Digital Commons@RISD Home > Division of Liberal Arts > Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive) > Vol. 21 (2023)
Abstract
Modern cosmology has revealed a Universe that is wholly unexpected; a defining feature is that its largest constituent parts are either dark or hidden behind the cosmological horizon, making them in principle unobservable.
These discoveries raise the important question of what constitutes an aesthetic appreciation of the Universe? By considering various modes of appreciation, I argue that a fuller aesthetic appreciation of the Universe would need to augment its visual forms of appreciation with conceptual and imaginative modes of appreciation informed by scientific knowledge.
This argument can have a direct bearing on the long-standing debate concerning the role of cognitive elements in aesthetic appreciation, by providing examples in the largest possible natural settings, where the cognitive element does not just enhance the aesthetic appreciation of that which is seen but crucially also enables additional modes of conceptual and imaginative appreciation of vast parts of the Universe that exist but are in principle invisible.
Finally, to have a glimpse of how profoundly radical, novel, and unique the modern Universe is aesthetically, I consider an imaginary installation as an earthy mimesis for the Universe that includes some radical gestures from modern conceptual art.