Thermoaesthetics: Life in Terms of the Nonliving

Universal animal preferences for mixtures of differentially exciting physical and psychological opposites

© 2023-2026 Andrew Hodgson. Edited by Lisa Anthony and Margaret Cameron.
Draft 1.

For it is by earth that we see earth,
by water water,
By aether divine aether,
and by fire destructive fire,
And fondness by fondness,
and strife by baleful strife.

— Empedocles (see Montanari and Montana 2022)

The Magical-Looking Water of Tsalal Island

How Edgar Allan Poe 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 have had reason, through life, to put faith in my veracity—the probability being that the public at large would regard what I should put forth as merely an impudent and ingenious fiction.

— A.G. Pym (Poe 1838)

The account given below of the unusual water in the streams of Tsalal Island, from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), is claimed by Encyclopedia Britannica (Mahan and Widom 2024) to be “perhaps the first description of a liquid crystal,” a complex physical state of matter that sets life apart from the nonliving, facilitates the operation of the animal brain and sensory systems, allows the existence of consciousness and evidently provides an explanation for the aesthetic biases and effects in biology that Darwin described as exceptions to the process of natural selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

Arthur Gordon Pym, the main character in Poe’s novel, initially a stowaway on a whaling ship, finds himself aboard the schooner Jane Guy on an expedition in the Southern Ocean after various unexpected events at sea. Although it starts out as a realistic adventure story, and claims to be a record of true events, things become increasingly supernatural as Pym travels south. At about the eighty-fourth parallel, with “the sea being of an extraordinarily dark colour,” the crew comes across an archipelago. They anchor the ship and travel inland accompanied by native inhabitants on an island called Tsalal, the name of which is pronounced with a prolonged hissing sound. Along the way they discover the trees are nothing like other trees, the rocks are “novel” in their mass and color, and the people are “the most wicked, hypocritical, vindictive, bloodthirsty, and altogether fiendish race of men upon the face of the globe,” but the strangest thing about Tsalal is the “singular,” “magical-looking,” liquid crystal-like water flowing through its streams:

I am at a loss to give a distinct idea of the nature of this liquid, and cannot do so without many words. Although it flowed with rapidity in all declivities where common water would do so, yet never, except when falling in a cascade, had it the customary appearance of limpidity. It was, nevertheless, in point of fact, as perfectly limpid as any limestone water in existence, the difference being only in appearance. At first sight, and especially in cases where little declivity was found, it bore resemblance, as regards consistency, to a thick infusion of gum Arabic in common water. But this was only the least remarkable of its extraordinary qualities. It was not colourless, nor was it of any one uniform colour — presenting to the eye as it flowed every possible shade of purple, like the hues of a changeable silk. … Upon collecting a basinful, and allowing it to settle thoroughly, we perceived that the whole mass of liquid was made up of a number of distinct veins, each of a distinct hue; that these veins did not commingle; and that their cohesion was perfect in the regard to their own particle among themselves, and imperfect in regard to the neighboring veins. Upon passing the blade of a knife athwart the veins, the water closed over it immediately, as with us, and also, in withdrawing it, all traces of the passage of the knife were instantly obliterated. If, however, the blade was passed down accurately between the two veins, a perfect separation was effected, which the power of cohesion did not immediately rectify. The phenomena of this water formed the first definite link in that vast chain of apparent miracles with which I was destined to be at length encircled.

According to King (1969), liquid crystals, specifically of the “cholesteric” or “chiral nematic” variety, were first described by the Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer in 1888, and named by Otto Lehmann in 1889, half a century after Poe’s book was published in 1838, so it’s impossible for Poe to have given a firsthand description. There is, however, a way for him to have done so inadvertently. Plasma membranes, a major component of all cells, including most relevantly neurons, are liquid crystalline in their physical composition, making the structure of the brain isomorphic with the water of Tsalal, and providing a connection potentially allowing Poe to have come up with such an accurate depiction of an undiscovered state of matter.

Tsalal water is, in many ways, more complex, lifelike and brain-like than normal water. Its complexity is evident in terms of description length, as Poe points out. It’s separated over short intervals into more and less viscous sections, with an overall consistency in between that of a normal fluid and solid. It’s both “perfect” and “imperfect” (order~disorder) at the same time, both clear and many changing versions of the color purple. It somehow flows rapidly while also being thick like gum arabic, or acacia tree sap (dynamic~static), and has the life-like property of recovering its structure, somewhat, after being disturbed in particular ways. Any of these qualities could contribute to the reason Poe’s magical water is so often given as the original liquid crystal description (Dunmur and Sluckin 2014): “These days, liquid crystal scientists like to speculate that Poe, through some remarkable insight, had imagined the liquid crystals of the future.”

Britannica probably got the idea from Kelker’s “History of Liquid Crystals” (1973) or an article titled “Cholesterics Already Described in 1838!” by Stegemeyer and Kelker in the journal Liquid Crystals Today (1991), in which the authors ask: “Can anybody answer the question where Edgar Allan Poe received information about cholesterics? Or was he a clairvoyant?” One answer typically given is that Poe must have observed semi-solidified blood outside the body in American slaughterhouses (Petrov 1999), which would have been similar to the water of Tsalal because “In its usual state within the human body, blood is an ordinary disordered isotropic fluid. The disklike shape of red blood cells, however, favours liquid crystallinity at certain concentrations and temperatures” (Mahan and Widom 2024).

Arguably, however, the water’s complexity goes beyond what might be expected in a portrayal of partially coagulated blood in buckets at a slaughterhouse, and if Poe had that experience it hardly follows he would choose to apply it to the water on an imaginary island in a future story. Poe saw any number of things with liquid crystal-like properties, such as a thick infusion of gum Arabic in water, which he mentions, or various other physically intermediate substances, but they don’t explain his motivation. Happening to encounter something doesn’t, by itself, lead a person to reproduce the thing artistically. There’s a distinction between having an experience and being inspired by it. A musician doesn’t remake a song just because they’ve heard it before; t’s also because they liked the way it sounded. A person doesn’t repeat a joke because they’ve head it before, it’s also because they thought it was funny.

Amusing things spread by capturing and holding our attention, persisting in the mind and tempting us to repeat or recreate them to a greater degree than unamusing things. It’s not the singer that makes a song musical, the poet that makes words poetic or the comedian that makes a joke funny, it’s something about the mind and brain of the observer. Artists don’t invent beauty and unconsensually impose it on their audience. Rather, they exploit biases that were already in place. Poe thought readers would like the water because he liked it himself, whether he got the idea from something he saw, heard in a conversation, read in a book, dreamt in a dream, or if he came up with it out of nowhere. Even if he could have learned about liquid crystals by looking into the future the question of why he was intrigued by the concept would still need to be answered.

Assuming a phenomenon gets remembered, is reproduced or passed on simply because it occurred at some point in the past is a logical mistake known as an origin fallacy, in which factors other than initial existence are ignored even though they might play a key role in the outcome under consideration. This is an issue in aesthetics generally, perhaps especially so in language. It’s easy to think that we use the expression “break the ice” because Shakespeare used it in The Taming of the Shrew, disregarding that we also probably say this because we like the idea of destruction mixed with solidness and associate lack of interaction with coldness. It’s easy to think we say there’s “method to the madness” because Shakespeare said something close to this in Hamlet, when in reality we repeat the phrase because we’re interested in juxtapositions of order and chaos.

Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't.

— Shakespeare, Hamlet (2022)

Regardless of where Poe got the idea of a semi-solid, semi-rapid, semi-orderly stream, the mystery is why he found it amusing, and thought, correctly, that others would as well. The simplest way to understand Poe’s apparent clairvoyance is a universal aesthetic bias in favor of fluidity coupled with solidness, which arises as a side effect of the special, simultaneously fluid and solid condition of the brain itself. The introduction of Esther Leslie’s book Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form, titled “Slush,” describes a famous painting from the early 1800’s by Caspar David Friedrich:

There is an old image of liquid crystal. It is an image of liquid turned crystal and crystal amid liquid. It is a painting known in German as Das Eismeer, which literally means the ice sea or the Sea of Ice, and refers to a polar sea, such as is found in the outermost North or most extreme South of the globe.

Leslie’s prose is poetic, with six mentions of fluidity interspersed with five mentions of solidness in the first two sentences, although in the painting itself there doesn’t seem to be any unfrozen water. She continues in the second paragraph outlining juxtapositions one might appreciate in the painting, some of which are indicated in brackets:

The Sea of Ice [fluid~solid] depicts expanses of ice amid seawater [fluid~solid] under a frozen sky [up/fluid~cold/solid]. Above the horizon there is only the tiniest hint of possible warmth [hot~small], radiating from off the painting’s edge. The crystals of ice that ostensibly form the main subject of the painting appear in many forms and shades [many~solid], mutable as the water that makes them [dynamic~solid]. In the foreground are plates and chunks of ice mixed perhaps with soil, the brownish edge of land, which lies somewhere unseen and unspecified. These rusty ice blocks [red~cold/solid] resemble rubble [disorder~solid/cold] and bricks, or slabs of stone churned up [disorder/up~solid/cold] in a graveyard where death occurred long ago. In the middle ground, a greyish spike of ice skewers the freezing waters [fluid~solid, spiky~solid]. Behind it, to the left, another bluish-white [dark~bright] iceberg juts from the ocean and begins to merge with the sky [fluid~solid] and the horizon. Further back, other spears of ice [spiky~solid/cold] have melded with the chilly blue of the sky [cold/blue~up/fluid]. Some of the ice and snow is opaque, some is translucent. The dirty brown ice pile in the foreground is transmuted, in the distance, into a luminous crystal palace [bright~solid], hinting at the possibility of something better on the horizon, something beautifully crystalline, not destructively splintered. There are clumps of softer greenish and yellowish snow [yellow~green] and, here and there [in~out], frosty dustings of new snow. The icebergs have edges that are like jagged fragments of glass [disorder/spiky~cold/solid].

Leslie is apparently the first person to connect art and beauty to state of matter physics in the brain, the main idea being that the isomorphism between liquid crystallinity in neurons and the contrast between fluid and solid in aesthetic phenomena is not coincidental; the former causes the latter, and this also goes for order juxtaposed aesthetically with chaos and motion with stillness.

Assuming she’s right, isomorphism between Tsalal water and the brain also isn’t a coincidence, and Poe didn’t need to make any observations of liquid crystal-like phenomena, any more than Friedrich would need to experience a real world example of sea ice prior to composing the painting. Leslie makes the point that Friedrich had never travelled to the poles, where the scene depicted must have been situated. Likewise, a poet doesn’t necessarily rely for their creativity on being directly exposed to the concept of a poem, a writer to that of a story or a comedian to a joke.

The hypothesis is a three-part system of cause and effect: from brain liquid crystallinity (softness) to a bias in the mind for fluid~solid mixtures to the outwardly observable result: a fluid~solid aesthetic effect. Because of the universality of brain softness, the bias would be universal to humans, and to all animals with brains and sensory abilities sufficient to distinguish a fluid from a solid and recognize a mixture of the two. A fourth, ultimate cause could be added to the system: natural selection that initially favored brain softness because it allowed the evolution of consciousness and sensory systems that increased survival rates for individuals expressing them.

Fluidity, by comparison to its direct opposite solidness, corresponds everywhere in nature to dynamism and disorder in that all three qualities increase together with temperature. Oppositely, on small scales, solidness corresponds to stasis and order, all three qualities increasing together in matter as its temperature goes down. Liquid crystals, membranes, living matter, neurons and brains, like Tsalal water, are complex mixtures of disorder with order and dynamism with stasis in addition to fluidity with solidness. As such, it might be expected that the same three-part scheme of physical cause and aesthetic effect applies to the dualities dynamic~static and disorder~order. These would also be universal, by the same logic as fluid~solid, and the same isomorphism between thermophysical conditions in the brain and aesthetic phenomena would apply, disorder~order and dynamic~static biases creating the connections, as argued by Leslie.

A bias for mixtures of disorder and order can explain why Tsalal water is both perfect and imperfect, and why this mixture is present elsewhere in the story. It’s in the juxtaposition of reality, such as references to actual expeditions, with fantastic events such as the magical water, fictional animals and the temperature increasing with more negative latitude (hot~cold). In a research article published in English Journal, Helen Lee (1966) says Pym “has an inexplicable urge to seek chaos and try to convert it to order,” and that a “rhythmic counterpoint between chaos and order creates the structure of the story.”

Since fluidity, dynamism and disorder are correlated in one physical and thermal direction, that of higher excitement, while solidness, stasis and order are correlated in the opposite direction, of lower excitement, the indirect mixtures fluid~static, fluid~order, dynamic~solid, dynamic~order, disorder~solid and disorder~static can also be predicted to represent universal biases and isomorphic aesthetic effects.

Tsalal Island water is not, by far, the only time something with a mixture of liquid and crystalline characteristics has appeared in creative literature. An example of the specific mixture water~crystal can be found the first lines of Poe’s poem “To the River—.”

To the River ——
Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty — the unhidden heart
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto’s daughter;

Other examples occur throughout literature going back thousands of years, for instance in Claudian’s “On a Crystal Enclosing a Drop of Water,” from the 4th century (2025). Claudian admires the beauty of a piece of ice containing some unfrozen water. The object is more precious because it’s not fully crystalline:

This piece of ice still shows traces of its original nature: part of it has become stone, part resisted the cold. It is a freak of winter's, more precious by reason of its incomplete crystallization, for that the jewel contains within itself living water.

Its “marvelous” for being both hard and wet at the same time:

Ye waters, who confine waters in a prison akin to them, ye that are liquid still and ye that were so, what wit has united you? By what trick of freezing is the marvellous stone at once hard and wet? what containèd heat has protected those enclosed waters? what warm wind melted that heart of ice? How comes it that the jewel in whose heart the water ebbs and flows was either made solid or liquid by frost?

Its crystallinity interacts with its fluidity to enhance its value:

Alpine ice was becoming so hard that the sun could not melt it, and this excess of cold was like to make it precious as diamond. But it could not imitate that stone in its entirety for at its heart lay a drop of water which betrayed its nature. As crystal its value is enhanced, for this liquid rock is accounted a miracle and the water enclosed within it increases its rarity.

Claudian emphasized that the water isn’t just fluid. It’s also dynamic, running this way and that:

See this vein which runs in a bright streak through the translucent ice. This hidden water fears not any blast of Boreas nor winter's chill but runs this way and that. It is not frozen by December's cold, nor dried up by July's sun, nor wasted away by all-consuming time.

He says the water is also errant, or disorderly, and alive. The object as a whole is more wonderful and strange than any pure liquid or crystal:

Safely hidden away in this round covering is a stream, an errant spring, enclosed within frozen waters. Mark you not how the crystal is all awash in its cavernous heart where living waters surge this way and that, and how, when the sun penetrates its frozen depths, the hues of the rainbow are reflected in it? Wonder­ful stone, wonder­ful water: stranger than all rivers and all stones because it is a stone and yet fluid.

The object is loved by children:

Children love to handle this shining crystal and turn its chilly mass over and over in their little hands;⁠ they see imprisoned in the transparent rock the water which alone winter forebore to freeze. Pla­cing the dry sphere against their thirsty lips they press useless kisses on that which guards the waters they desire.

Its aesthetic value of surpasses that of all the jewels of kings, and Red Sea pearls, despite its “shapeless,” “rough,” “uncarven” form:

Do not despise this sphere of rock-crystal. Kings' palaces contain no rarer jewel, nor are the Red Sea's pearls of greater value. It may be shapeless ice, unpolished rock, a rough, uncarven mass, yet is it accounted among the most precious of riches.

This idea of a tolerance for disorder happens to be part of the argument Poe, who wrote himself into his own story as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, used to convince Pym to publish his narrative in spite of how difficult it is to believe:

He [Poe] strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once a full account of what I had seen and undergone, and trust to the shrewdness and common sense of the public—insisting, with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards mere authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of being received as truth.

Fluidity mixed with solidness, where it can be expressed, is one of the most obvious and ancient aesthetic themes, recurring at high frequencies not only in poetry and art but also idiomatic and metaphorical language, architecture, decoration, names and in the myths and rituals of seemingly every culture. It occurs far more often than would be expected unless the concept of a fluid reflexively tends to produce in the creative mind that of a solid and vice versa, and this is also true for mixtures of motion with stillness and disorder with order.

Other aesthetic patterns are similar in that they involve mixtures of opposites, both direct and indirect, although, unlike physical qualities, most of them can’t strictly be considered isomorphic with conditions in the brain. This includes everything from extremely fundamental, primitive perceptual dualities (e.g., hot~cold, bright~dark, red~blue, up~down, out~in, long~round, many~few) to the most recently derived cultural dualities (e.g., divine~mortal), suggesting that animal preferences in general are related to brain liquid crystallinity.

Notes

We are below the river‘s bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones.

— Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees [fluid~solid]
That palpitate like the chill seas [fluid~cold]
Around the misty Hebrides! [fluid~solid]
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven [few~fluid]
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven [disorder/loud/up]
Uneasily, from morn till even, [disorder/bright~order/dark]
Over the violets there that lie [up~down]
In myriad types of the human eye— [many~round]
Over the lilies there that wave [up/fluid]
And weep above a nameless grave! [fluid~dead]
They wave:—from out their fragrant tops [fluid/out/up]
External dews come down in drops. [out/fluid~down]
They weep:—from off their delicate stems [fluid~solid]
Perennial tears descend in gems. [fluid~solid]

— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Valley of Unrest”

Creation Stories and States of Matter

Stories of creation reflect the complex liquid crystalline physical state of life.

