A friend of mine is studying the concept of beauty in ancient Greek philosophy, and when this challenge came along, this is what came to mind. One of the examples he gave was with, I think, Socrates (or perhaps Plato using him in a dialog, or something). Anyway, Socrates was listening to someone give an argument or explanation about some subject, and after the guy was finished he responded that it was a beautiful argument. He then proceeded to put it under his scrutiny, tearing it to bits.
Of course, there is no direct translation of beauty from Greek, since there were different words and concepts of what beauty was during their time. One could take Socrates' reply to imply that the argument was just all nice sounding fluff and no substance, or that it was indeed a great use of reason but just didn't hold up, or that simple reasoning, though beautiful, doesn't hold up in the real world due to it's complexity.
Mind you, I can't remember what my friend said about it, but whatever my first impression of it was, it wasn't the real point. So I fear that I might not understand what I'm talking about.
Whatever the case, an argument of reason can be a beautiful thing. |
Weekly Challenge: Finding Unusual Beauty
