago I read an article (not in Nature) about "beauty is the
average". I'd like to put the question in another way: "Is the average the
only beauty?"
 I do believe that the average is beautiful, but.... 

La^m.


On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, Tuan V Nguyen wrote:

> 
> Hello folks,
> 
> 	Last week, I was struck by the exchange between chi. Thu.c 
> Anh and Tua^'n (Japan) on the subject of youth. Their exchange 
> reminds me of an article I wrote long time ago on the question of 
> "what is beauty?". My idea arisen from a scientific paper by a 
> Japanese group of scientists, who used computer to address the 
> above question. I extract here some relevant parts for you, 
> particularly those who think they are young, to comment:
>  
> 	Many years ago, I read a book which claims that all human 
> behaviours are governed by genetic factors, i.e. genes and hence 
> there is a science called Behaviour Genetics. For example, for 
> most men, the perfect mate is youthful and beautiful. The 
> obsession with youth is due to men's genes which prefer to mate 
> with a young woman; this is so because young woman has more 
> reproductive years for them to exploit. Beauty, on the other hand, 
> reveals a more interesting side of reasoning.
> 
> 	What is beauty? Answer: it is simply average. In a recent 
> issue of Nature, there was a study conducted by a group of 
> ingenious researchers, who discovered this when they developed a 
> computer program which "averaged" the features of a human face. It 
> superimposed one randomly picked face upon another, then melded 
> the two images. They produced a series of images resulting from 
> the averaging of between two and nine faces, varying. When they 
> asked their subjects to choose the most beautiful face, without 
> exception, they considered the face with the most superimpositions 
> as the most beautiful. So, beauty is THE average, folks!
> 
> 	But, why should men's genes prefer the average? 
> 
> 	Any ideas? thinkers and philosophers of VNSA ?
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 
> 	Tuan
> 
> 
>