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 water.

— English Proverb

Mythology and philosophy are filled with examples of an appreciation for the fact that the physical situation of life is special, somewhere between hard and soft, wet and dry, movement and stillness, permanence and change, order and chaos, and generally that life is complicated compared to matter in nonliving physical conditions. Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only survivors of a flood sent by Zeus to punish King Lycaon of Arcadia for killing a boy as a sacrifice, are told by the Oracle of Themis they can repopulate the world if they “Depart from the temple with head veiled and garments unbound, and cast behind you the bones of your mother” (Bulfinch 1979). Realizing the earth was their mother, they pick up rocks, throw them backward over their shoulders (dynamic~solid), and the rocks become soft and mix with slime to make new people:

They veiled their faces, unbound their garments, and picked up stones, and cast them behind them. The stones (wonderful to relate) began to grow soft, and assume shape. By degrees, they put on a rude resemblance to the human form, like a block half-finished in the hands of the sculptor. The moisture and slime that were about them became flesh; the stony part became bones; the veins remained veins, retaining their name, only changing their use. Those thrown by the hand of the man became men, and those by the woman became women.

According to Empedocles fire, air, water and earth are engaged in an eternal cycle of transition between a relatively singular, orderly, compact cosmic sphere dominated by the attractive force of Love and an opposite, chaotic, spirally cosmic expanse generated by the repulsive force of Strife, with living things arising repeatedly throughout the cycle in periods between the extremes, when Love and Strife are in balance and the elements mix together in relatively equal proportions. Arguably, Empedocles’ cycle deserves as much as the water of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tsalal Island to be regarded as an original description of liquid crystals, in this case occurring almost 2,500 years before their discovery. Poe and Empedocles both reference three fundamental physical dualities: fluid~solid, dynamic~static and disorder~order, with the opposites of each interacting in complicated ways. These dualities also delineate perceptual dimensions, in that we recognize their constituents as fundamental opposites, and they apply for sensory systems in general, back to the first animals that were able to tell them apart.

In the ancient Chinese text Classic of Mountains and Seas the gods Fuxi and Nüwa create people from clay, animating it with the energy of divinity. Clay is used in Babylonian, Hindu, Polynesian, Laotian, Māori, Incan, Mayan, Korean, Vietnamese and many other creation myths around the world, according to Wikipedia (“Creation of Life from Clay” 2023). The Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda used mud. The Sumerian god Anki used clay and blood. The Mongolian god Ulgen used clay floating on water. In Bornean mythology the constituents are clay and sound. Prometheus uses clay to make human-shaped figures and the Goddess Athena brings them to life with her breath. In Genesis people are made from dust and, again, an injection of breath.

In Mesoamerican mythology, the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl retrieves the bones of those who died in the period of the Fourth Sun from Hell, has them ground up by a goddess, mixes them with divine blood and uses the resulting material to make new people and repopulate the world for the period of the Fifth Sun (Smith 2013):

Quetzalcoatl carried the bones to Tamoanchan, a place of paradise. The old goddess Cihuacoatl (“Woman Serpent”) ground them on a metate and placed the powder in a jade bowl. Quetzalcoatl and the other gods gathered around and shed their blood upon the ground bones, and the first people of the Fifth Sun were born.

Humans are made from a mixture of a blood and earth in the Enūma Eliš creation story of Babylon, according to the Wikipedia page “Babyloniaca (Berossus),” citing George (2021) and Beaulieu (2021):

Syncellus: There was a time, he says, when everything was darkness and water [fluid~dark] and that in it fabulous beings with peculiar forms came to life. For men with two wings were born and some with four wings and two faces, having one body and two heads, male and female, and double genitalia, male and female [male~female]. . . . For when everything was moist, and creatures had come into being in it, this god took off his own head and the other gods mixed the blood that flowed out with earth and formed men. For this reason they are intelligent and share in divine wisdom.

Fluid and solid qualities are commonly applied to the formation of the world as a whole in addition to that of people. Initially, they might be indistinct, requiring separation by a god or cosmic force, or cycle between interaction and independence, even though there’s no particular observable reason to imagine the world being different in these respects than it is as we see it today. Ovid (2006) describes the world prior to creation in terms of paradoxical mixtures of fluids and solids in the opening of Metamorphoses:

Unfirm the earth, with water mix’d and air;
Opaque the air; unfluid were the waves.
Together clash’d the elements confus’d:
Cold strove with heat, and moisture drought oppos’d;
Light, heavy, hard, and soft, in combat join’d.

The idea of thermal and physical opposites being joined in combat and clashed together in confusion is reminiscent of the account of Norse creation from Snorri Sturluson (2019). The world begins with complex interactions between solids, fluids, heat, coldness, fire, ice, melting, solidification, motion and stasis in a primordial void called Ginnungagap.

That part of Ginnungagap… that lies towards the north was thus filled with heavy masses of gelid vapour and ice, whilst everywhere within were whirlwinds and fleeting mists. But the southern part of Ginnungagap was lighted by the sparks and flakes that flew into it from Muspellheim. Thus… whilst freezing cold and gathering gloom proceeded from Niflheim, that part of Ginnungagap looking towards Muspellheim was filled with glowing radiancy, the intervening space remaining calm and light as wind-still air. And when the heated blast met the gelid vapour it melted it into drops, and, by the might of him who sent the heat, these drops quickened into life, and took a human semblance.

The being with a human semblance is Ymer, ancestor to the jötunn, rivals of the gods. Ymer is said to persist on the milk of a cow, Audhumbla, who is also born from molten drops. Another being, named Búri, emerges from salty rime as it’s consumed by Audhumbla. Búri fathers Borr, who marries Bestla, daughter of the jötunn Bölþorn, and they have three sons named Vile, Ve and Odin. The brothers slaughter Ymer, flooding the world with blood and killing all the jötunn except for one, Bergelmer, who survives in a wooden vessel. Then they drag Ymer’s body to the center of Ginnungagap and make the world using his blood for seas and lakes, his flesh for earth, bones for rocks, teeth and jaw for stones and pebbles. They raise his skull over the earth to be the dome of the heavens and throw his brains in the sky to make “melancholy clouds.” Finally, with the world ready, Odin and his brothers add the breath of life to two pieces of driftwood on the shore, making the first humans, Ask and Embla.

Stories in which a creator being is broken up into parts of the world often distribute the material of the body in a sensible way, accounting for similarities between the state of the part and that of the divine being from which it’s made. Solid body parts become solid parts of the world like rocks and trees. Liquid parts become liquids like streams and rivers.

This is the case with the Chinese god Pangu, who lives inside a chaotic cosmic egg [disorder~round] where the forces of Yin are mixed with the complementary and contradictory forces of Yang: hot with cold, sky with earth, light with dark, chaos with order, stillness with movement and male with female. Pangu emerges from the egg and proceeds, for 18,000 years, to divide the elements as he expands to lift the sky and separate it from the earth. Eventually, his arms and legs turned into the directions, his eyeballs the sun and moon and his breath the clouds and wind. His teeth and bones turned into rocks and minerals, sweat became dew, hair became grass, flesh became soil and the rivers were made of his blood. Animals are the fleas that were on his body.

In the creation myth of the North American Okanagan Tribe, from an area spanning parts of present-day Washington State and British Columbia, Old One makes Earth Woman by stretching and rolling an earth-like dough (Leeming 2010). Her hair accounted for trees and plants. The soil was her body; the stones were her bones and her breath the wind. Old One blew on small parts of her to make the animals, and humans were constructed from red clay.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses says that after fish, terrestrial animals and birds were allotted to their respected habitats the supreme creator molded man from parts of heaven, earth, ether, warmth, moisture, fire and form:

Form’d from an heavenly seed; or new-shap’d earth
Late from celestial ether torn, and still
Congenial warmth retaining, moisten’d felt,
Prometheus’ fire, and moulded took the form
Of him all-potent.

Life’s intermediate physics is also implicit in various transformations throughout Ovid’s poem, with characters turning into both liquids and solids, which wouldn’t be possible without life being a mixture to start with. Perseus turns men to stone with the head of Medusa. Atlas turns into a mountain; Arethusa into a stream. Niobé becomes rigid marble flowing forever with tears, and Cyane melts into spring water:

You would have seen her members beginning to soften,
Her bones and her fingertips starting to lose their old firmness;
Her slenderest parts were the first to be turned to fluid:
Her feet, her legs, her sea-dark tresses, her fingers (for the parts with least flesh turn into liquid most quickly);
and after these; her shoulders and back and her bosom
and flanks completely vanished in trickling liquid;
and lastly the living blood in her veins is replaced by springwater and nothing more remains that you could have seized on.

For the Abenaki people of the areas now called New England and Quebec, the creator, Tabaldak, made men and women out of stone (Haviland et al. 2013), but Tabaldak was disappointed because the hearts of the people were cold and hard, so he broke them up into the rocks that occupy the area today. He then created the Abenaki again, this time successfully using (somewhat softer) living wood, and, like trees, they would dance when moved by the wind.

It’s common for creation to unfold in such stages, with a number of attempts that fail because the material employed is too hard or too soft before the right consistency is achieved. Disappointed by the lack of devotion they receive from the nonhuman animals they create, the Kʼicheʼ Mayan gods decide to make people, hoping they will be more religious, forming them from mud in the initial attempt:

So then comes the building and working with earth and mud. They made a body, but it didn’t look good to them. It was just separating, just crumbling, just loosening, just softening, just disintegrating, and just dissolving. Its head wouldn’t turn, either. Its face was just lopsided, its face was just twisted. It couldn’t look around. It talked at first, but senselessly. It was quickly dissolving in the water.

Next, they try carving humans from wood, only to find them equally unholy and nonviable, this time for opposite reasons:

They were talking at first but their faces were dry. They were not yet developed in the legs and arms. They had no blood, no lymph. They had no sweat, no fat. Their complexions were dry, their faces were crusty. They flailed their legs and arms, their bodies were deformed.

Proper people eventually come together by adding water for blood to the flesh of yellow and white corn meal, a mixture that’s softer than wood and harder than mud, but first the gods take out the wooden version of people using a flood, rebellious pets and homicidally angry cooking utensils, exemplifying the widespread aesthetic themes of inanimate objects coming alive and the destruction of solids:

They were pounded down to the bones and tendons, smashed and pulverized even to the bones. Their faces were smashed because they were incompetent before their mother and their father, the Heart of the Sky, named Hurricane. The earth was blackened because of this; the black rainstorm began, rain all day and rain all night. Into their houses came the animals, small and great. Their faces were crushed by things of wood and stone. Everything spoke: their water jars, their tortilla griddles, their plates, their cooking pots, their dogs, their grinding stones, each and every thing crushed their faces.

Few stories could match the one told by the Spokane Tribe of Washington State for the physical diversity of ingredients that go into the people-making process (Brown and Ruby 1981):

Because he was lonesome, Coyote, after several failures, made Spokane man. In his first failure, he molded a man of pitch, who melted. He tried clay, but the rains washed the clay man away. He sculpted a man out of hot rock; it cracked. He wove a man of reeds; but this man caught fire and burned. Coyote then mixed all these elements together and — adding berries, smoke, and fire — created Spokane man. With these same elements, he created Spokane woman, and Amotkan, the Creator, gave her life.

The components of fluid~solid mixtures in creation stories can be either heterogeneous, as in breath mixed with stone or blood with bone, or homogeneous, as in clay or mud, and both types of mixtures are apparently amusing. In the first case the fluid gets more solid and the solid more fluid, in the second the starting material is already soft, although it may still be mixed with other ingredients.

The reason for so many cultures imagining almost the same scenario is that soft materials are closer to life in their texture than pure solids and fluids, which was apparent to the people inventing the myths and passing them on. Ultimately, it’s because of natural selection for liquid crystallinity and features that support it. We don’t need diffusion from a common origin narrative to explain why the myths are so similar, even though they come from different cultures and places, because people everywhere can readily observe that the constitution of humans and other animals is one of fluidity thoroughly mixed with solidness. If someone comes up with a myth that incorporates this structure (fluid~solid), it has a somewhat better chance of being adopted and passed on than one in which we’re made from either solidness or fluidity alone, regardless of the time and place.

Even though one can make sense of this pattern across creation stories using the fact that semisolid matter is a closer match for life than solid or fluid matter, there’s reason to think that the stories are also popular due to the existence of a preexisting bias in favor of fluid~solid mixtures. The same mixtures occur frequently in poetry and art, for instance, and in those contexts aesthetic value is the only explanation.

Perplexity

Perplexity’s response to “Creation stories in which clay is used to make life.”

Creation stories featuring clay as the foundational material for human life represent one of humanity's most widespread and enduring mythological motifs. Across cultures and continents, ancient peoples developed remarkably similar narratives in which divine beings sculpt the first humans from clay, earth, or mud, breathing life into these earthen forms. This cross-cultural phenomenon suggests deep symbolic resonance with humanity's relationship to the earth and the creative process itself.

Perplexity’s response to “How often do creation stories incorporate order and chaos?”

The motif of order emerging from or conquering chaos represents one of the most widespread themes in human mythology. This pattern appears across diverse cultural traditions, from the ancient Greeks' primordial Chaos giving birth to ordered cosmos to the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish where Marduk defeats the chaos goddess Tiamat. The Hebrew Bible's account of creation from tohu wa-bohu (formless void) and the Egyptian emergence of Ra from the primordial chaos waters of Nun further demonstrate this universal pattern.

Creation stories across world cultures exhibit a remarkably consistent pattern of incorporating themes of order and chaos, with approximately 77% of creation myths featuring these fundamental opposing forces as central elements.

Fluidity and Solidness in Poetry

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 touch,
Is powerful to araise King Pepin, nay,
To give great Charlemain a pen in's hand,
And write to her a love-line.

— Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well (2022)

Through history and prehistory, people have had an immediate understanding of the difference between a liquid and a solid, without needing scientists to explain the difference to them.

— Dennis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution (2010)

Shakespeare mixes fluidity with solidness in the quote above, the former represented by breath and the latter by an animated rock. Lafeu, the character who speaks the lines, is using a metaphorical scenario to make the point that the medicine is special and strong. Arguably, however, Shakespeare also chose this metaphor because it adds aesthetic value to the story by way of contradiction. A cold, solid, static, lifeless rock is opposite in our minds, and in reality, to breath, life, quickness, dancing, fire and motion, and therefore it’s surprising and amusing to imagine a rock being endowed with or put in juxtaposition to these qualities. The lines make the point about the power of the medicine and entertain us at the same time.

One could interpret the contradiction in terms of differential excitement. A normal, unexciting rock is given the more exciting quality involved in various pairs of universally recognized opposites, those described by the dualities hot~cold (fire), fluid~solid (breath), dynamic~static (life, motion, dance) and fast~slow (quickness, spritliness), with the more exciting dualistic component to the left of a tilde and less exciting component to the right. In the contexts of sensory biology and psychology these dualities represent perceptual dimensions. In aesthetics they can be thought of as mixtures. They have the same structure from either perspective, suggesting a relationship between sensory systems and beauty. By taking the given more exciting qualities and pairing them with solidness one can summarize Shakespeare’s metaphor for the rock as hot~solid, fluid~solid, dynamic~solid, fast~solid, or more concisely as hot/fluid/dynamic/fast~solid.

In the quote Lafeu is assuring the King of France there’s a treatment that will cure him of disease, to be administered by a woman named Helena, whose medicine, he says, could even breathe life into King Pepin the Short, who at the time had been dead for 800 years, or resurrect Pepin’s son Charlemagne and inspire him to write a love letter, presumably to Helena. The resurrections are another contradiction, in this case with the structure living~nonliving, one of the most common aesthetic themes in poetry, mythology and stories, as well as an essential element of many religions, which tend to apply the same exciting qualities to the dead that Shakespeare applied to the rock (see Disruptions of Death).

These are also the types of contradictory mixtures of opposites we see repeatedly in creation stories, as when humans come into existence as a result of solids being injected with the fluidity of breath. In the stories, the mixture is used as a practical solution to the problem of how to get from inanimate (solid or fluid) matter to life (a mixture). A transformation is necessary because living things are observably softer than a solid and harder than a fluid, or because, from a physical perspective, the nonliving is simple and dualistic while life is complex and intermediate. If in Shakespeare and other fiction and poetry the mixture fluid~solid is used for amusement, to satisfy an unconscious bias, it’s reasonable to assume this bias has also played a role in the evolution of creation stories and myths, exerting pressure in favor of mixtures by way of aesthetic selection that operates in addition to the apparent logical need for physical transformation. The stories make sense while also being appealing, and should converge for both reasons on descriptions of what would later be called liquid crystals.

