FYE 2200 HO:Beauty thru the Lens of Big History
Why is somethingâ€"an idea, a building, a protozoan cellâ€"beautiful? This seminar uses the scholarship of beauty, aesthetics, to examine the ways humanity has defined beauty and to ask questions. What in the universeâ€"the past and the present of the Big History narrativeâ€"conforms to formal ideals of beauty? Who defines beauty? Is the re-engineering of natural beauty a good idea? Will our great grandchildren be beautiful beings in a beautiful universe? We will define our own ideas about beauty and then speculate on how our ideals of beauty might impact the future. Prerequisite:
FYE 2000.