Roses

[sartorias]

Every morning about six, while the sun is still unobjectionable, I go out with my scissors and clip back molting roses. There are always tight buds underneath. I, who have never before had roses, somehow stumbled out of total ignorance onto the regimen these plants like best. The roses were small and scraggly when we moved in, though the

Comments

[sfmarty]

I have wondered that as well. I assume that the need to communicate with their gods led them to paint the Lascaux caves, etc, but what led them to design the paintings to such an extent. A shoulder of a horse fits the curve of a rock, the colors are varied and stunning.

We see in color, insects see in ultra violet (I believe) and so see paths on the flowers to steer by.

I too wonder when we saw the flower colors as beautiful.

[rysmiel]

As I worked among the roses in my hazy pre-caffeine brain state I wondered about how our ancestors came to discover beauty. The earnest evolutionist will point out that such things are the products of leisure, and of course the exigencies of survival came first.

Well, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, it seems to me that a lot of the things humans fiind beautiful in other humans could map rather well onto finding a partner who was healthy, and there would therefore be a selective advantage to having that ability.

[sartorias]

Quite true, which is why I am most interested in beauty that does not contribue to survival of the species.

As Henry Tilney says, And though the love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once raised, but you may in time come to love a rose?

[azureeve]

Are you certain all you did was hack- eh, prune the roses? It's about time I start taking care of my own garden again, now that I have time, I have no excuses.

Flowers, we all know, are supposed to be inviting in order to pollinate. Only, I don't think that they expected to be so pretty that they are plucked off the stem before they even get a chance to be fertilized.

From what I know, humans tend to favor symmetry and balance. We find things that have those two features the most aesthetically pleasing. This also means balance in colors and shapes as well. One wonders whether the partiality for balance and symmetry has to do with our tendency to put things into order.

Then again, my spiritual background and beliefs makes me wonder whether any complexity of nature, including our favoritism toward symmetry, is without some forethought of another. But that's just me.

[sartorias]

All I did was hack the roses, indeed!

And yes about symmetry and balance...

[mildmannered]

Interesting. I'm convinced _ although I don't know of any good research, or indeed of anyone *doing* such research _ that aesthetic sense, along with other emotions, evolved much earlier than people like to think.

I imagine all of this grows out of "pain/no pain" and "tastes good/poisonous" and "good mating speciman/diseased speciman" _ very basic binary choices that even very small-brained creatures make.

Humans in general like repeating patterns, bright contrasting colors, and symmetry, as is mentioned above _ all of which go into the pattern-finding ability that furthers survival and reproduction.

I'd love to see some hard research done on the aesthetic sense of smaller-brained animals. I'm fascinated by the recent research on the linguistic abilities of dogs (although one dog is hardly a representative sample; he could be the Einstein of dogs or a genetic freak), but I think dogs have been bred for a human-compatible interface. I'm more interested in evidence of linguistic ability/pattern preference in wilder animals.

[sartorias]

I have always been a firm believer not only in the linguistic ability of dogs, but their ability to see subtle signals. I had a dog once who had a sense of humor, and who responded to changes in expression no larger than eyeflicks.