Dunmur (2021) gives examples of the specific expression “liquid crystal” being used in poetry going back to the Renaissance. Petrarch (1304–1374) used the term, according to the translation of Elliot (1993), in “Il Canzoniere”:

The morning songs of birds on their sad themes [song~sad]
at daybreak fill the dene with echoing calls, [bright/disorder/many/high pitch~down/in]
and there’s the sigh as liquid crystals fall, [fluid~solid]
pouring in brisk and chilly shining streams. [fluid/bright~down/cold]

Later, Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) used it in “Las Soledades”:

Next day the eye of morning sees [bright~round]
pretended groves made of untruthful trees,
avenues that the farming of their town
has walled with liquid crystals and not stone. [fluid~solid]

At around the same time Shakespeare was writing lines about crystal tears, glassy streams, watery glass, liquid pearls, liquid mountains, liquids trapped in solids, melting solid flesh, melting mountains and freezing skies. One can see a pattern throughout poetry involving these mixtures and others like them so extensive and obvious that there can be no doubt of a universal tendency for them to be produced repeatedly in the creative mind. The idea of fluidity induces that of solidness, and vice versa, in a kind of aesthetic reflex.

The following quote from Shakespeare’s As You Like It (2022) is an example.

This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, [fluid~solid]
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot;
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp.

So is this, from Venus and Adonis:

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,
Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

This from Hamlet:

There’s a willow grows aslant a brook, [fluid~solid]
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. [fluid~solid]

And this from Richard II:

Too good to be so and too bad to live, [bad~good]
Since the more fair and crystal is the sky, [fluid~solid]
The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.

Of the nine uses of the word “liquid” found throughout all of Shakespeare’s writing on Open Source Shakespeare, four (~44%) exemplify the same pattern of fluidity mixed with solidness, a high proportion if one assumes such references should tend to occur randomly in relation to each other.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass.

Richard III:

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed
Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl. [fluid~solid]

Sonnet 5:

Then, were not summer’s distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, [fluid~solid]
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft.

Troilus and Cressida:

The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut, [fluid~solid]
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus’ horse: where’s then the saucy boat.

Out of the four times Shakespeare uses the word “solid” throughout his writing, three (75%) are coupled with some form of fluidity, either water or melting.

Hamlet:

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, [fluid~solid]
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Henry IV:

Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea; and other times to see [fluid~solid]
The beachy girdle of the ocean.

Troilus and Cressida:

And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe: [fluid~solid]
Strength should be lord of imbecility.

In sampling the most famous poetry, according to a Google search, clear examples of fluid~solid occur at an extremely high rate. In “Red, Red Rose,” by Robert Burns, “luve” is like a melody that will last until the “seas gang dry” and “the rocks melt wi’ the sun.” In Robert Frost’s “Birches” the trees are loaded with ice in the sun after the rain as a colorful rising breeze cracks and crazes their enamel (fluid/disorder~solid) and the warmth of the sun makes them shed crystal shells (hot~solid). In “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, the deferred dream “dries up like a raisin in the sun,” crusts and sugars over “like a syrupy sweet” or explodes. Gilgamesh is called “a raging flood-wave who destroys even walls of stone” (Kovacs 1989). The never-brewed liquor comes from “tankards scooped in pearl” in Emily Dickinson’s “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed” and the inns are molten blue (fluid~blue). In William Carlos Williams 1923 poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” the only components, aside from white chickens, are a solid red wheelbarrow and liquid water:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

Perhaps the ultimate example of the use of this mixture in poetry comes from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” where it’s used 14 times in 29 consecutive lines from a section of the poem in its fifth part, “What the Thunder Said”:

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses

If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Perplexity

Perplexity’s response to “How often do poems contain juxtapositions of fluids and solids?”

The juxtaposition of fluids and solids represents a remarkably common and enduring poetic device, though precise quantitative data on its frequency remains elusive in current scholarship. Based on available research, this contrast between states of matter appears to be more frequent than casual observation might suggest, embedded deeply in both the technical craft and thematic concerns of poetry across cultures and historical periods.

Contemporary and classical poetry frequently employs this juxtaposition across multiple dimensions. In Sylvia Plath’s “Nick and the Candlestick,” the poet creates “waxy stalactites” that function simultaneously as solid cave formations and metaphorical tears, demonstrating how fluid and solid states can merge conceptually while maintaining their distinct physical properties.

Based on available evidence, fluid-solid juxtapositions appear to be substantially more frequent in poetry than random occurrence would predict. The pattern manifests across cultures, historical periods, and poetic traditions, suggesting it addresses fundamental human experiences and provides poets with a versatile tool for exploring themes of change, permanence, transformation, and the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Perplexity’s response to “Find examples of the word crystal used together with references to fluids in the works of Shakespeare.”

Shakespeare frequently employed the word “crystal” in conjunction with various fluid imagery throughout his plays and poetry, creating a rich tapestry of metaphorical associations between the transparent mineral and different types of liquids. These combinations served multiple symbolic purposes, from conveying emotional states to describing physical beauty and natural phenomena.

Fluidity and Solidness in Culture

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 in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.

— The Bible, Revelation 4:6 (Coogan et al. 2018)

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

— The Bible, Psalm 23:5 (Coogan et al. 2018)

Anointment

Rituals involving the application of water, blood, oil and other fluids to solid objects like temples, altars, bones and statues have evolved many times in diverse cultures around the world, persisting to the present day and apparently going back before recorded history, the purpose typically being to raise the status of the object anointed to that of something more exciting, such as a sacred place, a living being, a saint, a king or a god.

Anointment of the statue of the god Marduk at Esagila, the “temple with a lofty top,” is an instance from Babylonia over 3,600 years ago. In addition to receiving food and water, baths, perfumes and fine clothing, being treated to music, dance and a recitation of the Enuma Elish creation story, the gold, silver and wooden statue of Marduk was anointed with oil, most likely olive oil infused with spices, and so was his wife, Sarpanitum, also a statue.

The Egyptians used black liquids to anoint bones, coffins, mummy cases and solid funerary items like figurines of Osiris, shabtis (assistants for the dead) and shabti boxes (Cartwright 2021). The liquids were complicated mixtures variously incorporating oil, fat, tree resin, beeswax and bitumen (Fulcher et al. 2021). Their use might have been linked to worship of the death and resurrection god Osiris, who was known epithetically as “the black one” and often shown with black or green skin.

Shortly after his birth, Siddhartha Gautama, destined to be awakened and become the latest Buddha, was bathed in fragrant water that poured down from a pair of warm and cold streams in the sky, produced either by gods or a group of nine cosmic dragons. The event is commemorated today by rituals in which water is poured over the right shoulder of statues of the Buddha as a baby from copper ladles with long handles, accompanied by the recitation of vows to do good instead of evil and liberate all living things.

Hindus pour water prepared with energizing mantras on deities and temple towers in a ritual called Kumbhabhishekam, with the water adding energy to the structure and transforming the gods inside from a nonliving stone to a devine being. In the Jain ritual Mahamastakabhisheka, hundreds of liters of milk, saffron water, turmeric water, coconut water, sugarcane juice and other liquids, and flowers, are poured on the head and down the body of a giant statue, carved in the tenth century, of the legendary hero and ascetic monk Bahubali (Gommateshvara).

The Aztecs evidently believed human blood was desired by the gods, who would retaliate in anger if it wasn’t being provided in sufficient quantities through sacrifice and bloodletting, which were also responsible for maintaining the motion of the sun, the order of the cosmos and ultimately life on Earth. It was offered in special stone bowls called cuauhxicalli, which were decorated with “undulating bands” denoting a liquid, likely the sacrificial blood they contained (Taube 2009). It was poured onto statues of the gods to provide them with nourishment (Cartwright 2018), and applied to the sun, the stars, mouths of stone idols and the cornices of chapels (Anonymous Conqueror 2025):

He plunges the knife into the breast, opens it, and tears out the heart hot and palpitating. And this as quickly as one might cross himself. At this point the chief priest of the temple takes it, and anoints the mouth of the principal idol with the blood; then filling his hand with it he flings it towards the sun, or towards some star, if it be night. Then he anoints the mouths of all the other idols of wood and stone, and sprinkles blood on the cornice of the chapel of the principal idol.

The earliest instance of anointment in the Bible might be when Jacob, after dreaming of a ladder to Heaven with ascending and descending angels (up~down), stood up the stone he’d been using as a pillow to make a pillar (up~solid) and anointed it with olive oil. A few hundred years later (~1200 BCE), in Leviticus, Moses supposedly consecrated the tabernacle and the solid objects inside with scented oil: the table, lampstand, basin, utensils, altars and the Ark of the Covenant (Coogan et al. 2018):

Then Moses took the anointing oil and anointed the tabernacle and all that was in it, and consecrated them. He sprinkled some of it on the altar seven times, and anointed the altar and all its utensils, and the basin and its base, to consecrate them. He poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron’s head and anointed him, to consecrate him.

When people are anointed, for instance in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, the liquid is commonly applied to a relatively solid part of the body, particularly the head. The purpose is usually to elevate a person’s status, connect them to a deity, heal the sick or prepare the dead for the afterlife, suggesting psychological associations between fluids and empowerment, divinity, spirituality and life.

In later temples that replaced the Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, the most holy innermost temple chamber and place where Heaven and God were thought to exist on Earth, was sprinkled with the blood of a goat and bull every year on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, a ritual similar to Aztec blood anointment of statues and chapels.

Various Christian sources claim that Adam, the first man and son of God, was entombed below the base of the Cross when Jesus was crucified at Golgotha, the “Place of the Skull.” The blood and water that ran down from Jesus’ side, when he was stabbed with a holy spear by the Roman soldier Longinus, flowed through the cracks created in the Rock of Calvary by an earthquake at the moment he died, anointing Adam’s skull and bones in a kind of reconciliation for original sin.

By being crucified above them [the remains of Adam], our Lord Jesus Christ mystically showed our salvation through the water and blood that flowed from Him, through His pierced side, . . . to sprinkle our forefathers’ remains.

— Epiphanius, Panarion (2009)

According to legend Christ’s blood also fell on rocks of green jasper, leaving red spots and creating heliotrope “bloodstones,” or “Christ stones,” which were believed to have healing powers such as the ability to stop bleeding. Bloodstones were worn around the neck as amulets, and dipped in cold water to increase their powers.

The theme of adding fluids to solids reappears in other Christian contexts, such as painting doorways with blood, sprinkling with holy water, reliquaries with holes and pathways through which water or oil are poured to flow over the bones of dead saints, or, with breath as the fluid, when God breathes on the “very dry” bones filling a valley to resurrect them in the Book of Ezekiel (Bible 2025):

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.’

This event is notable for its similarity to the way life and/or humans are made in Egyptian, African, Greek, Norse, Native American, Islamic and other creation stories, by the injection of breath into clay, wood or other solids. It also happens to be how God made the first person in the Bible (Coogan 2018):

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

We see the same mixture in magical Greek breathing stones, the gambling superstition of blowing on dice for good luck, the Egyptian practice of transferring the dying breath of sacrificed animals such as birds and lizards to a statue or amulet to make it come alive, and in poetry, as discussed in Fluidity and Solidness in Poetry using an example from Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (2022):

I have seen a medicine
That's able to breathe life into a stone,
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary

There are also magical events from famous stories that involve adding fluids to solids. For instance, in Chrétien De Troyes Yvain, the Knight of the Lion (2018) a magical stone triggers a storm and the appearance of the guardian knight when water is spilled on it from a nearby spring:

If thou wilt take of the water in the basin and spill it upon the stone, thou shalt see such a storm come up that not a beast will remain within this wood; every doe, star, deer, boar, and bird will issue forth. For thou shalt see such lightning-bolts descend, such blowing of gales and crashing of trees, such torrents fail, such thunder and lightning, that, if thou canst escape from them without trouble and mischance, thou wilt be more fortunate than ever any knight was yet.

Other occasions in which liquids are applied to solids include the widely practiced wetting the hulls of newly constructed ships or new buildings and roofs with water, blood, beer, rum or wine, or the anointment of the weapons and armor of medieval knights. Libation rituals in which fluids are poured onto the earth, temples or other solids have the same structure as the given practices of anointment, and the same tendency to arise and persist ubiquitously. Libation is among the most ancient and mysterious of religious activities (“Libation” 2025), with a “remarkable degree of similarity between religions that otherwise have little connection.”

For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.

— The Bible, 2 Samuel 14:14 (2008)

The probability is low of so many cultures persistently converging on the practice of mixing fluidity with solidness in the form of anointment without a process of selection, rather than a series of coincidental events, pushing them toward this outcome. There’s a clue to the mechanism or selection agent at work in the fact that the fluid is always understood to elevate the status of the subject of anointment, from a statue to a god, a dead pharaoh to a pharaoh living in the underworld, a stone temple to a conduit of blood for the cosmos, the Tabernacle to a house of God on Earth, a stone to a sacred marker for a spiritual vision or a magical device, or “very dry” dead bones to a “very great multitude” of resurrected Israelites. The subject is more arousing after it’s anointed than it was before. This supports predictions 1 and 2 in Thesis and Predictions.

Fluids From Solids

Thou shalt see the mountains that thou supposest fixed, passing by like clouds.

—The Koran 27:88 (Bartlett 2022)

He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the wickedness of its inhabitants. He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water.

— The Bible, Psalm 107:35 (Coogan et al. 2018)

In another popular mythological and religious motif fluidity is produced by solidness, rather than being added to it. Although it seems to be less common than anointment, likely because it’s relatively fantastic, and impossible in practice, it shows up at least four times in the Bible, once when Moses hits a rock with a staff in Exodus 17 (Coogan et al. 2018):

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’

Moses does the same thing many years later, in Numbers 20:

Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank.

God makes sure to get credit for the production of water in Psalm 78:

He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap.

In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all night long with a fiery light.

He split rocks open in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.

He made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

In 1 Corinthians, we find out the water-spilling rock was mobile, and that it was Jesus:

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Turning rock into water or making a solid object otherwise produce it is not the only option for providing it to thirsty people, especially for God. He could have redirected a river, dropped bottled water from the sky, made the Israelites impervious to desiccation, or made it rain, which He’d done before, most famously in the Genesis Flood, but also in Kings, Deuteronomy and Zechariah.

Previous to Moses striking a rock the second time in Numbers, Rabbinic writings say the Israelites got their water from Miriam’s Well, which differed from the usual well in that it was a beehive-sized, sieve-like sphere of solid rock that rolled through the desert under it’s own power spraying drinkable water into the air like a geyser, as needed to keep millions of people hydrated for forty years. The Well disappeared when Miriam died, or quit providing water, creating the need for Moses and/or God to turn more rock into water for the remainder of their final year wandering in the desert, on the way to the “land flowing with milk and honey.”

Similarly, the Zoroastrianism god Mithras saved the lives of his followers during a drought by creating a flood of water from a rock by shooting it with an arrow, the same rock from which he was born. In depictions of the event he can be seen emerging equipped with a dagger, a torch and a Phrygian cap, along with shooting flames and a fountain of water, often accompanied by the water god Oceanus, the winds, and exciting animals such as a scorpion, raven, snake, lion, crocodile or dog.

The Mayan god of wind, rain and breath Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent, was in possesion of a magical stone called the “wind gem,” believed to be the divine source of air, wind and hurricanes in Mesoamerican mythology. The Aztec counterpart of the gem is a section of a conch shell that Quetzalcoatl wore around his neck, its spiraling shape representing the fluidity of breath and wind. The Mayans and Aztecs were influenced by the Olmecs, who used jade for wind gems going back to around 1000 BCE or more, carving it into the flowing shape of an oyster shell.

In The Poetic Edda & The Prose Edda, Saemund Sigfusson and Snorri Sturluson (2019) explain how the dead warriors Odin collects, the Einheriar, subsist in Valhall, the hall of the slain, while they wait to be released and fight in the battle of Ragnarök. They eat the flesh of a repeatedly resurrected, cornucopia-like porky beast named Sæhrímnir every day, and drink mead provided by the goat Heidrûn, who produces enough for at least 432,000 soldiers from the nourishment he gets by munching on the branches of the tree Lærâd, which grows on the top of the hall:

Five hundred doors, and forty eke [many~entrance], I think, are in Valhalla. Eight hundred Einheriar will at once from each door go when they issue with the wolf to fight.

Five hundred floors, and forty eke, I think, has Bilskirnir with its windings. Of all the roofed houses that I know, is my son’s the greatest.

Heidrûn the goat is called, that stands o’er Odin’s hall, and bites from Lærâd’s branches. He a bowl shall fill with the bright mead; that drink shall never fail.

This is nothing, however, compared to the amount of water that drips from the solid horns of the magical stag Eikthyrnir, who feeds on Lærâd along with Heidrûn, into the “bubbling boiling spring” Hvergelmir, from which all waters rise and 20 rivers flow around the “dwelling wind” of gods:

Eikthyrnir the hart is called, that stands o’er Odin’s hall, and bites from Lærâd’s branches; from his horns fall drops into Hvergelmir, whence all waters rise:

Sid and Vid, Soekin and Eikin, Svöl and Gunnthrô, Fiörm and Fimbulthul, Rin and Rennandi, Gipul and Göpul, Gömul and Geirvimul: they round the gods’ dwelling wind. Thyn and Vin, Thöll and Höll, Grâd and Gunnthorin.

