Thermoaesthetics: Life in Terms of the Nonliving

A concept of aesthetic complexity based on universal animal preferences for mixtures of more and less exciting physical and psychological opposites.

Salvator Rosa’s “The Death of Empedocles.” Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

© 2024 Andrew Hodgson. Edited by Lisa Anthony and Margaret Krous. The idea that physical conditions in the brain are related to our sense of beauty was first proposed and demonstrated, to my knowledge, by Esther Leslie in Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form. This story is hypothetical. All comments are welcome.

Contents

· Mixtures
∘ Thesis
∘ Beauty
∘ Sensory Bias
∘ Universality
∘ More and Less Exciting Things
∘ Aesthetic Indifference
∘ Conceptual Relatives
∘ Other Mixtures
∘ Degrees of Excitement (deg)
∘ Categories of the Mind
∘ Hue Heat
· Complexity
∘ Metaphysics
∘ Philosophy
∘ Creation Stories
∘ Complexity Theory
∘ The Magical-Looking Water of Tsalal Island
∘ Liquid Crystals
∘ Aesthetic Reflex
∘ Consciousness
∘ Thermal Indifference
· Disruptions of Inwardness
· Exciting Things in Containers
· Verticality
∘ Mixtures of Up and Down
· Painted by Nature
· Time is Boring
· Temperature
∘ Brain Heat
∘ Heat and Excitement
∘ Temperature Mixtures
∘ Rapid Eye Movements
· Fluidity and Solidness
∘ Fluidity and Excitement
∘…