On an airplane today looking out at the clouds, while taking in their majestic loveliness, I found myself pondering the nature of beauty. As far as I can see, we cannot know anything of the nature of beauty outside of human experience, since we can confer on the subject only with our fellow humans.<\/p>\n
I don’t expect Martians to land on Earth anytime soon to invite us for tea and some good conversation on the nature of beauty. Our nearest companions here on earth don’t seem particularly interested either. I’ve never known a dog or a cat to look up at a cloud (although I’d be willing to be surprised).<\/p>\n
And so we are faced with this odd situation – the wonder of a tree, the dance of a flame, the delightful meandering path of a mountain waterfall, none of these wonders can be teased apart from the human brain that perceives them. Perhaps things matter<\/i> only because they matter to us.<\/p>\n
And so I wonder – does “beauty” exist in the universe outside of the human perception of beauty? Or is the question itself meaningless?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On an airplane today looking out at the clouds, while taking in their majestic loveliness, I found myself pondering the nature of beauty. As far as I can see, we cannot know anything of the nature of beauty outside of human experience, since we can confer on the subject only with our fellow humans. I … Continue reading “Clouds from the air”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}