Odin’s magical golden ring Draupnir is like Eikthyrnir horns in that it drips fluid, in this case what must be liquid gold, which turns into eight new rings once every nine nights. The Bleeding Lance from Arthurian legend is like Eikthyrnir and Draupnir, described by Chrétien de Troyes (2019) as being the “purest white,” except for the tip, which is “pure vermillion,” because, despite that “it has neither flesh nor veins,” the tip is continuously dripping blood.

At the Temple of Apollo at Delphi the oracular priestess (or Pythia) reputedly received and passed on prophecies in a trance induced by vapor flowing into the sanctuary through a crack in the ground below her seat. The vapor was thought of as coming from Apollo as pneuma, meaning “breath,” “wind,” “life force,” or “spirit,” or from the corpse of the serpent Python, who Apollo killed to take over the oracle, or as an exhalation of the earth herself, Gaea, if not all three. The priestess could have relayed the prophesies sober, in a normal, vaporless temple, and there’s an ongoing debate about what was really happening historically. Either way, the story is more interesting in the case with vapor. If it was real then the Greeks built the Temple at Pytho (Delphi) over a geothermal vent because they liked the idea. If it wasn’t real then it was added to the story later on for the same reason.

Solids from Fluids

There are also numerous legendary instances of the opposite transformation, where fluids magically turn into solids. The Jiaoren mermaids of China cry tears than turn into pearls. In Japanese folklore the ugly, “inky black,” shark-like, demon-faced, dragon-bearded but friendly yokai called the samebito cries blood that changes into rubies upon hitting the ground. In Apache legend, the relatives of a group of warriors who rode off a cliff to avoid being captured cry tears that turn into black obsidian. The “fairy crosses” of the Blue Ridge Mountains, small natural rocks with shapes like crosses, are said to have formed through the crystallization of tears of fairies crying about the death of Christ. The tears of the Finish hero Väinämöinen become blue pears at the bottom of the sea (Lönnrot 1989):

Finally Väinämöinen himself weeps. His huge tears fall into the sea. When a duck dives down and recovers them, they have been transformed into blue pearls.

The Norse goddess Freyja cries tears that become gold when they fall on the earth and amber when they fall in the sea, leading to the popular kenning for gold “Freyja’s tears.” The myth and the kenning are structured the same, specifically as tear~gold, generally as fluid~solid, and they have the same explanation, that we’re amused by the concept of mixing physical opposites. This kind of correspondence between an expression and a famous fictional event is very common. “Wet your beak,” “blood and iron,” and “soaked to the bone” have the same structure as anointment rituals. “Like getting blood from a stone” generally matches the structure of the water from rock motif, and so on.

Art and Decoration

If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones, — others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne (from Ballou 1899)

Visual mixtures of fluidity and solidness have been admired for centuries in the form of water fountains, wishing wells, reflecting pools, gargoyles, artificial waterfalls, streams and ponds, Zen gardens with sand raked in flowing patterns, as well as floral, swirling, twisting, spiraling, undulating and/or wavy forms moulded into, carved into or painted on rocks, pottery, temples, churches, sculptures, gravestones, coffins, staircases, roofs, gates, street lamps, railings, stained-glass windows, doors, door handles, door knockers, keys, tables, chairs, bed frames, desks, drawers, drawer handles, faucets, lamps, vases, light fixtures, chandeliers, cups, plates, silverware, swords, suits of armor, shields, helmets, guns, crowns, thrones, coins, belt buckles, buttons, medals, rings, pendants, coins and other objects.

Decorative water cascades go back at least 3,000 years, being constructed in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Girsu (Stancius 2022). The first known fountain, around 4,000 years old, is a Mesopotamian statue of a goddess, possibly Ishtar, holding a vase with a hydraulic device that created the effect of spouting water. Rain chains, recently gaining popularity worldwide, were used in Japanese temples and tea houses going back at least to the 1500’s. Some ornamental fountains, such as those in Japanese gardens, consist of little more than water dripping onto and flowing over a rock, so that the effect is almost identical to that created by the anointment of a solid object in a ritual.

The main styles, or “orders,” of classical Greek architecture—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—incorporated increasing amounts of fluid-like ornamentation over time, a transition Ralph Waldo Emerson called “the flowering of geometry” (Ballou 1899). The simple, plain and rounded tops of the Greek Doric order gave way to the volutes, or spirals, of Ionic columns, and these to the most ornate Corinthian columns with spirals, leaves and scrolls. At each step the architecture became more fluid. Buildings increasingly looked as though parts of them were melting. Architectural fluidity is not confined to the buildings of the Greeks and Romans. Emerson also used the flower analogy in describing Gothic cathedrals, as “a blossoming in stone, subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the serial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty” (Ballou 1899).

The opening picture, Bruegel’s 1563 painting of the Tower of Babel, exemplifies the mixture fluid~solid in that the Tower is a solid surrounded by water and clouds, with the clouds nearly penetrating some of its many entrances in the upper floors, like breath entering a stone. In Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream” the solid wooden walkway in the lower portion of the painting contrasts with the dark fluidity into which the person on the bridge looks to be melting away. The background of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is one of blue fluidity intermingling with red solidness, and a very improbable scene for a subject to be sitting in front of.

In the paintings that resulted from a survey conducted by the artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, which were selected to reflect average public opinion about artistic preferences in several countries, almost every country tested appears to have chosen a painting with a solid, rocky cliff, outcrop or stretch of land taking up about half the space, on the left, and water and sky taking up the rest, on the right.

Dennis Dutton, in his book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution (2010), interpreted these paintings as evidence for his hypothesis that humans evolved our appreciation for such paintings in the context of differential survival while living in the African savannah. He suggests humans without a sufficient attraction to such landscapes were less likely to survive, despite that the paintings show very little resemblance to the flat, mountain-less, waterless savannah habitat of our distant ancestors.

Dutton’s scenario would seem to imply people were dying in large numbers and populations were being driven to extinction repeatedly when they wandered beyond the savannah into new territory, that those with a tolerance of or attraction to other types of environmental scenery were consistently eliminated for doing so, although our ancestors subsequently lived in and traveled through every other type of habitat.

Hypotheses

The rise of Marduk in the Egyptian pantheon doesn’t make it inevitable for worshipers to carve a statue of him and anoint it with liquids. The idea that baby Buddha was sprayed by a celestial river does not necessitate the existence of a massive ritualistic effort to pour water on Buddha statues in commemoration of the event. Such things don’t necessarily need to be commemorated at all, and certainly not in the particular, idiosyncratic ways they are. Although rituals incorporating such abstract concepts can serve important purposes, those purposes could just as well be accomplished by any number of other activities. We shouldn’t expect cultures to so often converge on themes like anointment or liquid to solid or solid to liquid phase changes by chance, without the action of some selective process.

Aesthetic mixtures of fluidity with solidness are so common, cross-cultural and persistent that it’s not sufficient to trace the practice back to a point of origin predating all the examples and treat that event in itself as an explanation. There were multiple independent origins, and none of them constitute an actual reason for the ritual to come about, or for it to continue to be of interest for so long, persisting from prehistory into the present day.

This could be called the origin hypothesis of anointment rituals. It offers no obvious mechanism, relying on randomness and coincidence rather than selection, and it doesn’t predict the existence of a desire to initiate, adopt or continue the practice. The argument is like claiming music (including song) exists in every human culture today only because, long ago, someone made a musical sequence of sounds for the first time. What’s missing is the reason the first person did so, why they wanted to do it again, and why others copied the idea and kept making more music until the phenomenon expanded to its current extent. A much more probable alternative is that people have always been biased to favor musical sounds, and this created the effect of cultural music being adopted at every stage from its inception, through its dispersion and ultimate, ubiquitous distribution across the globe.

Music isn’t unusual in being both ubiquitous and inexplicable in terms of natural selection. The same kind of bias and effect process can be used to explain aesthetic phenomena in general, including dance, poetry, ornamentation, contrasting coloration patterns in bodies and artifacts, popular motifs in myth and religion and other aesthetic phenomena that have no obvious adaptive value.

An incidental bias for fluid~solid mixtures would hardly be unusual considering the scope of such unnecessary and non-adaptive biases and aesthetic effects, many of which (music, dance, ornament, color patterns) predate human evolution by hundreds of millions of years, commonly enough that it’s worth asking whether nonhuman animals are also in the habit of adding fluidity to solidness.

Fluid~Solid Mixtures in Animals

Waterfowl, being somewhat uniquely in a position to display an appreciation for fluid~solid mixtures due to their constant access to water and possession of a prominent solid feature to anoint with it, can be predicted to have a habit of dipping their beaks in the water to impress and amuse each other. Assuming a universal bias, this should be common in the courtship and other friendly interactions of widely unrelated waterfowl species, used by both males and females in displays. Clark (1971) observed beak dipping in pair formation and copulation of the white-backed duck Thalassomis leuconotus:

The smaller bird dipped its beak as if to feed from the surface. The other did the same and again both immersed their beaks…. On another occasion the birds swam round in a circle about 5 feet diameter, dipping their beaks frequently.

The same kind of bill dipping display is used by male and female common loons Gavia iramet (Tate 1970), the yellow-billed loon Gavia adamsii (Sjölander and Ågren 1976), black-winged stilts Himantopus himantop (Goriup 1982), eiders (genus Somateria, Johnsgard 1964), diving ducks in the tribe Aythyini (Johnsgard 1965), adult and yearling Mandarin ducks Aix galericulata (Bruggers and Jackson 1981), male and female flying steamer ducks Tachyeres patachonicus (Moynihan 1958), wood ducks Aix sponsa (Armbruster 1982), dabbling ducks (Hepp and Hair 1983), stiff-tailed ducks (genus Oxyura, Johnsgard 1967), harlequin ducks (genus Histrionicus, Bengtson 1966) and male and female black brant geese Branta bernicla nigricuns (Welsh and Sedinger 1990), among others.

Ravens appear to enjoy dipping their bills in a shallow pan of water (Heinrich and Smolker 1998), and many types of birds including ravens, crows, various parrots, cockatoos, starlings and grackles dip solid food in water for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

The popularity of this behavior, the lack of an obvious adaptive purpose for it, and the fact that it’s used in courtship all suggest the presence of a nonadaptive bias for fluid~solid mixtures in birds, calling into question any adaptation-based or psychoanalytic explanation for the same bias in humans.

Fluid~solid bias is likely to be at least partially responsible for the evolution of fluid-like and spiral forms in horns such as those of spiral-horned antelopes, kudus, elands, markhors, moose, Girgentana goats and many others. Fluid-like horns, which hardly seem like the ideal weapon, can evolve to be useful in a fight with a conspecific intrasexual rival and be attractive to the opposite sex at the same time, somewhat like the structure of a building is entirely practical while the addition of fluid-like decoration is done purely for pleasure.

Adaptive Hypotheses

An adaptive hypotheses would propose there’s a function for a psychological bias favoring fluid~solid mixtures, and that the bias evolved through differential survival. This would be a process that selects for individuals who appreciate visual experiences mixing a fluid such as water with a solid such as earth over those who don’t. It requires a reason for those in the former group to survive and pass on the genes for the bias more effectively than those in the latter group.

A scenario of this kind would be that, due to the bias in question, our ancestors chose to live near an interface between a body of water and land, where they had better access to water and related resources than individuals or groups choosing to live at too great a distance from water, who were disadvantaged by the lack of those resources. The bias would originally have happened to come about by chance in one or a small number of our ancestors, and then be selected for due to the advantage until it was expressed by everyone in the human population. This is a complicated process, and it’s not likely to have played out in reality. An animal, especially a person, would seem to know better than to wander off and perish in the desert or the ocean without the additional need for an abstract, unconscious attraction to an intermediate landscape keeping them alive.

Adaptive models are problematic because of how easy it is to imagine scenarios like the one above and decide they must be true without testing them, and most of them can’t be tested. The fact that we can also easily think of other reasons for the bias, such as that animals require both fluid water and solid food, and those who avoid one or the other will die before reproducing, might seem at first to reinforce the adaptive perspective. However, it could also be thought to reduce the chances of any one competing possibility being correct, and cast doubt on the approach as a whole. It’s just as easy to come up with reasons to avoid the edge of a water body, which would make the bias detrimental, perhaps especially in Africa, and the water in lakes, streams and the ocean is usually unsafe for humans to drink. Another problem with adaptive models is that it’s not only mixtures of water with land that we admire, it’s also blood and breath with bones, stones and statues, wind with stones, oil, milk, and black liquids with statues and coffins, and so on.

Fluid~solid bias is not in the same category as other features of the mind regarding the degree of certainty that can be attached to its functionality. The usefulness of desires for food, water, and the opposite sex are beyond dispute. They make so much sense it’s safe to assume they evolved in the contexts of survival and reproduction.

Desires for things like music, dance and ornamentation are different. We know based on the prevalence of these phenomena throughout the animal world that animals generally find them amusing, that we’re biased to favor them, but our amusement probably can’t be understood in terms of natural selection, and we don’t need an adaptive reason for every bias in the mind, even if it happens to be universal. It’s entirely possible that they arise for no purposeful reason, incidentally, from features of the brain that do serve a purpose, and don’t get eliminated because they’re not sufficiently detrimental to be selected against. Fluid~solid bias seems to belong in this category, along with other biases for compositions of primitive perceptual opposites, including those describing matter in fluid versus solid states.

Psychoanalysis

Freud might argue for the existence of the same bias as in adaptive hypotheses, but say that it results from experiences during development. He might point out fluid~solid mixtures in sexuality, and be intrigued by the extremely frequent appearance of fluid~solid juxtaposition in dreams. What the experiences inducing the bias would be is far from obvious, however, more so than with adaptive explanations, despite that the experiences would need to be nearly universal, and there’s nothing about familial relationships or frustration of the libido that immediately stands out as a good reason for the bias in question to arise.

Sensory Bias

Preexisting sensory bias, a fourth hypothesis, also assumes fluid~solid mixtures in culture can be explained by human amusement with the idea of adding fluidity to solidness. In this case, however, the bias is an incidental side effect of sensory system and/or brain structure, with no need for a direct adaptive function or differential survival process, and the bias is free to favor fluidity of any kind with any kind of solidness, rather than only water and land as in the idea of adaptively preferring fluid~solid scenery. It can also efficiently explain the prevalence of fluid~solid mixtures in poetry, creation stories, religion, mythology, idiomatic language, art and architecture, and it covers instances of the mixture such as the magical transformation of solids into fluids and vice versa, which seem unlikely to follow from a preference for semi-watery landscapes.

The strongest evidence of an aesthetic rather than adaptive explanation for fluid~solid mixture bias is probably how well the bias fits the general pattern of contradiction and differential excitement in aesthetic material, and that by replacing fluidity with other more exciting qualities, or solidness with other less exciting qualities, one can generate the structure of additional, extremely common aesthetic structures. This is shown in Monoaesthetic Mixtures in Language, Culture and Biology. Fluid~solid and similar biases for mixtures of opposites can be explained as side effects of brain and sensory system structure, coming into existence with the evolution the of perceptual dimensions that allow us to distinguish the opposites interacting in the corresponding effects.

The same arguments made above for an excitement differential between fluids and solids and a universal bias for mixtures of the two can be made for any of the qualities that define the physical difference between a fluid and solid, such as dynamism versus stasis and disorder versus order, aesthetic examples of which appear to be more common than those of fluid~solid mixtures. The implication is a causal link between preferences and states of matter, the most obvious underlying reason for the link being that the animal brain is inevitably in a state of balance between a liquid and crystal, and therefore also the properties of matter in these phases.

Perplexity

Perplexity’s response to “Earliest recorded instance of the practice of anointing a solid object with water, oil, blood or some other fluid.”

The earliest recorded instances of anointing solid objects with water, oil, blood, or other fluids can be traced back to approximately 3000-2500 BCE in Mesopotamia and Egypt, with possible prehistoric antecedents extending back to the Neolithic period around 7000-8000 BCE. The practice appears to have emerged independently in multiple cultures across the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, suggesting a fundamental human impulse to sanctify objects through the application of sacred substances. These early practices laid the foundation for the elaborate anointing ceremonies that would become central to religious traditions worldwide.

Perplexity’s answer to “How common is anointment of statues in ritual?”

Statue anointment is a remarkably common practice across virtually all religious traditions worldwide, occurring with such frequency and universality that it can be considered one of the most widespread ritual behaviors in human history. From daily temple ceremonies to major religious festivals, the anointing of religious statues represents a fundamental way humans interact with the divine through material objects.

The universal nature of statue anointment reflects fundamental human psychological and spiritual needs. Anthropological studies reveal that the practice serves multiple functions: it maintains the perceived “aliveness” of religious objects, creates tangible connection points between human and divine realms, and provides regular opportunities for community religious participation.

Perplexity answers “What is the most common body part to be anointed with oil?”

The most common body part to be anointed with oil is the forehead. This is often done in religious ceremonies and rituals. Sometimes other parts of the body like the hands or feet may also be anointed, depending on the tradition or purpose.

Perplexity responds to “Spirals in cave art”:

Spirals are one of the most ubiquitous motifs in cave and rock art across ancient cultures, often interpreted as symbolic representations of spiritual journeys, natural cycles, or cosmic forces.

Perplexity responds to “tears that turn into solids mythology.”

