This makes it sound a bit like the manifest image versus the scientific image that philosophers of science talk about. But my understanding of the aesthetic image, if you can call it that, is quite different from the manifest image, because it requires a much deeper engagement with perception and sensation. Aesthetics (in my unschooled view) proposes that such a thing as beauty exists beyond and independent of our experience of it, and in that way is more like science, hinting of a magnificent reality in the face of which we can only feel humble and small
I didn’t know that the term “aesthetics” was an 18th century invention. The timing corresponds to the rapid rise of science. Was the goal of the 18th century project to make aesthetics a science? Or maybe protect it from science?
This makes it sound a bit like the manifest image versus the scientific image that philosophers of science talk about. But my understanding of the aesthetic image, if you can call it that, is quite different from the manifest image, because it requires a much deeper engagement with perception and sensation. Aesthetics (in my unschooled view) proposes that such a thing as beauty exists beyond and independent of our experience of it, and in that way is more like science, hinting of a magnificent reality in the face of which we can only feel humble and small
I didn’t know that the term “aesthetics” was an 18th century invention. The timing corresponds to the rapid rise of science. Was the goal of the 18th century project to make aesthetics a science? Or maybe protect it from science?