1. © POSbase 2004 Beauty Contributor The philosopher George Santayana defined beauty as value positive, intrinsic, and objectified. Value positive and intrinsic mean that beauty provides pleasure without any reasoning about expected utility. Objectified means that people experience beauty as an attribute of an object, not as a personal preference, like a cold drink on a hot day. There are basically three views to answer the question What is beauty?:

2. © POSbase 2004 Beauty (1)Several theorists tried to define beauty by objective features, like symmetry or balance. Beauty in this sense is based on biological equipment of the perceptual system. This view of beauty was so dominant in 16th century that artists introduced pattern books with pictorial elements that artists could copy and combine with each other in order to create beauty.

3. © POSbase 2004 Beauty (2) Another view is that beautiful is what pleases the senses; what pleases the senses is different from person to person so that beauty is in the eye of the beholder or de gustibus non est disputandum (taste cannot be debated). Beauty in this sense may also be socially constructed.

4. © POSbase 2004 Beauty (3) Finally, the sense of beauty can emerge from patterns in the way people and objects relate. It is the interaction of characteristics of the perceptual system and the object that determines aesthetic experience, like in the processing fluency theory of beauty (Reber et al., 2004)Reber et al., 2004

5. © POSbase 2004 Beauty It is worth stressing that beauty can be a feature of art, but does not need to be. There are other aesthetic qualities, like the sublime. Good art can be ugly, and beautiful pictures may have no artistic merit.