Throughout human history, cultures around the world have created compelling mythologies about tears that transform into solid substances, particularly precious stones, crystals, and other enduring materials. These legends serve as powerful metaphors for grief, transformation, and the permanence of emotional experiences.

Fluidity and Solidness in the Philosophy of Biology

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 hold you together. Hear me, then: —Three tribes of mortal beings have still to be created, but if created by me they would be like gods. Do ye therefore make them; I will implant in them the seed of immortality, and you shall weave together the mortal and immortal, and provide food for them, and receive them again in death.' Thus he spake, and poured the remains of the elements into the cup in which he had mingled the soul of the universe.

— Plato, Timaeus (2012)

The idea of life as a kind of compromise between solidness and fluidity is not new. It goes back to the earliest creation stories, appearing repeatedly as a dualistic motif in which solids are infused with fluids to make humans or life. It’s expressed explicitly in the earliest philosophical thought, and repeatedly throughout the centuries in every part of the world, foreshadowing the discovery in 1888 that matter is in fact capable of existing for long periods of time as a physical, fluid~solid mixture, of maintaining itself in the process of a phase transition between a liquid and a crystal, and that it does so primarily in living systems.

Lao Tzu, who was always fond of a contradiction, made the argument at least 2,300 years ago in the Tao Te Ching (1996) that humans and plants transition from a dominant state of weak softness to one of strong solidness that’s easily subdued and adjacent to death:

A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At their death they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life. Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken. The hard and strong will fall. The soft and weak will overcome.

Disregarding the amusingly contradictory concept of weakness overpowering strength, an extremely popular aesthetic theme forming the basis of countless stories and found throughout the history of philosophy, this is an early recognition that organisms are made of soft (liquid crystalline) matter, and that we gradually solidify throughout our lives. Fluidity is being lost, so it must be present initially, and it wouldn’t be possible for beings already in a crystalline condition to crystallize. Anaximander (2012) said the same thing around 600 BCE:

Anaximandros said that the first animals were generated in the moisture, and were covered with a prickly skin; and as they grew older, they became drier, and after the skin broke off from them, they lived for a little while.

In Anaximander’s view, animals had been created as the vapors of earth were “raised by the sun.” Humans came later, developing from fish, “growing up as sharks do till they were able to help themselves, they then came forth on the dry ground.”

Other early Greek philosophers were at odds over life and its origins, with Thales claiming that, like everything else, it came from water, Anaximenes saying that it’s a type of condensed air, and Heraclitus (at least implicitly) that it came from something fire-like, on account of life’s hot and dynamic nature and the fieriness of the soul. The volcano-diving philosopher Empedocles was convinced of the more nuanced scenario of life coming about periodically as the classical elements earth, air, water and fire cycled between states of extreme unification and separation, imposed respectively by the predominance of Love and Strife. Life would arise between extremes when the elements were semi-distinct and mixed in the right proportions.

In the Timaeus (2015), Plato’s dialog between Socrates and the Pythagorean character Timaeus, “the framers of us” are said to have made the body out of various transformations and mixtures of fluid, solid, and soft matter. Bones were made from earth and wetness:

The bone was formed by sifting pure smooth earth and wetting it with marrow. It was then thrust alternately into fire and water, and thus rendered insoluble by either.

Marrow binds the relatively solid body to the relatively fluid soul. It’s made of triangles like the kind that assemble into different polyhedra to make earth, air, fire and water. For the marrows, though, including brains, spinal cords, nerves and seed, the maker used special, smoother triangles and “mingled them in due proportion.” He made “warm, moist” flesh out of earth, fire, water, acid and salt, using it to provide flexibility, cover the bones and keep them from breaking when we fall, and to protect us from heat and cold. A semi-liquid substance flows out of our heads through holes pierced in the scalp by fire and solidifies into hair:

Still, the head could not be left a bare globe of bone on account of the extremes of heat and cold, nor be allowed to become dull and senseless by an overgrowth of flesh. Wherefore it was covered by a peel or skin which met and grew by the help of cerebral humour. The diversity of the sutures was caused by the struggle of the food against the courses of the soul. The skin of the head was pierced by fire, and out of the punctures came forth a moisture, part liquid, and part of a skinny nature, which was hardened by the pressure of the external cold and became hair.

The fact that hardness and softness vary throughout a body was also addressed by Aristotle. As he put it in On the Parts of Animals (1882): “Of the homogeneous parts of animals, some are soft and fluid, others hard and solid; and of the former some are fluid permanently, others only so long as they are in the living body.” He thought animal bodies must have diverse properties in this regard to give rise to their diverse functions:

Animals, then, are composed of homogeneous parts, and are also composed of heterogeneous parts. The former, however, exist for the sake of the latter. For the active functions and operations of the body are carried on by these; that is, by the heterogeneous parts, such as the eye, the nostril, the whole face, the fingers, the hand, and the whole arm. But inasmuch as there is a great variety in the functions and motions not only of aggregate animals but also of the individual organs, it is necessary that the substances out of which these are composed shall present a diversity of properties. For some purposes softness is advantageous, for others hardness; some parts must be capable of extension, others of flexion. Such properties, then, are distributed separately to the different homogeneous parts, one being soft another hard, one fluid another solid, one viscous another brittle; whereas each of the heterogeneous parts presents a combination of multifarious properties.

The most vital body parts were thus understood in Aristotles’ time to be a mixture of fluidity and solidness. He used Empedocles’ physical system and assigned some of the classical elements and forces (fluidity, solidness and temperature) special significance in contributing to the structure of life:

Now there are three degrees of composition; and of these the first in order, as all will allow, is composition out of what some call the elements, such as earth, air, water, fire. Perhaps, however, it would be more accurate to say composition out of the elementary forces; nor indeed out of all of these, but out of a limited number of them, as defined in previous treatises. For fluid and solid, hot and cold, form the material of all composite bodies; and all other differences are secondary to these, such differences, that is, as heaviness or lightness, density or rarity, roughness or smoothness, and any other such properties of matter as there may be.

A body’s status in terms of hot versus cold and solid versus fluid is considered a major determinant of its structure. The balance of these is said to be responsible, in part, for sleep, health, aging and long hair:

No animal has so much hair on the head as man. This, in the first place, is the necessary result of the fluid character of his brain, and of the presence of so many sutures in his skull. For wherever there is the most fluid and the most heat, there also must necessarily occur the greatest outgrowth.

Aristotle seems to have thought that heat, fluidity, length and outwardness are all related, implying an opposite relation between coldness, solidness and inwardness. Although he appreciated the physical complexity of parts of animals that incorporate mixtures of these opposites, such as the face with its variously harder and softer, more and less wet and dry and extensible and contractable elements, he wasn’t as charitable about the brain, calling it a cold, bloodless, excrement-resembling concoction of earth and water not connected to the rest of the body or the senses, assigning it the function of moderating the heat of the heart and soul and holding the body in the perfect balance, referring in places to its superabundant fluidity and in others to its solidness, as though the brain is particularly difficult to place in one or the other category.

Galen of Pergamon, the famous doctor and philosopher, in Works on Human Nature: Mixtures, De Temperamentis, said that earth, air, water and fire are pure representatives of the fundamental qualities hot, cold, wet and dry, but that in animals these qualities always occur as “mixtures.” No animal is as dry as earth, cold as ice, wet as water or hot as fire, although, according to Galen, “ants are dry as animals, while worms are wet; then again, among worms, some are wetter, either just wetter for a worm, or by comparison with some particular worm.” Dogs are wetter than ants or bees, he says, and humans are wetter than dogs. All things can be quantitatively compared by way of the four fundamental qualities (Galen et al. 1997):

Now, since the median in any genus — but especially in that of substance as a whole — consists in a mixing together of the extremes, our conception and identification of it must also come about from the same starting-point. Conceptually the matter is very simple. We begin with the hottest of all perceptible things, fire, say, or violently boiling water, and draw a line from that down to the coldest substance we know, ice, say, or snow; and we mark this line exactly in the middle. This will give us the point of good proportion conceptually — that which is equidistant from each of the extremes. We may also create it physically, by mixing equal amounts of ice and boiling water. For that which is made from a mixture of both of these will be equidistant from the two extremes of burning and of dying of cold. It is thus a simple matter, by getting hold of this mixture, to have an example of the median state of all substance with regard to the opposition of hot and cold. One may then remember this, and use it as a yardstick against which to measure everything else.

Galen’s “point of good proportion” between physical extremes is a pretty good description of a liquid crystal for the second century, 1700 years before they were discovered. The reason, of course, is that he was describing the state of living things, which is largely one of liquid crystallinity. More recently, the British physician and theologian Peter Mark Roget said, in Animal and Vegetable Physiology (1836):

The animal as well as the vegetable fabric is necessarily composed of a union of solid and fluid parts. Every animal texture appears to be formed from matter that was originally in a fluid state; the particles of which they are composed having been brought together and afterwards concreting by a process, which may, by a metaphor borrowed from physical science, be termed crystallization. Many of those animals, indeed, which occupy the lowest rank in the series, such as Medusae, approach nearly to the fluid state; appearing like a soft and transparent jelly, which, by spontaneous decomposition after death, or by the application of heat, is resolved almost wholly into a limpid watery fluid.

Ernst Haeckel, in The Wonders of Life (1904), considers the “chief physical property,” or “peculiar thickness and consistency” of living matter:

The physicist distinguishes three conditions of inorganic matter — solid, fluid, and gaseous. Active living protoplasm cannot strictly be described as either fluid or solid in the physical sense. It presents an intermediate stage between the two which is best described as viscous; it is best compared to a cold jelly or solution of glue. The cause of this softness is the quantity of water contained in the living matter, which generally amounts to half of its volume and weight. The water is distributed between the plasma molecules, or the ultimate particles of living matter, in much the same way as it is in the crystals of salts, but with the important difference that it is very variable in quantity in the plasm. On this depends the capacity for absorption or imbibition in the plasm, and the mobility of its molecules, which is very important for the performance of the vital actions.

The American naturalist John Burroughs discusses the issue of solidness and fluidity in organisms in a chapter called “The Living Wave” of his book The Breath of Life (1915):

It is a significant fact that the four chief elements which in various combinations make up living bodies are by their extreme mobility well suited to their purpose. Three of these are gaseous; only the carbon is solid. This renders them facile and adaptive in the ever-changing conditions of organic evolution. The solid carbon forms the vessel in which the precious essence of life is carried. Without carbon we should evaporate or flow away and escape. Much of the oxygen and hydrogen enters into living bodies as water; nine tenths of the human body is water; a little nitrogen and a few mineral salts make up the rest. So that our like in its final elements is little more than a stream of water holding in solution carbonaceous and other matter and flowing, forever flowing, a stream of fluid and solid matter plus something else that scientific analysis cannot reach — some force or principle that combines and organizes these elements into the living body. If a man could be reduced instantly into his constituent elements we should see a pail or two of turbid fluid that would flow down the bank and soon be lost in the soil. That which gives us our form and stability and prevents us from slowly spilling down the slope at all times is the mysterious vital principle of force which knits and marries these unstable elements together and raises up a mobile but more or less stable form out of the world of fluids.

Thus, we have it on good authority that life is a complex mixture of fluidity with solidness. This means it’s also a complex, semi-dualistic, semi-contradictory mixture of fluid and solid characteristics such as motion and stasis, disorder and order, randomness and regularity and so on, the same qualities that, for reasons currently unresolved by science, appear ubiquitously as juxtapositions in aesthetic phenomena.

Metaphysical philosophy, myths and religions are structured around all these dualities (fluid~solid, dynamic~static, disorder~order), or around their close conceptual relatives. Physical qualities interact in complex ways, just like they do in the body and brain. Semi-duality is also a popular theme. The idea, for instance, that order and chaos or change and constancy can be contradictory and complimentary at the same time occurs repeatedly, as though this aspect of matter in the brain has been projected, cross-culturally, onto the most ancient and influential products of human thought. An obvious way for this to have happened is a relationship between brain structure and preferences.

Linguistic and aesthetic evidence shows these dualities to be organized in the mind with each fluidity-related quality associated in a category, and each solidness-related quality associated in an opposite category, forming a pattern that could have been used to predict the physical state of living material and the brain. Conversely, neurological liquid crystallinity can be used to predict the structure of language and aesthetic phenomena.

There’s a range of degrees to which fluidity and solidness are mixed in a body, depending on the part in question. A bone filled with marrow or a tooth with blood running through it are relatively dualistic mixtures, with a more definite separation between liquid and crystal than that found in soft tissues. In a plasma membrane, or an organ with a large proportion of such membranes, as in the brain, liquid and crystal are more thoroughly mixed. Fluid~solid dualism still applies, but it’s reduced to a minimum, and the properties we attribute to life, such as consciousness, are maximized.

Modern science has largely dismissed the philosophy of fluidity and solidness, treating it as irrelevant, at least by comparison to genetics, molecular and cellular biology, ecology, adaptation and other major current topics. Fluid~solid semi-duality in the brain, known in the scientific world as “criticality” or the “edge of chaos,” probably contributes to its complexity as much or more so than large neuron numbers, neuron interconnectedness, modularity or any other, frequently cited essential neurological feature. It’s been selected for throughout the full evolutionary history of the animal brain, and it’s uniquely isomorphic with aesthetic phenomena (see Leslie 2016).

Rather than being unimportant, the mixing of physical opposites in life is probably as consequential as any of its other universal characteristics, with the potential to answer some of the most important open questions, as well as others we’ve never thought to ask, particularly in areas like aesthetics where little progress has been made using the usual theories of adaptive evolution or psychoanalytics.

Fluidity and Solidness in Language

People mountain, people sea.

— Chinese idiom, meaning “crowded”

Somewhere, what with all these clouds, and all this air, There must be a rare name, somewhere… How do you like “Cloud-Cuckoo-Land”?

— Aristophanes, Birds (Bartlett 2022)

As discussed elsewhere, the idea of a fluid interacting with a solid to create an amusing mixture shows up repeatedly in several, semi-independent aesthetic realms including poetry, religion, mythology, creation stories, art and architecture, making up a cross-cultural pattern that’s conveniently explained by a single, universal fluid~solid bias in the human mind working as a selection agent in its favor.

Fluidity is mixed with solidness in popular expressions such as those listed below. References to blood, water, air, the sky, clouds, melting, boiling, smoke, wind, breath, blowing and the like represent fluidity, while metals, minerals, stones, rocks, earth, land, wood, trees, mountains, bones, nails, teeth, hardness and similar things are representative of solidness. Some of the expressions are labeled in parentheses with the opposites they reference.

Fluid~solid (56): blood and iron, every cloud has a silver lining, a melting pot, castles in the air, a diamond in the sky, wet your beak, a watched pot never boils, a well-oiled machine, hard liquor, a stiff drink, a stiff breeze, a hard rain, cast stones against the winds, not my cup of tea, like getting blood from a stone, blood diamond, it makes my blood curdle, a smoking gun, a tempest in a teapot, sweating bullets, smoke and mirrors, raining pitchforks, ride hard and put away wet, soaked to the bone, bleed me dry, gravy train, the same fire that melts the butter hardens the egg, bread and butter, a greasy spoon, god's bloody nails (divine/fluid~solid), spill out into the streets (fluid/out~in/solid), up shit creek, before the ink was dry, from soup to nuts, like a cow peeing on a flat rock, piss on your chips, happy as a clam in butter sauce, milking me dry, scrape the poison from the bones, the land of milk and honey, cloud-cuckoo land, blowhard, milkbone, milk toast, land a blow, able to fog a mirror, the Latin phrase “gutta cavat lapidem” (a drop of water hollows out stone), ghost in the machine.

Idioms

As idioms, the given expressions don’t explicitly contain their own meaning. The meaning has to be deciphered by or provided to anyone hearing them for the first time. For instance, there’s nothing actually hard about a “hard” or “stiff” drink, a “stiff breeze” or a “hard rain.” Each of these phrases applying hardness to a liquid is part of a general pattern, in that every case is an independently derived, literally nonsensical instance of a fluid which isn’t actually hard, stiff or solid in any reasonable sense nevertheless being described as such.

In some cases it’s possible to guess the actual meaning of an idiom because it corresponds closely to the figurative meaning, as in “getting blood from a stone” or “burning the midnight oil,” but this doesn’t explain why we choose to communicate the concepts of impossibility and staying up late in these particular ways rather than using words that would do the job more directly and efficiently.

Such expressions present the same problem in linguistics that nonfunctional, impractical, amusing features of animals present in evolutionary biology. The simplest answer to the question of why they exist is that we find them amusing, just as this is the simplest explanation for the existence of song, dance and flowers. Popular expressions that don’t make sense in terms of efficient communication can be thought of as euphemistic, poetic and/or humorous phrases we insert into language to make it more agreeable.

Mixtures of Fluidity

The most convincing reason to think that aesthetic biases exist for mixtures of fluidity with solidness is probably that fluidity is generally juxtaposed to qualities from the less exciting side of perceptual dimensions, not just solidness. Large numbers of independent examples from poetry, art, mythology and stories demonstrate this, but it can perhaps be most easily seen in idiomatic language.

Replacing solidness in the perceptual dimension fluid~solid with qualities from the less exciting side of other perceptual dimensions such as hot~cold, dynamic~static, disorder~order, bright~dark, red~blue, up~down and out~in generates the structures fluid~cold, fluid~static, fluid~order, fluid~dark, fluid~down and fluid~in, all of which turn out to be popular linguistic (see below), poetic and artistic mixtures just like fluid~solid.

