The Definition of Aesthetics and Beauty

This chapter proposes the definition of beauty and discusses the levels of beauty and the structure of beauty. This chapter points out that Aesthetics should be a science that studies beauty in general, including natural beauty, artistic beauty, design beauty, and aesthetic feelings. Beauty, just like material and thinking, is the foundation of everything, without which the world won't even exist. Beauty is an evolutionary existence, an objective and natural existence, and an existence of emergence. It is hierarchical, structural, and dynamic, and its core is the “least action principle”.

Methodology of Aesthetics

Consideration is made of the modern realist “democratic aesthetics” of Russian thinkers (i.e., the Utopians like Proudhon and Tolstoy and the revolutionary democratic conceptions of thinkers like Belinskii and Herzen and the Proletarian socialist aesthetics of Marxism-Leninist thought) and the modern Chinese cultural aesthetics approach of Qian Xuesen. This results in the emergence of a set of methodological values of system philosophy and concludes that system philosophy constitutes the methodology of aesthetic research.

Western Aesthetics

This chapter studies the development and basic ideas of Western aesthetic thoughts by reviewing the aesthetic history of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages and by investigating the modern and contemporary aesthetics. It initially discusses the dominant classical Greek aesthetics, the medieval aesthetics, the 19th century aesthetics, and finally the modern aesthetics. The chapter finds that while the history of aesthetics is marked by countless schools of thoughts, only a few people of rare talent have made significant contribution to the entire human civilization through their aesthetic theories and ideas.

The Fundamental Principles and Laws of the Ontology of Systems Aesthetic Philosophy

This chapter notes that the philosophical ontology of system aesthetics is also the ontology of the systems philosophy and points out that system philosophy is the foundation of systemic beauty and explains the basic rules of systemic aesthetics. According to the view of systems philosophy, beauty lies in the unity of system diversity: the regularity and the rationality of the unity, the symmetry and non-conservation of the universe, the fit-for-purpose of the least action principle, and the hierarchy and structure of optimization. Those all constitute the overall beauty of systems aesthetics.

Chinese Aesthetics

This chapter studies the development and basic ideas of Chinese aesthetics by reviewing the history of aesthetic perspective from the Han Dynasty; the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties; the Tang Dynasty; the Five Dynasties; the Song and Yuan Dynasties; and the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The ancient Chinese artists pursued the artistic conception of beauty, namely, the integration of mind and objects, sentiments, and scenes, and the fusion of subjective emotions and objective landscape. Nevertheless, this conception overlooks the function of practice, the intermediary between mind and objects. Actually, there are three fundamental elements: emotion (first feeling) of aesthetic subjects; artistic conception sensed through the painting brush in practice (perception); poetry, books, songs, and paintings as artistic finished products (containing essence and sentiments). It is the combination, conformity, and harmonious co-existence of these three essentials (namely subject–practice–object) that constitute the art system aesthetics or design aesthetics.

The Beauty of Design

In this chapter, the principle of design beauty is proposed, and the hierarchy of design beauty is pointed out. The principles of design beauty are high-quality materials (light, thin, soft, or hard), best technologies (consistent with mathematical theories, namely the “structure of force” by Rudolf Arnheim), and best structure (consistent with the least action principle). In the history of aesthetics, artistic design can be divided into three periods in terms of its nature and tendency: the period of “imitation” and “similarity,” the period of “concepts,” and the period when Deign beauty prevails everywhere.

The Beauty of Art

This chapter explains the hierarchy, structure and manifestation of artistic beauty. In this chapter, the author points out that the beauty of art lies in the conceptual integration, harmony, and unity of rationality and natural beauty. It is the reflection of the hierarchical beauty of emergence in people's consciousness. It studies various types of arts, including plastic arts (paintings, sculptures, and architectures), audio arts, linguistic arts (words and literature and poetry), and performing arts (drama, dance, and movie). The chapter also concludes that the beauty and ugliness of art are relative. They are both conditional and have their own self-organization evolution process. From beautiful and comparatively beautiful to more beautiful and most beautiful, from ugly and comparatively ugly to uglier and most ugly, beauty and ugliness both go through a process of emergence, evolution, and development. They are both formed in a linear structure.

The Beauty of Nature

This chapter argues that beauty of nature is the intrinsic quality of things and examines various types of natural beauty, including the beauty of landforms, the beauty of animals and creatures, the beauty of flowers, the beauty of trees and the natural in poetry. It also studies the hierarchy of natural beauty and finds that all objects, be it the universe, the solar system or the earth, are all of the same origin, and things evolve from a singularity and are in similar shapes rather than different shapes. It holds that the structure of natural beauty consists of three factors, namely the moving cause, the final cause, and the formal cause, and that these three factors (namely the structure of beauty) determine the function, the effect, as well as the characteristics of beauty. This chapter concludes that the utmost beauty is the natural beauty which emerges in the coordinated evolution of the universe, nature, and the human society. It is the origin of all artistic and design beauty.

Mathematical Foundations of Aesthetics

Mathematical methods were used to prove the principle of aesthetics. It was pointed out that the least action principle is the fundamental law of harmonious beauty. This chapter establishes a variational equation of the beauty of harmony, with the left side of the equation being the least action principle, which represents energy efficiency and time efficiency, while the right side refers to harmony and beauty, namely the beauty of harmony. The mathematical symbol linking the two sides suggests that physics, philosophy, and aesthetics are unified in a harmonious and organic way. Its beauty lies in the fact that the two sides of the equation are not only symmetric, congruous, orderly, and succinct, but also in the fact that it has a very beautiful look.