Status Updates From The Substance of Style: How...

Reading this on my iPhone during occasional train rides when I'm not reading a periodical. Basically it's a thoughtful and extensive survey of the increasing influence of design. We're living in what Postrel often terms "the era of look and feel." Here are some of the influences and consequences.

"Beauty is not a measure of goodness or truth", but neither does it signify decadence or waste. "Look and feel appeal directly to us as visual, tactile, emotional creatures, but they do not inevitably override our cognitive faculties, much less our sense of right or wrong." Aesthetics complements goodness & truth.

"Galileo himself was not just a great scientist, mathematician and writer but an accomplished draftsman who recorded his lunar observations in watercolours. Before romanticism declared art the province of a talented, bohemian few, drawing and painting were both common scientific tools and signs of personal refinement."

Postrel's teacher "didn't take aesthetics any more seriously than she took social studies. She looked only for decoration, surface without substance, and had low standards even there. It was enough to be 'creative' and 'expressive'. The teacher viewed artwork as intuitive and innate, the opposite of intellect or skill. She thus neither taught technique not demanded that form serve meaning."

"If teachers are substituting what another writer calls a 'Crayola curriculum' for critical thinking and writing skills, it's not because aesthetics is inherently incompatible with rigorous academics but because such teachers are avoiding rigour in all its forms."

It's not always true that people seek beauty only once more practical needs are met: "To a peasant in a subsistence economy, significantly better housing or faster transportation might require more than a lifetime's income, while a bit of decorative carving or an elaborately braided hairstyle takes only time, skill, and minimal expense. In this instance, someone will choose aesthetics over more 'basic' goods."

Recent "scholarship challenges the received academic wisdom that tastes are as different as languages, that the art of one culture is incomprehensible to the previously unexposed people of another. In fact, languages themselves begin with universals. So, apparently, do aesthetic responses....Within the universal patterns are individual variations."

Recent "scholarship challenges the received academic wisdom that tastes are as different as languages, that the art of one culture is incomprehensible to the previously unexposed people of another. In fact, languages themselves begin with universals. So, apparently, do aesthetic responses....Within the universal patterns are individual variations."

In the 2001 British election, "Hague's looks were universally declared a major political problem, before and after he was trounced by Tony Blair. 'The general view is that he looks a lot like a fetus in a suit,' said an old friend and ally."

And here I thought the Byzantines were hilarious with their frank insistence on good-looking emperors.