Fluid~cold (4): wind chill, cold spell, in cold blood, the water cooler effect; fluid~static (8): cry yourself to sleep, still waters run deep (fluid/dynamic~static/down), dead in the water, dead air, stay afloat, lazy river, god rest his soul, slow you blow; fluid~order (3): rinse and repeat, bloodline, lick into shape; fluid~dark (7): burning the midnight oil (hot/fluid~dark), blue wave, blue blood, dark cloud on the horizon, nothing but blue skies ahead, blue sky thinking, out of the clear blue sky (cool color/order~out); fluid~down (17): water under the bridge, teardrop, blow me down, trickle down, watered down, what it boils down to, under your breath, breathing down my neck, meltdown, plant a flag, drain the swamp, under the weather, undercurrent, downstream, sink or swim, under the influence.

The Softness Effect

I scarcely closed my eyes all night long. Goodness knows what was in my bed. I lay upon something hard, so that I am black and blue all over. It is quite dreadful!

— H.C. Anderson, The Princess and the Pea (Scudder 1909)

Animals probably like the texture of soft things such as breasts and tongues because we have similarly soft brains. There's nothing soft, or very little softness to speak of anywhere in the universe except on Earth, where life transforms fluids and solids into the liquid crystalline material that makes us up. Living things absorb environmental fluids and deconstruct the crystalline structure of solids, incorporating matter into an intermediate, fleshy condition with special capacities like moving around without falling apart, perceiving the environment and expressing preferences. The softness of life is rarely addressed in science and philosophy, perhaps because it's so familiar. We usually treat it as if it’s unimportant despite the fact that it's more fundamental than most of life's other properties, none of which would be possible without it, evolution included.

An animal's body is made of material spanning a range of physical states, from fully crystalline to fully fluid and everything in between. Brains are in the middle, with maximum softness. The most extensively liquid crystalline or softest part of the body is simultaneously the most sentient. This consistency of the brain apparently causes an automatic preference for soft things and the evolution of correspondingly soft sexual characteristics.

Biology today doesn't have an explanation for kissing, making out, foreplay and much of the business of sex other than the transfer of genetic material. Breasts, lips, tongues and hips are soft parts of bodies we like to engage with for amusement. Other animals have similar features, some of which appear only during the breeding season. Outside the body there are many likely, monoaesthetic examples of the softness effect in culture such as stuffed animals, chewing gum, soft foods, flower petals, clay and Play-Doh.

Perplexity’s answer to “Do people prefer soft textures?”

Soft textures trigger powerful psychological and emotional responses rooted in fundamental human experiences. Studies demonstrate that soft fabrics like wool, cashmere, and fleece trigger a psychological sense of warmth, safety, and relaxation, with people who wear softer textures being perceived as more approachable and nurturing. This preference appears linked to our earliest experiences—babies are naturally drawn to plush textures, reinforcing the idea that softness represents comfort and security.

The neurobiological basis for softness preference involves specific neural pathways. Research shows that objects with compliance levels similar to human body parts (around 5-7 mm/N, matching the softness of hands and forearms) yield the highest tactile pleasantness when touched. This suggests our preference for certain soft textures may be evolutionarily calibrated to our own physical characteristics.

The Fluidity of Learning and Solidness of Knowledge

Obstinate and mindless
Block of Stone,
Lying here
On this green moss,
Oblivious of rain and dew,
Immune to frost and snow.
How many times has this garden
Flourished and Decayed!
How often have these flowers and trees
Bloomed and Faded!
Just ask old Mr. Stone —
He remembers it all!

— Zheng Banqiao (1693–1765, see Tzu 2019)

Popular expressions containing references to fluidity, solidness and other primitive perceptual qualities can be used to predict physical processes going on in the animal brain. They show, for instance, that learning is a fluid process and knowing is like a solid. Linguistically, and therefore psychologically, learning, novelty, lies and fantasy are more like heat, disorder, motion, upwardness, outwardness and length, while knowledge, truth and reality are colder, orderly, still, down, inward and round.

That fantasy is elevated excitement-wise above reality is detectable in how we use the words “unreal,” “unbelievable” and “fantastic” to mark exciting moments or perceptual events even though the events inciting such exclamations are perfectly believable, just unexpected. Surprisingly many of the phrases we use regularly and collectively to describe learning, or changes in the material of the brain, implicate that heat, fluidity and disorder are part of the process.

All languages most likely use references to these and the other more exciting qualities as indications of learning, more often so, at least, than their opposites, which are thought of and spoken about on average as psychological relatives of knowledge, certainty and reality. Various expressions implying a relation between learning, wondering, mystery, the unknown and heat, fluidity, disorder, light, speed, high-pitch and the directions up and out are given below, along with expressions that imply a relation between the opposites of these qualities and knowledge.

Learning (31): burning question (hot/inquiry), blown away (fluid/out/learn), stirring news (fluid/dynamic/new), the foggiest idea (fluid/unknown), hate to break it to you (disorder/learn), breaking news (disorder/novel), what’s cracking (disorder/inquiry), what’s shaking (dynamic/inquiry), crash course (disorder/learn), see how things shake out (dynamic/out/learn), bright idea (bright/learn), bring to light (bright/learn), shed light on (out/bright/learn), it dawned on me (bright/learn), air of mystery (fluid/mystery), news flash (novel/bright), get up to speed (up/dynamic/learn~in), the run-down (dynamic/learn~down), the buzz (high-pitch/new), a little bird told me (high-pitch/learn), find out (out/learn), figure out (out/learn~order), far out (out/learn/exciting), expand your mind (out/learn), it’s up in the air (up/fluid/unknown), explode the myth (out/learn), the answer is blowing in the wind (fluid/mystery~in) and perhaps the “Dark Ages” (darkness/lack of learning) and “Enlightenment” (brightness/learning).

Knowledge (19): true as steel (true/solid), cold hard facts (cold/solid/reality), it’s not set in stone (not solid/not certain), airtight (certain/enclosed fluid), firm belief (solid/certain), the fact of the matter (solid/reality), a matter of fact (solid/reality), hard evidence (solid/reality), a firm grasp on (solid /in/knowledge), well-grounded (solid/reality), on solid ground (solid/solid/knowledge), wisdom tooth (knowledge/solid), crystallized intelligence (solid/knowledge), crystal clear (solid/certain), I can feel it in my bones (solid/knowledge), confirm (solid/certain).

Lying, deceitfulness and concepts of being fake or unreal appear to fall on the mental side of more excitement along with learning and novelty. These are heat- and fluid-like in “snake oil,” “full of hot air,” “airy fairy,” “carry fire in one hand and water in the other,” “pants on fire,” “blowing smoke,” “gasbag,” “smoke and mirrors,” “greasing palms” and “lie like you breath.” Lies and unreality are disorderly in “bend the truth,” bright in “little white lie,” dynamic in “pull a fast one,” “you really had me going” and “a hustle,” high-pitched in “crying wolf,” upward in “a tall tale,” outward in “a stretch,” “a stretch of the imagination” and “far out,” spiky in “backstabbing” and “sharp practice,” long in “hair-brained,” “feed me a line” and “pulling your leg,” and multiple in “five-finger discount” and “crooked as a barrel of fishhooks.”

Notably, the list contains several references to bodily extremity, long and more multitudinous body parts such as hair, hands, legs and fingers as opposed to central, solid, inward or singular features like hearts, bones, guts, teeth or mouths, which themselves have more to do with knowledge and reality.

Longer, spikier, less round and more exciting animals like snakes, weasels, foxes, wolves and cats should be more common in language about lying or trickery than their rounder, less dynamic or spiky relatives like cows, elephants, bears, owls and pigs, to which on average stereotypes of knowledge or reality should be attached.

Lies and exciting features should go together in culture and art as well as language, like the way, in Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, Pinocchio’s nose becomes longer the more he tells lies. In Aesop’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” high-pitch and multiplicity combine with lying to reinforce the idea that the Peter got what he deserved.

Generally, words we use for simple shapes, symmetry, evenness, straightness, flatness, regularity and the like are also used in language of knowledge, truth and reality, as in a right angle and being right, a true surface and truth, rulers and rules, figures and figuring, straight lines and straight thinking, or squares and squaring with reality. We consistently use ideas of order and also stillness, darkness, downwardness, inwardness, depth and holes, which are otherwise associated with solidness and roundness, as depictions of knowledge and reality. This can be seen in the expressions below, which are followed in parentheses by the associations they imply.

Knowledge idioms (34): Get my thoughts in order (thinking/order), it doesn’t square or line up (not orderly/not real), back to square one (square/singular/what we know for sure), trying to get it straight (order/almost know), information (in/shape/knowledge), clarity (order/certainty), in the know (in/know), deep understanding (down/knowledge), depth of knowledge (down/knowledge), fill me in (many~in/knowledge), let it sink in (in/down/knowledge), what it comes down to (in/down/reality), double down (down/down/sure), tripling down (down/down/down/sure), food for thought (in/thinking), deep dive (down/in/knowledge), holy cow (in/cow/realization), holy crap (in/solid/realization), in a nutshell (in/solid/container/knowledge), heart of the matter (in/reality), get it down pat (in/down/know well), you don’t have to keep rubbing it in (in/in/I already know), hard to swallow (not in/not real), I can’t fathom (not down/unreal), true blue (reality/bluer colors), instill (in/static/knowledge), a still tongue makes a wise head (static/knowledge), rest assured (static/certain), what it boils down to (boiling~down/real), whistle past the graveyard (high-pitch/lack of knowledge), understand (down/knowledge), get to the bottom of (down/knowledge), down to Earth (down/real), I gathered that (inward/knowledge).

Liquid Crystallinity as a Fundamental Property of Life

The most important and under-appreciated characteristic of life is its complex, intermediate, liquid crystalline physical condition.

© 2025 Andrew Hodgson

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 molecular pattern which seems to have been most underestimated in the consideration of biological phenomena is that found in liquid crystals.

— Joseph Needham, 1950 (see Brown and Wolken 1979)

Organisms are exceptional in that the matter making up the living parts of our bodies is in an intermediate, liquid crystalline physical state. This is probably life’s most primitive, universal, exclusive and essential property, so no one should be surprised by the prospect that being in this condition would have consequences, especially those related to aspects of biology that don’t already make sense in terms of current evolutionary theory, such as aesthetic biases and their effects, the structure of which tends to be isomorphic with that of liquid crystals (see Leslie 2016).

Liquid crystals are more complicated and difficult to describe than a solid or fluid. They persist as a mixture between physical opposites, in a situation of simultaneous and fluctuating motion with stasis, fluidity with rigidness, disorder with geometric order, expansion with contraction, freedom with confinement, and so on for every other duality that applies to liquid versus crystalline states of matter. They’re also known as “mesophases,” and “ordered fluids,” with the former term acknowledging their physical intermediacy and the latter that geometric order is related to solidness and opposed to fluidity. They could just as legitimately be called disordered solids, flowing solids, chaotic crystals or geometric liquids. Like so many things we find amusing, liquid crystal phases are inherently complicated and contradictory (Brown and Wolken 1979):

The term “liquid crystals” is at once intriguing and confusing. While it appears self-contradictory, the designation is really an attempt to describe the properties of a particular state of matter. The liquid crystalline phase is, in fact, distinguished from both the liquid and solid phases of matter by first-order phase transitions. It mixes the properties of both the liquid and solid forms and is intermediate between the two. For example, liquid crystals combine a kind of long-range order (in the sense of a solid) with the ability to form droplets and to pour (in the sense of water like liquids). The combination of properties yields new properties that are found in neither solids nor liquids.

Essential biomolecules that have liquid crystalline properties and phases include myosin, hemoglobin, DNA, RNA, trypsin, (Stewart 1967), chitin (Clark 1928, Brown and Wolken 1979), collagen, cellulose, elastin, spongin, fibrin, muscle proteins (Clark 1928), amyloid and various cell membrane phospholipids including lecithin and phosphatidylethanolamine, which are especially abundant and important in neurons, and phosphatidylserine, which carries signals in the brain (Corrigan et al. 2006). To some extent, these substances have been selected for as components of organisms due to their liquid crystalline, physical properties, rather than happening to have them entirely as an accidental byproduct of other biological functions.

Lyotropic mesophases, liquid crystal phases dependent on a solvent, are vital to the organization of chromatin (Leforestier et al. 2001), connective tissues, adrenal cells, ovaries, muscles, brains and other animal components (Stewart 1967). They contribute to sensation and consciousness, the need for water and moderate temperatures, thermoregulation, the ability of organisms to move while simultaneously maintaining our integrity, and large scale softness and elasticity of tissues and body parts like skin, fat and especially the brain (“What is the softest organ?” Perplexity):

The softest organ in the human body is generally considered to be the brain, primarily because it is composed of delicate neural tissue that is highly changeable and easily influenced by external forces.

Liquid crystals are sensitive and responsive to small changes in conditions including temperature, humidity, pressure, strain, light, foreign molecules, electric fields, magnetic fields, and, therefore, they would seem to be ideal for animals as components of sensory systems. Responsiveness also makes them suitable for perceptual purposes, as they can change in color, transparency, phase, molecular order and/or orientation in rapid reactions to environmental variables.

People have always been aware of our special physical condition, as can be demonstrated by the structure of creation stories, which usually mix solids with fluids to make humans. This is also clear from philosophical arguments going back to ancient times and the content of myths, poetry, fictional stories and language, addressed in Creation Stories and States of Matter, Fluidity and Solidness in Poetry, The Magical-Looking Water of Tsalal Island, Fluidity and Solidness in Philosophy and other previously published articles.

The liquid crystallinity, ordered fluidity and dynamic stasis of living matter and especially brains is evident in the way other parts of the local universe exist exclusively in either fluid or frozen states and can therefore only freeze or melt, respectively, while life and brains can participate in both transitions. There’s a range of environmental temperatures at which we don’t melt into a dynamic, chaotic fluid or freeze into a motionless, geometric solid, and this goes for the brain more so than the body. Heating or stimulating a brain beyond some point must produce more molecular motion, disorder and overall fluidity than those at which it can operate, resulting in unconsciousness and then death. Cooling the brain must involve relative molecular stasis, order, overall solidness, unconsciousness and death again, in the opposite physical direction.

Another way to think about life and material states is to imagine taking the bodies of organisms apart and laying out the pieces in order according to how solid or fluid they are. On the far right, say, would be water, cytoplasm, blood, bile, tears, milk, saliva, bone marrow, aqueous humor, spinal fluid, slime, xylem, phloem, juice, nectar, honey, oil and other biological fluids. On the far left would be bones, nails, scales, spines, horns, shell, beaks, teeth, wood, exoskeletons and so on.

Relatively complicated organs like muscles, livers, kidneys and hearts would fit in somewhere near the center of the line. They exist in a kind of limbo where structure and fluidity interact so intimately we normally don’t think to describe them in such terms. Muscles work by fluctuating between approaches to relatively solid and soft states, more so than brains, and tolerate more drastic temperature swings without damage. It’s arguable on this basis that brains are more liquid crystalline than muscles and hearts, that they belong at the center of the spectrum of physical states making up an animal. All nonliving matter, aside from some of that derived from living things, resides at or beyond the more solid or more fluid, left or right extremes.

Many scientists have recognized that liquid crystals play a role in life, but fewer than might be expected given the likelihood that such a fundamental biological property would be significant to evolution and have psychological effects. It’s been suggested many times over the last 150 years that life and liquid crystals are closely related. Lawrence J. King (1969) quotes Joseph Needham in Biochemistry and Morphogenesis, published in 1942:

Living systems actually are liquid crystals, or, it would be more correct to say, the paracrystalline state undoubtedly exists in living cells…. most of the protein, fat and myelinic substance of the cell probably exists in these states, but this is only directly visible when all the molecules are oriented in enormous swarms in one direction, as in muscle fibrils. . . . This state seems the most suited to biological functions, as it combines the fluidity and diffusability of liquids while preserving the possibilities of internal structure characteristic of crystalline solids.

A wide variety of biological structures such as biomembranes and layered tissues and processes associated with them likely rely on the “limited flow” characteristic of lyotropic liquid crystals (Stewart 1967):

The presence of lipid, protein, and other substances in various forms of lyotropic mesophases explains many of the properties which distinguish protoplasm from inanimate colloid or even, in more general terms, some of the essential differences between the physical structure of living and nonliving matter.

The lack of interest among biologists in liquid crystallinity might be compared to something like chemists dismissing electrons as a largely irrelevant curiosity, or cosmologists deciding gravity might be important somehow, but not worth incorporating into models of the universe. For instance, one could spend a lifetime trying to figure out why we die, consulting relevant ideas in genetics, biochemistry, physiology and evolutionary biology without encountering a physical interpretation of the problem, or coming to any coherent conclusion, while simply recognizing that life represents a physical transformation away from the usual fluid and solid conditions of the nonliving world, and therefore an unsustainable, temporary state, immediately suggests an answer: we gradually solidify, liquefy, vaporize and/or sublime.

