Course HUSL 6355.

001 Beauty

Professor Frederick Turner

Term Fall 2010

Meetings Tuesday 10:00 am-12:45 pm

Professor’s Contact Information

Office Phone 972-437-2155 (cel 214-213-8581)
Office Location JO 5.522
Email Address frederick.turner@gmail.com website <frederickturnerpoet.com>
Office Hours Thursday 3:15-6:15 pm
I don’t read Web CT mail.
Other Information For University policy on student citizenship, see
(http://provost.utdallas.edu/home/syllabus-policies-and-procedures-text)

General Course Information

We will explore questions of this kind:

Is beauty one or many? appearance or reality? changing or unchanging?

relative or absolute? If “just” means “fair,” and “fair” means “beautiful,” is
justice an aesthetic concept? If Thrasymachus in the Republic is right, can Hitler
have been wrong? If Thrasymachus is wrong, can contemporary poststructuralist
theory in the humanities, "cultural studies," etc, be right? If beauty is freedom
and play, how can it exist in a physical universe (and a human society based on
its necessities) that are deterministic? Is the universe deterministic? Is beauty
the same as the aesthetic? Are the problems of dualism--mind/matter, soul/body,
etc--the shipwreck of beauty, or is beauty the solution of them? Do animals have
an aesthetic? Can beauty be rooted in animal ritualization? What would a classic
Darwinian account of beauty look like? What are the limits of classic Darwinian
theory? Is every human language a closed hermeneutic circle, an
Course Description incommensurable culture-world, a "language-game," or is there a deep universal
human language, a "humanese" or "worldese" of which natural languages are
"dialects"? I.e., is verbal beauty purely local or both local and universal? Can
the nature/nurture problem be overcome by a sophisticated gene/culture
coevolutionary theory? Can there be a neurobiology of aesthetic experience? Do
mind-brain issues cloud or enrich the question of aesthetics? If beauty is both a
biological and a cultural phenomenon, how is the relationship between these
aspects mediated? What are the implications for arts education if beauty genres
are hardwired in the brain? Is beauty an objective property of the universe? If
beauty is an objective property of the universe, what is the universe like and
where does beauty fit in? Can chaos and complexity theory help us toward a new
understanding of aesthetics? What is the relationship between a
Chaos/complexity theory of beauty and an evolutionary theory of beauty? Can
game theory assist us in creating narratives and games that have the allure of
beauty? Can we pull all this together? What makes a story beautiful? What
makes a game beautiful? How should the academic humanities be changed--in

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 goals, self-description, relationship to the public, disciplinary organization, etc, if
our conclusions (if any) are valid? How will this new view of the arts fit into the
increasingly democratic, diminishingly statist, market capitalist, ethnically
diverse, theologically reawakened, technologically sophisticated global culture of
today?

1. Students will be able to give a plausible answer to any of the questions

specified in the course description, using the required texts.
2. Students will show in writing how scientific and humanistic definitions of
Learning Outcomes
aesthetics differ and/or can be resolved.
3. Students will demonstrate in class discussion a knowledge of the
interdisciplinary issues addressed in the course.

Plato: Republic (Grube trans.) Hackett

Friedrich Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Dover
Konrad Lorenz: On Aggression, Harvest
Stephen Pinker: The Language Instinct, Penguin
Brett Cooke and Frederick Turner: Biopoetics, Paragon ICUS
Required Texts & Epstein, Rentschler & Herzberger: Beauty and the Brain, Birkhauser Verlag
Materials Gyorgy Doczi: The Power of Limits, Shambhala
James Gleick: Chaos: Making a New Science
Benoit Mandelbrot: The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Freeman
J. T. Fraser: Time, the Familiar Stranger, Tempus
Judith Wechsler: On Aesthetics and Science, Birkhauser
Robert Wright: Nonzero: The Logic of Hunan Destiny, Pantheon
Frederick Turner: Beauty: The Value of Values, U P of Virginia

Assignments & Academic Calendar

[Topics, Reading Assignments, Due Dates, Exam Dates]
Week 1 Introduction

Week 2 READ Plato’s Republic, books 1, 2, 6, and 7. QUIZ

Week 3 READ Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man QUIZ

Week 4 READ Lorenz: On Aggression QUIZ

Week 5 READ Pinker: The Language Instinct QUIZ

Week 6 READ Biopoetics QUIZ

Week 7 READ Beauty and the Brain QUIZ

Week 8 READ Doczi: The Power of Limits QUIZ

Week 9
READ Gleick: Chaos QUIZ

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 Week 10 READ Mandelbrot: Fractal (as much as you can: look at the pictures) QUIZ

Week 11 READ Fraser: Time, the Familiar Stranger QUIZ

Week 12 READ Wechsler: On Aesthetics and Science QUIZ

Week 13 READ Wright: Nonzero QUIZ

Week 14 READ Turner: Beauty QUIZ

Week 15 Conclusions

Course Policies
The quizzes will consist of a question on the reading of the week or the previous
week, to be answered within about 10-15 minutes at the start or end of the class
Grading (credit) in the form of about a page of prose. Quiz grading will reflect the reading
Criteria preparation and originality of the answers. Contribution to class discussion will
count for 1/2 of the final grade, and the average of the quiz grades for 1/2. Extra
credit may be given for an optional paper.
Make-up Exams None
Extra Credit An optional paper of 3-5 thousand words
Late Work Not accepted without major excuse
Special
None
Assignments
Attendance will not be kept, but a missed quiz will count as an F and three
Class Attendance missed quizzes will result in an F for the class, unless a compelling excuse (e.g.
medical emergency, bereavement) is given.
The Socratic seminar format of the class requires punctuality, a queue (kept by
Classroom
the professor) for contributions, no side conversations, and a few other rules to
Citizenship
be explained.
Field Trip
N/A
Policies

These descriptions and timelines are subject to change at the discretion of the Professor.