Post 5 - Marie Marchant

             Beauty has been around as a concept for some time now, however  it is one of those things that is hard to exactly articulate. So what is beauty exactly? The definition of beauty in the dictionary is, "a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight”. However, it is not that simple. Scientists have been researching what characteristics do we find beautiful. One of the biggest answers to this question is symmetry. Symmetrical shapes, faces, landscapes etc. we find beautiful more often than asymmetrical shapes. Furthermore, suggesting that our brains more easily process symmetrical items, making them more pleasing to our eye. Scientists have also found in studies about facial beauty that people find faces that are on an average similar to other faces found in the world more attractive. Thus, some scientists suggest that we find beauty in things that feel familiar. 

             This level of attraction to symmetrical faces and features is also found in other animals as well. Molly Morris is a behavioral ecologist at Ohio University in Athens. She found that young female swordtail fish prefer symmetrical males. She claims that swordtail fish have dark vertical bars on their sides. Small, young females prefer males with the same number of bars on both sides. Research on birds also shows that female birds prefer good-looking males. For example, among satin bowerbirds, females prefer males whose feathers reflect more ultraviolet light. Males whose feathers reflected less UV light had blood parasites compared to birds whose feathers reflected more UV light which were healthy males. So when females chose males with feathers that had strong UV light reflection feathers, they were using that information to find healthy males to father their young (Stevens, “What Makes a Pretty Face?”). 

              Science can attempt to decipher beauty, but it is a difficult task. However, science in a way is beautiful itself. Science is beautiful because it studies the most beautiful thing of all, our world. Science and art both want to explore and understand the world around us because it is so beautiful it is awe striking. It is difficult to find images more beautiful than the images captured by the Hubbell space telescope for example. Yet, the most beautiful part of science might not be the images at all. Instead, its the discovery of our story and how we came to be, the story of self discovery and curiosity that is the most beautiful of all (Joravsky, “Is Science Beautiful?”)/ 

Articles Referenced:
“What Makes a Pretty Face?” Alison Stevens
“Is Science Beautiful?” David Joravsky