tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post114326316895795949..comments2024-03-28T21:56:51.675-04:00Comments on Face to Face: Psychometrics & evolutionary aesthetics: the beautiful and the sublimeagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-1143651356743388682006-03-29T11:55:00.000-05:002006-03-29T11:55:00.000-05:00It is my observation that appreciation of aestheti...It is my observation that appreciation of aesthetics is correlated with both IQ and social class. Which leads to the conclusion that it's just another way in which the human animal sorts out his status within society. People with higher IQ's are better at figuring out the preferred tastes of the upper class and instinctually internalize those tastes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-1143331303227672592006-03-25T19:01:00.000-05:002006-03-25T19:01:00.000-05:00That reminds me of how Edmund Burke's distinction ...That reminds me of how Edmund Burke's distinction between the sublime and the beautiful applies to golf courses. The beautiful is some place conducive to human habitat -- meadows, valleys, slow moving streams, grassland intermingled with copses of trees, the whole English country estate shtick. The sublime is nature so magnificent that it could kill you, such as by you falling off a mountain or into a gorge.<BR/><BR/>Beautiful landscapes are most suited for building golf courses, since a golf course needs at least 100 acres of land level enough for a golf ball to come to rest upon. But golfers get a thrill out of the mock sublime, where you are in danger of losing not your life, but your mis-hit golf ball into a lake or canyon. One reason that Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula is so legendary is because it combines sublime sea cliffs with beautiful (and thus functional for golf) rolling plains.Steve Sailerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11920109042402850214noreply@blogger.com