Aesthetic Sense

What is an aesthetic sense?

I often use whether something is "beautiful" or "not beautiful" as a criterion for judgment.

However, when I think about it, it is ambiguous what I myself am using to judge something as "beautiful" or "not beautiful." It has not been verbalized.

What has not been verbalized is "not beautiful"…is what I think.

Therefore, I thought about "aesthetic sense."
I went to see the "NAKED meets Gaudi" exhibition this February, and the buildings designed by Gaudi are beautiful. Many people would feel the same.

However, it is not just architecture and paintings that I feel are beautiful.I sometimes feel that books, organizations, and people's ways of thinking are "beautiful" as well.

When I think about what they have in common, I feel like I can derive one answer.

It is "structure".

Reverse Engineering

There is an analysis process called reverse engineering.
It is the act of dismantling or analyzing an existing product to clarify its mechanisms, specifications, components, technology, and design.

When I look at things, I feel like I am subconsciously performing a small reverse engineering process. Of course, it is impossible to perform reverse engineering on things outside my expertise.

However, I can infer the background and philosophy.
It would be fair to say that is why I read books.

So, what are the background and philosophy of that thing?
I feel like it is something like "constraints".

What are constraints?

First, you cannot go against natural laws.
In the case of Gaudi's architecture, it is gravity. Furthermore, the existence of God, which Gaudi believed in, might also be included in natural laws.

To that, external factors are added.
These include the technology, laws, morals, market environment, and behavioral characteristics of the majority of people in each era.

Furthermore, internal factors are added.
These are past experiences, the current environment and position one is in, and each person's individual thinking characteristics (receptive, resistant, expansive, or stagnant types).

People make choices while being bound by such constraints.

It is not Hamlet's line, but "life is a series of choices."
In Hamlet's case, it was a choice of picking one and discarding the other. However, I would like to think of it as choosing the best pattern when connecting something to something else.

That selection criterion is... No, since you cannot set a standard value, it is more like having a constant "evaluation function" that expresses one's individuality.

It is important to have consistency in that evaluation function.

A blueprint is a history of thought.

If that is the case, by repeatedly making the choices one deems best (connecting one-to-one) from among several options that have cleared constraints under the laws of nature, parts that one has never seen before will likely emerge.

Those parts on their own do not hold much meaning.
However, when you try combining them in various ways,there comes a moment when you suddenly see a new world. It is an 'aha!' moment.

I believe that is what 'structuring' is.

And whether that structure is beautiful or not, I think it depends on whether that person is repeatedly making choices based on a consistent evaluation function within the laws of nature they believe in and the constraints that bind them.

Therefore, a person's 'aesthetic sense,' while often appearing in their output, does not necessarily mean that the output will become a finished product. Whether it can be output as a finished product (such as a building or engineering project) is because it is placed under the constraints of a different phase.

The Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci

That is why countless blueprints remain in Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts, including flying machines, bridges, human anatomy, and architecture. This is surely because the technology to realize them did not exist in his time.

Although many of the blueprints recorded in those manuscripts never actually took shape, what remains there is exactly what the human Leonardo da Vinci took as a premise, what constraints he worked within, and what kind of decision-making he accumulated.

It is beautiful.
That is what I think.

However, it is rare for structures to remain for posterity like those of Gaudi.
If that is the case, the first thing we should do is to translate our own aesthetic sense into blueprints.