Goodby (1998) says molecules in living systems “invariably exhibit both thermotropic and/or lyotropic liquid crystalline properties,” meaning they’re dependent on temperature and/or concentration in a solvent such as water to remain liquid crystalline. This is certain to be related to the importance of temperature and water as ecological factors influencing the location and abundance of organisms on large scales.

Ho et al. (1996) describe organisms as “polyphasic liquid crystals,” with many intermediate physical states existing together in a body:

Liquid crystals in organisms include the amphiphilic lipids of cellular membranes, the DNA in chromosomes, all proteins, especially cytoskeletal proteins, muscle proteins, collagens and proteoglycans of connective tissues. These adopt a multiplicity of mesophases that may be crucial for biological structure and function at all levels of organization from processing metabolites in the cell to pattern determination in development, and the coordinated locomotion of whole organisms.

Lehmann (Brauns 1911) takes distinctions between crystalline hardness and shape and the relative softness and curvature of organisms to suggest that life is somewhat more liquid than a solid:

The treatises on crystallography define a crystal as a solid, homogeneous, anisotropic body. Living organisms have curved forms, while crystals are polyhedra bounded by plane faces. Organisms are soft, and the simplest organisms, such as amobae, are liquid, while crystals are rigid. Curved and liquid crystals would contradict the fundamental definition of a crystal, and also the theory of molecular arrangement adopted by all crystallographers.

Liquid crystallinity of spider silk is at least partially responsible for its high tensile strength, or the amount of energy needed to break it. Material in a cholesteric liquid crystalline state has been found in silk secreting glands. Knight and Volrath (1998), using polarizing microscopy, found in the spider silk secretory pathway a “large scale texture” consisting of “a chequered pattern of rather regularly alternating, approximately rectangular, blue and yellow areas, resembling the texture of a synthetic, lyotropic nematic discotic liquid crystal in a cylindrical tube.”

Oriented molecules in a liquid crystal can reflect light to give brilliant colors, sometimes more so than what’s possible with pigments (Makow 1982). Cholesteric liquid crystal molecules are usually elongate, with axes pointing along a plane. Many such planes sit on top of each other, the molecular axes in each neighboring plane pointing at a slightly different angle so that the axes rotate periodically throughout the substance. The color of light reflecting from planes arranged in this way varies depending on the angle at which they’re viewed. Iridescent, angle dependent coloration in animals is produced by this mechanism, and cholesteric liquid crystals are becoming popular in human art (Locquin 1975):

Paintings with free liquid crystals sparkle with rainbow colors and appear like nothing ever seen before in a painting. The best comparisons of color effects are with some beetles, butterflies and wings of some birds.

As might be expected, living systems transform substances that exist primarily in a crystalline state into liquid crystals. For example, microcrystalline cholesterol injected into the peritoneum of a mouse is transformed within about two hours into a liquid crystalline form found within peritoneal leukocytes and regional lymph glands (Stewart 1967). Crystalline cholesterol fed to a rabbit is transformed into a liquid crystalline component of the blood plasma and later deposited in a similar liquid crystalline form on the walls of arteries (Stewart 1967).

The notion of simple phenomena like flow, disorder, motion and their opposites playing a part in bodies and minds is reminiscent of early philosophers holding the view that in the apparently inanimate there must be a certain, small amount of life and consciousness. Rinne (1930) has argued that liquid crystallinity fills the gap that seems to separate us from the nonliving:

It is customary to draw the boundary between living organic and inorganic matter so that crystals represent the highest form of inorganic material and low organisms form the beginning of the organic world, with a definite and deep physiological gap between the two categories. In my opinion, this gap does not exist, since the sperms, which are undoubtedly living, are at the same time liquid crystals.

Based on the importance of lyotropic liquid crystalline phases of matter in contemporary organismal structure and function, Stewart (1967) says the origin of life likely coincided with the development of mesophases. Or, more specifically, that aggregations of amphiphiles, water solvent and ions could have spontaneously developed into stable, but mobile, complex liquid crystalline structures, given appropriate conditions of concentration and temperature, which likely existed in many places in the waters of the early Earth.

See the chapter “Flowing Crystals” (2016) in Esther Leslie’s Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form for a review of the history of ideas on how life and liquid crystals relate, with discussions of the work of Joseph Needham, Otto Lehmann and Ernst Haeckel. Leslie’s book, to my knowledge, is unprecedented in suggesting and presenting evidence for a causal link between preferences, beauty and liquid crystals in the brain. In order to explain the widespread correspondence between preferences for song, dance and ornamental patterns across many, otherwise very different species, we need something that’s true of all brains, and liquid crystallinity fulfills this requirement.

Consciousness

Because brains are especially central, soft and complex by comparison to other body parts and other things in the universe when it comes to physical states of matter, it can be said that consciousness is concentrated for all animals in the area of the body with the highest degree of liquid crystallinity, which is reason to believe the two are related. So is liquid crystal sensitivity to the environment, given the likelihood that this ability corresponds to being conscious.

Luzatti and Husson (1962) studied a phospholipid in tissue samples from the human brain and found that it exhibited two liquid crystalline phases, one lamellar and one hexagonal, seemingly meaning small-scale brain structure includes stripe-like alternating layers and geometric shapes, similar to those in aesthetic patterns that evolve through sexual or cultural selection. The authors say that lipoprotein conditions in the brain itself are probably not far from a phase transition between liquid crystal and coagel (hydrated crystal), determined by temperature, concentration, or electric potential parameters, and that this may prove important to the regulation of substances in brain cells. They point out it might not be coincidental that the phase transition temperature is so close to normal body temperature.

R. K. Mishra published a paper in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (1965) proposing that the liquid crystallinity of the brain is involved in perception, memory, thinking, original thought and dreams. Mishra writes of solid structures made up of plates and fibers creating long-distance repetitive order throughout a liquid matrix within the brain, of freedom versus confinement and restraint of molecules, phases with variable amounts of order, and lattices being reshaped in “lattice alterations” from one to another thermodynamic equilibrium, ultimately suggesting the structure of liquid crystals will explain consciousness itself:

In this scheme of things consciousness is an emergent property of the liquid crystal, which need be no more mysterious than the ‘wateryness’ of water or the ‘colour’ associated with a wavelength.

Recently proposed phase transition-based models of cognition demonstrate the value of analogies between liquid crystals and the nature of the brain and mind. Cocchi et al. (2017), in accounting for the observation that “correlations between behaviour and neuronal activity have been documented at almost every scale of analysis,” suggest that “criticality in the brain,” or a balance involving randomness, order, fluidity, structure, and fast and slow flow, plays an essential role in how the mind works:

Mathematicians and physicists have developed a considerable armoury of analytic tools to address multi-scale dynamics in a host of physical, biological and chemical systems (Bak et al., 1987). Chief amongst these is the notion of criticality, an umbrella term that denotes the behaviour of a system perched between order (such as slow, laminar fluid flow) and disorder such as the turbulence of a fast-flowing fluid, (Shih et al., 2015). A critical system shows scale-free fluctuations that stretch from the smallest to the largest scale, and which may spontaneously jump between different spatiotemporal patterns. Despite their apparent random nature, the fluctuations in these systems are highly structured, obeying deep physical principles that show commonality from one system to the other (so-called universality).

The authors say psychological disorders probably correspond to physical transitions in the matter of the brain away from a critical state of fluidity mixed with order: “…brain disorders, as diverse as epilepsy, encephalopathy, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may correspond to excursions from such an optimal critical point.”

Such models, which appear to be an effective way of understanding scale-free activity and mental disorders, illustrate the presence of complexity and contradiction in the brain with respect to simple physical opposites, and can probably explain a lot of other psychological phenomena as well. They imply an elastic-like resistance, in place to avoid excursions from an average, intermediate consistency, keeping brains in a range where they operate properly. Too much motion must be countered by a reflexive increase in stasis, too much stasis by motion, disorder by order and vice versa, providing a potential mechanism for a kind of aesthetic reflex.

The liquid crystal/mind analogy, which is more than an analogy, applies to all conscious species. If the characteristics of liquid crystals do prove to be essential to such things as memory, thinking, originality and consciousness then it would be reasonable to suspect they also play a role in aesthetic preferences.

The Origin of Life

Some of the important events in the origin of life include the concentration of carbon, formation of complex organic molecules, sorting of those molecules into chiral types, evolution of sustained loops of chemical interactions, formation of a replicator, a coupling of this chemistry and replication to an energy source, the origination of liquid crystallinity, and possibly a transition from indistinct networks of living material into relatively individual, self-contained entities or cells. Some of the possible scenarios for the concentration of carbon are addressed here, along with how life may have evolved from gaseous, liquid and crystalline matter, or, in the words of Robert Hazen (2001), how it was first “crafted from air, water and rock.”

Carbon concentration may have happened through repeated flooding of pools along the shores of early oceans, presumably by the action of the tides. These pools would have been flooded with water containing low concentrations of soluble carbon compounds, and the water would repeatedly evaporate at low tide leaving the heavier carbon behind, causing it to increase to saturation (De Duve and Miller 1991, Parsons et al. 1998). In this scenario life gets started in three dimensions, in solution.

Alternatively, life may have originated at the interface between water and minerals. Simple carbon molecules would have become attached to mineral surfaces, with moderately confining bonds so that they could interact with each other. Energy could come from the formation of the mineral. Wachtershauser (1994) has described early life as a “surface organism” on pyrite, energized by the formation of the pyrite. He says that carbon would enter the system, then undergo transformations for a time without being immobilized, and then be released in aqueous form. Interestingly, then, it seems carbon would have traveled through the surface organism in a kind of limbo between its more common dispersed and mineral forms, much as it does through current organisms and ecosystems.

In one scenario life evolves within connected chambers that result from the formation of certain common minerals, for example weathered feldspar (Parsons et al. 1998), or iron monosulfide (Martin and Russel 2003), perhaps with some molecular interactions/reactions on the surfaces and others taking place in solution within the chamber. More than a million chambers can exist over a square millimeter of weathered feldspar, making up a surface of 130 square millimeters from the microscopic perspective, and the chambers are the same size as modern bacteria (Parsons et al. 1998). In these cases organic reactants may not be destined to “die by dilution,” a potential problem with Wachtershauser’s model (De Duve and Miller 1991), or by irradiation or hydrolysis (Parsons et al. 1998).

Feldspar chambers are interconnected, providing opportunity for horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Woese (2002) argues that extensive horizontal gene transfer is the only way to explain the evolution of cells, given their complexity. In this scheme the components of early cells are relatively modular, and thus amenable to replacement by the products of transferred genes. The complex cells of today show a spectrum of chemical and physical interconnectivity between their components. Less integrated ones, such as aminoacyl-tRNA transferases, show a higher historical frequency of HGT than more integrated ones, such as ribosomal proteins. HGT would have been very important in collections of early, loosely organized cells. It could have driven the complexity of cells up to a point where the systems supporting them became sufficiently idiosyncratic that HGT was rendered less important than traditional Darwinian selection based on individual variation. This point of transition Woese (2002) calls the “Darwinian threshold.” Given the common occurrence in complex dynamical systems of critical points and phase changes, transitions across the Darwinian threshold may have been drastic. Before it, species, and cell types, as we know them, would not have existed. The cell types of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes may be relatively “solidified” ancestors of members of three “evolutionarily fluid” communities.

Original “cells” might have had mineral walls, and then, through the formation and phase separations of lipids, membranes could have formed tiny semipermeable windows between the mineral cells and the outside environment (Parsons et al. 1998). Eventually proto-cellular collections of organic molecules could have escaped from the containers, reforming the windows into protective spheres on the way, becoming more like the cells we recognize today.

Membranes could have been the first structures in living systems to exhibit liquid crystallinity, but there’s reason to believe nucleic acids did so previously. Segments of DNA self assemble into several liquid crystalline phases (Nakata et. al. 2007, University of Colorado 2007), and recent research shows the assembling segments can be as short as six bases. They tend to stick together end to end, forming aggregates that behave like longer molecules of DNA, which then form a liquid crystal. This only happens if base pairs match up, meaning complementary strands in the early stages of chemical evolution would tend to collect and self-organize into liquid crystalline droplets. Noel Clark, researching the physical behavior of short strands of DNA, says:

In essence, the liquid crystal phase condensation selects the appropriate molecular components, and with the right chemistry would evolve larger molecules tuned to stabilize the liquid crystal phase. If this is correct, the linear polymer shape of DNA itself is a vestige of formation by liquid crystal order.

Like minerals, phase separations could provide a mechanism for concentration of carbon, as well as selection of certain types of molecules over others. The ones selected in this way may often be those that are common in living systems. Selection by phase separation might also be an alternative, or partial, explanation for the chirality of biomolecules. For instance, molecules related to cholesterol, because of their chirality, organize into liquid crystals with a natural pulse when situated within a temperature gradient (Cladis et al. 1991). This is termed “breathing mode,” and Cladis says it’s “sort of like the heartbeat turning on” (Peterson 1995).

Thesis and Predictions

The structure of aesthetic phenomena can be explained by preferences that arise from the soft, liquid crystalline physical state of the animal brain.

Thesis

Aesthetic phenomena are usually made up of complex, contradictory mixtures of differentially exciting qualities or concepts, particularly those from the opposite ends of evolutionarily primitive perceptual dimensions or dualities. Arranging such opposites in pairs with respect to the level of arousal they convey produces a set of contrary or “mixed” structures that correspond to essential features of music, song, dance, art, poetry, mythology, language, humor, games, hallucinations, dreams and a surprising proportion of the overall content in animal communication, behavior, coloration and shape, creating a pattern that can only be understood in terms of similar, universal complexity in the animal brain, evidently that related to its soft, liquid crystalline physical condition.

Predictions

Support for the following predictions, which are testable, for the most part, through experiments or observational studies, represents support for the given thesis, from which they were derived. Arguments based on parsimony, probability and a preponderance of anecdotal evidence can be made in their favor. Some appear to be true from the results of studies that have already been carried out (e.g., crossmodal correspondences). Others predict patterns we already know to exist, without necessarily knowing why (e.g., song, dance, Thayer’s law, Gloger’s rule). Links in the predictions lead to sections with a discussion and examples or to collections of relevant photos on Pinterest, mostly those of sexually selected animal coloration patterns. Parenthetical references cite related research for further information, not necessarily that which backs up the given prediction or the overall thesis.

