Aesthetic phenomena can be organized into lists that reflect their structure as mixtures of primitive perceptual opposites, demonstrate aesthetic indifference and show that large numbers of individual aesthetic events can be explained by a relatively small set of biases in their favor. Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease
Universal patterns in language and behavior reveal that pairs of psychological opposites are structured such that one component is more arousing than the other. What, was he sad, or merry? Like to the time o’ the year between the extremes Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye. — François Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680 (Bartlett 2022) Nay, I'll come: if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy. — Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (2022) Strangely, any mixture of
The same psychological bias that causes the selection of fluid~solid mixtures in poetry and creation stories causes them in culture more widely, in myths, stories, religions, rituals, paintings, sculptures, architecture, decoration, language and elsewhere. Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and
Philosophers have always recognized life as a complex mixture of fluid and solid components. © 2025 Andrew Hodgson That which is bound may be dissolved, but only an evil being would dissolve that which is harmonious and happy. And although you are not immortal you shall not die, for I will
The most important and under-appreciated characteristic of life is its complex, intermediate, liquid crystalline physical condition. Liquid crystals stand between the isotropic liquid and the strongly organized solid state, life stands between complete disorder, which is death, and complete rigidity, which is death again. — Dervichian (Repula 2022) The aspect of
The idea of death is coupled euphemistically with qualities from the more exciting side of primitive perceptual dimensions. O Unas, you have not gone dead, you have gone alive to sit on the throne of Osiris. Your scepter is in your hand that you may give orders to the living,
Heat Even thus did we bore the red hot beam into his eye, till the boiling blood bubbled all over it as we worked it round and round, so that the steam from the burning eyeball scalded his eyelids and eyebrows, and the roots of the eye sputtered in the
The abundance of juxtapositions of fluidity with solidness in poetry requires an explanation involving a universal feature of human psychology. I have seen a medicine That's able to breathe life into a stone, Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary With spritely fire and motion; whose simple
The structure of creation stories reflects the complex physical, liquid crystalline state of living matter. Having this in view, the Creator mingled earth with fire and water and mixed with them a ferment of acid and salt, so as to form pulpy flesh. — Plato, Timaeus (1873) Blood is thicker than
How Edgar Allan Poe accidentally predicted the discovery of liquid crystals. Another reason was, that the incidents to be narrated were of a nature so positively marvellous, that, unsupported as my assertions must necessarily be, I could only hope for belief among my family, and those of my friends who
© 2023-2025 Andrew Hodgson. Edited by Lisa Anthony and Margaret Krous. The idea that our sense of beauty is related to physical conditions in the brain was first proposed and demonstrated, to my knowledge, by Esther Leslie in Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form. For it is