Aesthetics and the Biology of the Fleeting Moment

AESTHETICS AND THE BIOLOGY OF THE FLEETING MOMENT ROLAND FISCHER* Empty eyeballs knew That knowledge increases unreality, that Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show. —W. B. Yeats When Goethe's Faust, after tumultuous years ofsearching, finally begs the moment, "Oh Augenblick verweil', Du bist so schön!" he expresses— against his will—the paradoxical desire ofman both to fixate a beautiful moment and still to go on living. There is really no choice but to go on living. Instants do not exist by themselves; they have to be perceived as rhythmical sequences ofnear simultaneities which—coupled to our metabolic rate—are fused to lead to an experience ofduration. This essay will attempt to analyze the biological basis underlying the creation and duration ofa fleeting moment. Contemporary scientific concepts about the genesis and death ofa momentum filled with experience are related to and a continuation of man's historical effort to account for existence . Projecting order into and determining lawfulness among phenomena constitute an age-old preoccupation of man. Read [i] gives a succinct description ofhow men, time and again, have attempted to order aesthetic experience. Since the early days ofGreek philosophy men have tried to find in art a geometrical law, for ifart (which they identify with beauty) is harmony, and harmony is the due observance ofproportions, it seems reasonable to assume that these proportions are fixed. The pyramids * Research Division, Department ofPsychiatry, College ofMedicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus io, Ohio, U.S.A. This paper is based on a lecture, "La biologie de l'instant fugitif," delivered September 24, 1963, at the Clinique Psychiatrique Universitaire de Lausanne, Switzerland. The author is indebted to his artist wife, Trudy, for many illuminating discussions and to Miss Carolyn Kelley, Mrs. Patricia Hutchins, and Robert C. Elliott for editorial assistance. This article is respectfully and affectionately dedicated to Dr. Heinrich Klüver. 210 Roland Fischer · The Fleeting Moment Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter 1965 ofEgypthavethus beenexplained, Gothic cathedralsandthe beauty ofthe human body interpreted. From Agrippa von Nettesheim through Dürer and Blake these efforts have recurred [2]. Aesthetic Considerations Let us examine the relation between order and complexity in the visual image as the basis ofthe aesthetic experience.1 Birkhoff[4] suggested that aesthetic feeling arises from an unusual degree of harmonious interrelation within the object. His mathematical formulation ofthe fundamental aesthetic problem is based on the idea that, within each class ofaesthetic objects, the ratio oftheir order (balance and symmetry) and complexity (O/C) yields the aesthetic measure (M) of any object in the class. The basic formula can be written M = O/C. Birkhoffs is only one attempt to seek explanation ofaesthetic pleasure in terms oflawfulness, regularity, harmony, balance, and symmetry. In a more recent attempt, Meyer [5] showed that it is possible to increase the length ofviewing time in a monkey by increasing the constraint—which he equates, after Garner [6], with the amount of inter-relatedness or structure ofa system ofvariables as measured in informational terms—of the displayatwhichhe is looking. Meyer believes thatthe rewards that one obtains from looking at a picture are rewards exactly in the sense that drinks ofwater, bitsoffood, ororgasmsare rewards. "Anything, in principle , will serve as a reward ifits consequence for stimulation is such that the degree ofstimulus noisiness, randomness, or entropy is thereby reduced." Meyer's concept ofidentifying aesthetic pleasure with reward is questionable , since values attached to pleasurable—or painful—experiences are neither measurable nor the outcome of simple cause-and-effèct relationships . McCulloch [7] states that, apart from urgency and the conditions of the moment, values do not constitute a hierarchy. Through a series oftests with rats it can be determined at what degree ofstarvation for both food and sex half of the experimental animals will prefer food and half sex. How much punishment would prevent halfthe rats from seeking food or halffrom seeking sexual activity can also be plotted. Now, ifwe assume that values have a common measure, then rats starved for both food and sex so that they choose halfand halfought to be willing to take the same 1 Beauty seems to have receded or even disappeared from contemporary aesthetic theory; as a genericvalue...