I really liked this piece. Steen's slant on why we enjoy aesthetics so is a compelling read. He gets down to the bare bones of looking at why something seen could be so pleasing, and what kind of specific truths, precarious as they are, that process elucidates.
Steen claims that, when we get right down to it, the enjoyment we derive from an aesthetic experience, in this specific case a visual aesthetic experience, is based on evolutionary precursors and active pursual of "reliable information about baseline values, as well as a rich sense of the full range of sensory phenomena [our] system is designed to handle." He goes on to say that the seeking of satisfaction in these experiences comes from an "appetite" that gets developed. I think that is just great stuff, and a very cool and concrete way to set up the rest of his analysis, which is a reading of "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and how the speaker, or Keats, encounters the object and impresses his own subjective experience to that object. This is a fundamental definition of what we humans do, straight out of Damasio. We also get an explication on an earlier moment of the poem where Keats seems to be utilizing theory of mind by ascribing thought, emotion and feeling to the characters. This is all great.
But don't you think it's odd that he uses a poem to talk about the works of a visual subjective experience? It's kind of an odd frame to use to make these points, despite the fact that it is a tight analysis and very sweetly analyzes exactly what truth in beauty there is. But doesn't it sort of challenge our metarepresentational capacity? You are reading a paper by a guy named Steen who is analyzing how humans have an evolutionary tendency to seek the things that compose aesthetics and our cognitive process of imaginative response by analyzing a poem by Keats who is writing about looking at a Grecian urn and being taken out of his own thoughts to a moment trapped in time where he ascribes emotions and feeling to characters depicted being in the middle of an endless moment of passion. Whew!
Nevertheless, it is an excellent way to sort of expound on, or dispel the magic of, Keats subjective experience of an object and his declaration that beauty IS truth. It's a step towards the future and out of the typical canonic wistful lust for the words of Keats. Steen needs this particular piece to explain how it is more accurately the certain kinds of truths that us cognitive machines relate to in encountering and appreciating a piece of art: 1 (aesthetics) "that there is a significant and systematic relation between certain orders that are externally manifest and the internal manifest order of certain aspects of our being" and 2 (imaginative), "the truth of beauty encompasses the use of imaginative immersion and the creation of virtual agents in representational art." There is something about that conclusion that makes me say, "yes, yes, YES!"
Why? Because the points Steen makes are so clear when dealing with something as muddled as the cognitives of aesthetics. He links our enjoyment with art as something basic, tied to an evolutionary need, something that assists our survival in our given environment and puts our search for order on scientific terms. I just love it when science dispels magic, mysticism and belief. Somehow it makes things more beautiful to know that we seek out order in our universe to confirm order in ourselves, yes, that we are ok, and things are ok, and that we really are one with the universe after all, apart and a part. That Keats got it half right and half wrong - that our truths are derived from fictions, and our fictions dervied from truth - that that it is all I know and all I need to know. It is that sort of tension that comforts me, assists me in knowing my place in the universe. It hums.
Comments (3)
Hi, Dominic.
Tougaw suggested I take a look at your entry and comment b/c we may be diametrically opposed on Steen. But I am having a hard time understanding what you are saying here. That might be b/c I am sick and taking antibiotic and codeine too. Better living through chemistry. But I'ma take a crack at it anyway.
In the interests of full disclosure, let me say I disliked Steen as soon as he said that Keats might be fatuous. Keats fatuous! Really! Let's see Mr. Steen write an Ode sometime. As you may have guessed, I am partial to Keats, who died when he was 25 or 26, of galloping consumption.
I don't think you have been accurate in restating Steen's thesis (but I could be wrong). I understand him to mean that aesthetic appreciation is rooted in an evolutionary need to garner information from the enviroment that is not supplied by genetics. And that yes, as we become more skillful in garnering information, we widen our knowledge base. I don't see what this has to do with Keats.
I think you are right to point out the layers of cognition embedded in the poem--which is why ProfT chose it as a reading, I'm assuming.
I don't know why you would want to dispel the magic of Keats' poem--and you a candidate in the M.F.A. program! Don't let the scientists scare you, for God's sake! Scientific truth is not the same as artistic truth, and they don't necessarily have to mesh. Neither does art need to bow down to science. I am afraid that art is being intimidated by science in the 21st century.
Rest assured that Keats is entirely right, so please don't take Steen's side against him! I believe that Steen only half understands the poem!
Maryellen :) RIGHT ON Keats, and WRITE ON the rest of you.
Posted by Maryellen | November 28, 2007 5:42 PM
Posted on November 28, 2007 17:42
Maryellen,
Thanks for your comment. You make some valid points that I wish you did in class. We had a pretty lively discussion going on!
In regards to science, I am not the least bit intimidated. I actually was on track to become a geneticist when I decided to shift gears completely and focus on literature. It's a pretty crazy switch, but from my perspective Steen's stuff was fantastic. And I guess I got all caught up in that and allowed him to call Keats fatuous. But, I kinda agree with him, but on a very specific level - Keats is keenly aware of this fatuousness, recognizes this in himself and brings that out in Ode to Nightingale. Then again Steen doesn't evaluate that one. But I think that Keats' fatuousness is performing a function in his work - that of reiterating the sort of desire to lose oneself in something as silly as it may be because of what that process does, oddly enough, in grounding ourselves. I think this is what you miss in the usage of Keats that Steen performs - he uses Keats as a way to provide distance and as a stand in for the things we do ourselves when we look at a piece of "beautiful" art. By playing the game of sensorial pattern recognition and garnering new information (as you put it) we feel connected to something universal and external internally. We seek the confirmation of a natural order and how we apply to the world in our particular space. In Keats' his concern with death, as we discussed in class, is a subtle undertone in Ode on a Grecian Urn. Steen then utilizes this process Keats performs to further evaluate just what the quality and definition of the truths are that we see in beauty.
I guess my point in this comment is that I don't believe science is beginning to outshadow/shine literature - I think we are finally moving towards a communification, if you will, of the two, which is a beautiful thing.
Posted by Dominik | November 29, 2007 1:06 PM
Posted on November 29, 2007 13:06
Two quick points. I also grimaced at the suggestion that Keats's claim about beauty and truth was made "fatuously." But if you read the article, it's clear that Steen admires Keats enormously and that what he really means is that Keats claim is a very big (and kind of vague) generalization. Steen wants to fillin the blanks Keats leaves open and explain how, in cognitive terms, beauty and truth might be related to each other.
That leads to the second point. Maryellen, you asked what the idea that beauty helps us "gather information about our environment not supplied by genetics" has to do with Keats. I think Steen is arguing that one of the things Keats is doing in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is dramatizing ways that art draws on and plays with what might be the evolutionary role of beauty: to help us make sense of the relationship between individual (organism?) and environment.
But that leaves Maryellen's very good questions still open-- about how Steen supports these ideas and whether they are too limited or missing the mark. My gut sense is that Steen is right about this function of beauty and aesthetics, but that it doesn't work to suggest that beauty and aesthetics serve a single purpose, even if that purpose is broad and encompasses quite a bit.
Posted by Jason Tougaw | December 3, 2007 10:19 AM
Posted on December 3, 2007 10:19