1. More exciting things: Perceptual heat, fluidity, dynamism, speed, disorder, brightness, warm colors (red, orange, yellow), sound, loudness, high pitch, upwardness, outwardness, length, spikiness, large size, large numbers of things and novelty are more exciting to observers psychologically, neurologically and physically than their opposites. The experience of these qualities increases brain temperature more than that of less exciting things. Anger, sexual arousal and other high excitement extremes of emotion also correlate with higher brain temperature.
2. Less exciting things: Perceptual coldness, solidness, stasis, slowness, order, darkness, cool colors (green, blue, purple), silence, quietness, low pitch, downwardness, inwardness, roundness, small size, small numbers of things and familiarity are less exciting to observers than their opposites (those given in prediction 1). The experience of these qualities increases brain temperature less than that of more exciting things, if at all. Emotions near the lower excitement extreme of animal arousal are correlated with lower brain temperature.
3. Mental categories: Humans and other animals automatically associate more exciting things (list 1) with each other in an unconscious category of the mind (mental category 1), and less exciting things (list 2) with each other in an opposite mental category (2). Phenomena in the same category feel like each other unconsciously, which itself is because they involve similar changes in the neurological excitement, temperature and therefore thermal characteristics of the brain. Support for the reality of mental categories can be found in psychological literature on conceptual metaphor, cross-modal correspondences and synesthesia.
4. Aesthetic mixtures: Pairing any quality listed in prediction 1 with any quality listed in prediction 2 generates the structure of a contradictory juxtaposition of differentially exciting qualities, referred to here as a “mixture,” which happens to also be the structure of a common theme or pattern found throughout aesthetic material, so that mixtures make up a large portion of what animals find amusing. The experience of a mixture increases brain temperature moderately, less than that of a combination of more exciting things (e.g., red fluidity) and more than that of a combination of less exciting things (e.g., blue solidness).
5. Aesthetic indifference: The mixtures in prediction 4 effectively predict aesthetic structure regardless of whether they’re made up of direct opposites (e.g., bright~dark, up~down, fluid~solid) or indirect opposites (e.g., up~dark, bright~down, fluid~dark, fluid~down, bright~solid, up~solid). This can be demonstrated by lists of mixtures such as those in Monoaesthetic Mixtures in Language, Culture and Biology.
6. Sensory aesthetics: Breaking aesthetic material down into its most basic perceptual components, those given in predictions 1 and 2, for example, reveals the high frequency with which it tends to be made up, sequentially or simultaneously, of mixtures of qualities in mental category 1 with those in category 2. Such mixtures occur less frequently in non-aesthetic perceptual material.
7. Aesthetics: Beauty, preferences and aesthetic phenomena are usually explained as side effects of common experiences (in humans), as the direct result of differential survival in populations of ancestors, or as indirect bias/effect pairs that coevolve by chance and/or because they provide indications of genetic survival ability in the context of mate choice. These explanations are usually incorrect. Sensory bias theory, which argues that preexisting sensory system structure serving unrelated purposes gives rise incidentally to preferences that then happen to select for aesthetic phenomena, is the closest hypothesis to that proposed here.
8. Other mixtures: Common aesthetic mixtures also result from the pairing of more recently derived and/or specific opposites such as happy versus sad, life versus death, divine versus mortal, male versus female and others. Aesthetic indifference applies to these mixtures just as it does to those made up of relatively primitive, more general opposites, such that for example there’s some amount of aesthetic value in the juxtaposition of death not just with life (the undead, the afterlife) but with humor (tragicomedy), divinity (deicide) and masculinity (androcide, patricide), more so at least than there is in the combination of death with sadness, mortality and femininity.
9. Universal biases: Mixtures of perceptual opposites are selected for due to universal preferences with structures that match those of the mixtures, both through mate choice in animals generally and in culture by way of universal human inclinations.
10. Preexistence: Sentient animals have always been born with a preexisting ability to understand the difference between the pairs of opposites given in predictions 1 and 2, and with a set of related predilections for mixtures of the these and other opposites.
11. Monoaesthetics: All the specific aesthetic instances of a particular mixture are caused by a single, universal bias in the animal brain favoring that mixture, with the bias having originated prior to the species expressing it.
12. Aesthetic reflex and physical mental representation: Stimuli we recognize as exciting increase physical excitement in the brain, along with its temperature, fluidity, molecular motion and disorder, inducing an elastic-like response and a corresponding psychological desire for opposite, less exciting stimuli, and vice versa. This elasticity is the basis of animal preferences that don't make sense in an adaptive context, and it relies on the densely liquid crystallinity physical state of the brain.
13. Preference evolution and brain softness: Brains evolve to be soft, or liquid crystalline, because being in this condition allows for and facilitates consciousness, sensation and cognition, increasing biological fitness but also, incidentally, introducing biases that select for perceptual moderation and juxtaposition between qualities at opposite ends of the perceptual dimensions defined by sensory abilities. These biases are proximally nonadaptive, but not detrimental enough to be selected against to the point of being eliminated.
14. Temperature and emotion: Otherwise nonsensical popular expressions show that angriness, sexual arousal and other simple types of excitement are related to higher temperature, fluidity, motion and disorder in the mind and brain. Oppositely, low excitement emotions such as indifference and sadness can be shown through linguistic evidence to relate to relative coldness, solidness, stasis and order.
15. Physical realities from psychology: Facts regarding the nature of matter can be discerned from universal psychological associations, regardless of the fact that a person wouldn't necessarily know or care to do so. One could have predicted, for instance, that heat, dynamism and disorder are somehow related in nature based on the fact that we associate them universally with each other, with intense emotions, and with psychological excitement in general. If we were not aware of the way colors are arranged in rainbows, in sunlight split by a prism, the order of the colors could be determined indirectly using the hue-heat effect because red looks slightly warmer than yellow, yellow looks warmer than green, green warmer than blue and so on.
16. Linguistic mixtures: Communication is largely made up of mixtures, or references to perceptual and conceptual phenomena from opposite ends of a spectrum of excitement. This applies to idioms, many of which have an aesthetic origin, to the music-like linguistic alternation between sound and silence and higher and lower pitch in language, and to other alternating or simultaneous references to the mental opposites given in predictions 1 and 2. Repeated random samples of popular expressions or lines of famous poems will contain examples of the predicted mixtures at high rates, and more frequently so in poetry than prose.
17. Mixtures in music: Animal vocalizations evolve to fit biases favoring auditory mixtures of sound with silence, high pitch with low pitch and regularity with randomness, especially under selection by mate choice. This is evident throughout the musical vocalizations of insects, birds, whales, mice, humans and numerous other animals, meaning the biases are independent of brain and body size and form, taxonomic history, and all the other differences between animals with the capacity to hear and sing a song.
18. Mixtures in dance: In dances, by contrast to normal, non-aesthetic activities, animals tend to increase the motion and disorder of the darker, lower, central and inward parts of their bodies more than the brighter, upper, outward and distal parts. These effects, which have the structure of mixtures as defined above, can be seen cross culturally in human dances and interspecifically in animal courtship rituals. As with musicality, differences between animals are irrelevant to the existence of the biases and their effects.
19. Mythical mixtures: The structure of mythical material is largely a reflection of human biases that favor differentially exciting juxtapositions of perceptual and conceptual opposites, such as gods versus death.
20. Learning and knowledge: Popular expressions show that, in the brain, learning is a fluid process and knowledge is like a solid. Learning, novelty, lies and fantasy are automatically thought of as being similar to heat, disorder, motion, upwardness, outwardness and length, while knowledge, truth and reality are thought of as being colder, orderly, still, down, inward and round.
21. Form is boring: Concepts having to do with form are mixed in aesthetic material with those related to excitement, indicating that form belongs to a mental category of less exciting things.
22. Time is boring: Concepts having to do with time are mixed in aesthetic material with those related to excitement, indicating that time belongs to a mental category of less exciting things.
23. Coloration patterns: Sexual selection causes the evolution of widespread patterns in the shape and coloration of animals, regardless of other differences between species. The more dorsal, anterior, distal, protrusive, elongated and dynamic parts of animals tend to evolve through mate choice to be darker, cooler colors, and relatively ventral, posterior, central, inward, round and static parts evolve to be brighter, warmer colors. Resulting from the same process, darker and bluer sections of color on bodies tend to take on more fluid-like, disordered, spiky and fragmented appearances than brighter and redder patches, which become relatively orderly, round, smooth and singular.
24. Thayer’s law: Despite its current interpretation as a cryptic survival adaptation, Thayer’s law is actually a sexually selected effect resulting from universal biases for upward (dorsal) darkness and downward (ventral) brightness. See Thayer (1896) and The Thayer Effect on Pinterest.
25. Gloger’s rule: Animals tend to prefer brighter and warmer colors in colder environments and darker and cooler colors in hotter environments, choosing mates accordingly, and these biases are largely responsible for the ecogeographic effect known as Gloger’s rule. See Gloger (1833).
26. Bouba Kiki: The bouba/kiki effect (Köhler 1970) can be interpreted as a universal association of high pitch (kiki) with spikiness and low pitch (bouba) with roundness. This makes phenomena in which high pitch is coupled with roundness or low pitch with spikiness relatively complicated, contradictory and amusing.
27. Roundness disruption effect: Animals are universally biased to appreciate disruptions of roundness, or the application of more exciting qualities to round things. This bias is responsible for the decoration of round body parts with long, flowing features, such as long hair in humans, and for the way round objects are used in games and sports.
28. Oblong effect: The oblong, slightly spiky shape of eggs, decorative ocelli, flower petals and other aesthetically selected things is a reflection of a corresponding, universal bias in the animal brain for the mixtures long~round and spiky~round. This is a special case of the more general roundness disruption effect.
29. Out~in effect in bodies: Animals find the outward parts of each other's bodies to be more exciting than the inward parts. A preference for mixtures of out and in causes sexual selection favoring bodies that exhibit complex juxtapositions of these qualities. This is why the inward parts of bodies such as mouths, noses and ears tend to be coupled with features expressing outwardness. Inward parts are also coupled with other exciting qualities such as brightness, redness, length and spikiness.
30. Proximity disruption effect: References to relatively exciting perceptual qualities increase between individuals as we approach each other more closely. This also applies to other animals. Proximity disruption is a special case of the inwardness disruption effect.
31. Physical lateralization: Due to differences in plasma membranes, probably in part to differences resulting from lipid (e.g. sphingomyelin) concentration, the left side of the brain is slightly more solid than the right, which is slightly more fluid, resulting in a preference for more exciting qualities to be situated on the right side of the visual field and less exciting qualities on the left. See Pediconi and Barrantes (1990) on phospholipid differences between brain hemispheres.
32. REM and brain heat: Rapid, random eye movements during sleep result from increased heat (molecular disorder and dynamism) in the brain during this sleep phase, and represent an outward, large-scale behavior caused by thermal conditions in neurons.
33. Softness effect: Animals are amused by soft bodily features and objects because they reflect the soft physical consistency as the brain.
34. Personality types: Extroverts, by comparison to introverts, are more tolerant of or amused by more exciting perceptual phenomena, while introverts are more tolerant of or amused by less exciting phenomena. This is due to physical differences in the extrovert versus introvert brain, the former being less excited physically by default than the latter. See Perceptual Excitement and Eysenck’s Mechanism of Personality.

Works Cited

Gloger, C.L. (1833). Das Abandern der Vogel Durch Einfluss des Klimas. Breslau, Breslau.

Köhler, Wolfgang. Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology. United States, Liveright, 1970.

Thayer, Abbott H. “The Law which Underlies Protective Coloration.” The Auk 13.2 (1896): 124–129.

More and Less Exciting Things

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.

— Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (2022)

Perceptual heat, fluidity, motion, speed, disorder, brightness, the so-called “warmer” colors red, orange and yellow, sound, loudness, high pitch, upwardness, outwardness, the left side, spikiness, length, large size, large numbers of things and novelty tend to be more exciting to animals than their opposites: coldness, solidness, stasis, slowness, order, darkness, the “cooler” colors purple, blue and green, silence, quietness, low pitch, downwardness, inwardness, the right side, roundness, small size, small numbers of things and familiarity.

These qualities, listed below, make up psychological dualities that we appear to distinguish, understand and appreciate by way of differences in how they influence the temperature of the brain, sometimes directly so in the case of heat and cold, otherwise indirectly by way of sensory signals and the level of neurological excitation they convey.

More exciting things (list 1, pole A): heat, fluidity, dynamism, speed, disorder, brightness, warm colors, sound, loudness, high pitch, upwardness, outwardness, the left side, length, spikiness, large size, multiplicity, novelty.

Less exciting things (list 2, pole B): coldness, solidness, stasis, slowness, order, darkness, cool colors, silence, quietness, low pitch, downwardness, inwardness, the right side, roundness, shortness, small size, small numbers, familiarity.

The qualities in list 1 and their conceptual relatives are used figuratively to describe higher states of arousal like anger, passion, happiness, humor, intoxication and insanity, and often to mean excitement itself, in addition to their literal meanings. They stand for impropriety, disobedience, disagreement, informality, generality, effortlessness (easiness), fantasy, uncertainty, dominance, danger, evil and lies, and they’re used euphemistically to counter the unexcitingness of death, loss and other unpleasant events, more so at least than the qualities in list 2 and their conceptual relatives, which tend to denote less excitement and lower arousal states like sadness, boredom, seriousness, sobriety and sanity. List 2 qualities describe rules, laws, difficulty (hardness), reality, certainty, knowledge, agreement, formality, specificity, submission, safety, goodness and the truth, and they counter the unpleasantness of overly exciting behavior and situations.

Thus, pairs of more recently derived conceptual opposites are organized in the mind according to the same system of differential excitement that animals have been using for millions of years to understand each other and their surroundings. Primitive perceptual opposites function something like an operating system of the mind, with higher level concepts relying on them to “make sense.”

List 1 and 2 qualities delineate extremely primitive sensory abilities, those we use to comprehend temperature, texture, motion, light, color, sound, shape and direction. They can be experienced by all animals with appropriate sensory systems. Mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, arthropods, mollusks and others, some of our most distant animal relatives, probably think of them as opposites just as we do. A connection between sensory system structure and preferences can explain why so many different species exhibit such similar aesthetic inclinations. Birds and humans, for instance, are both amused by song, dance, contrasting coloration and flowers.

There are, of course, more and less exciting things to be considered apart from those listed above. Some also represent primitive opposites (e.g., forward versus backward, front versus back, peripheral versus central, expansion versus contraction, freedom versus confinement), while others are more recently derived: evil versus good, soul versus body, win versus lose, irrational versus rational, id versus ego, free will versus determinism, fluid versus crystallized intelligence and so on.

Some concepts that have no apparent opposites can nevertheless be shown to fit into one or the other excitement category. Time, names, money, skin, math, thought and the mind are this way, for example, all of them falling on the less exciting side. Dreams and magic are examples on the more exciting side. Animals can be put into more and less exciting categories based on the degree to which they express list 1 and list 2 qualities: mobility, coloration patterns, the volume and pitch of vocalizations, the length and spikiness versus roundness of their bodies and so on. Sensory systems themselves are evidently differentiated by levels of excitement, with visual stimuli being more exciting than auditory and olfactory stimuli, although this doesn’t necessarily apply to certain species.

For almost every pair of opposites that we recognize universally, it’s easy to determine that one component is more exciting than the other. In fact, there seem to be many more psychological dualities to which this applies than there are exceptions, and the more universal and primitive the opposites are the more obvious it is that one is more exciting. The idea applies so widely that it’s reasonable to conclude differential excitement has something to do with the way sensory systems work, that it occurs inevitably and we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between opposites without it.

One could imagine perceptual abilities having aesthetic side effects in the form of biases that persist despite being adaptively neutral, or even detrimental but negligibly so compared to the benefits of seeing, hearing, and knowing the difference between wet and dry, motion and stasis, night and day, sound and silence, long and round, up and down, out and in and so on.

Cultural phenomena, animals bodies and behaviors evolve and develop through aesthetic selection to express perceptual structures that juxtapose list 1 and list 2 qualities, as opposed to taking on forms that combine qualities within a particular list, and rather than having a random structure with respect to opposites. Aesthetic decisions in biology and culture select for mixtures of more and less exciting things, or for moderation with respect to the degree of arousal conveyed by shapes, coloration patterns, movements, sounds, sequences of concepts and other phenomena.

Linguistic Patterns

'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

— Shakespeare, Hamlett (2022)

Linguistic patterns demonstrate differential excitement between list 1 and list 2 qualities. For example, we call undesirably ordinary or unexciting things “cold,” “icy” (cold/solid), “dry” (solid), “stale” (solid), “stiff” (solid), “tired” (stasis), “slow,” “lifeless” (static), “tame” (orderly), “square” (order), “flat” (order), “lackluster” (dark), “drab,” “ho-hum” (low pitch), “meh” (low pitch), “monotonous” (orderly sound), “underwhelming” (down), “boring” (inward), “dull” (not spiky/round), “small” and “ordinary” (order/familiar), despite the lack of a consistent, outwardly observable reason to do so, and as if they fail to satisfy a desire for some amount of heat, fluidity, dynamism, disorder, brightness, high pitch, variation, spikiness, large size and outwardness, which represent higher excitement in “things are heating up,” “a fever pitch” (heat), “on cloud nine” (fluid/multiple), “boiling over” (hot/fluid/up), “blood was boiling” (red/fluid/hot), “make a splash,” “get a rush” (speed), “earth shaking” (dynamic), “earth shattering” (disorder), “cracked up” (disorder/up), “all hell broke loose” (many/hot/disorder/free), “bright and breezy” (bright/fluid), “beaming” (light/happy), “tickled pink” (bright), “rosy” (red), “red hot” (bright/red), “buzzing” (high pitch), “alarmed” (loud/high pitch), “riled up,” “shook up” (dynamic/up), “sensory overload” (over/up), “freaking out,” “blown away” (away/outward), “on pins and needles” (spiky), “a big deal” (large size), “swell” (size increase) and “no small matter.”

Hundreds of examples of expressions like those above are listed in the following section: Differential Excitement in Language, along with those supporting the other suggested connections between primitive perceptual qualities and more derived concepts, which can be stated metaphorically, as in: anger and passion are hot, uncertainty and humor are fluid-like, insanity is outward and disorderly, certainty is solid and orderly, happiness is upward and bright, sadness is downward and dark, dominance is higher, submission is lower, difficulty is hard, lies are smoke and so on.

The given patterns evolve and persist in languages because their contents and meanings are psychologically congruent. Our interpretation of them is aligned with preexisting expectations. They have aesthetic value because they conform with categories that exist in the mind from birth, such as those defined by lists 1 and 2. Calling something in list 1 by the name of something else in the same list automatically makes sense and gives us a type of satisfaction, and the same goes for the qualities in list 2. “Boiling blood” makes sense because the qualities heat, disorder, redness and fluidity are all associated, congruently, in a mental category of higher excitement that also contains the idea of anger. “Take it with a grain of salt” makes sense because inwardness (taking), smallness, singularity and solidness are all congruently associated in a category with lack of excitement.

The pattern in which list 1 qualties denote higher excitement and list 2 qualties denote lower excitement is in contrast to incongruent expressions that juxtapose opposites, which have aesthetic value because they contradict expectations. These are part of a second, equally important linguistic pattern, which is addressed in the section Aesthetic Mixtures. They include expressions like “take it with a huge grain of salt,” which adds large size to the original, in contradiction to the concept that something as small as a salt grain is insignificant. The variation “take it with a bunch of grains of salt” adds multiplicity to make a mixture, although the phrase is still predominantly unexciting. It’s common for phrases to evolve this way, to include additional qualities from the opposite mental category, which compensate for the original, unmixed content. The attractiveness of contradiction is why we say things like “awfully good,” “old news,” “seriously funny,” “same difference,” “more is less” and “bittersweet.” In each saying one component is more exciting, respectively awfulness, newness, funniness, differentness, more and sweetness.

As an example of the distinction between a congruent and contradictory expression, “bored to death,” a literal, congruence-based metaphor, amuses us by reflecting the particularly universal idea that death is less exciting than life, while “thrilled to death,” an ironic, contradiction-based idiom, amuses us as well, in this case by the way it creates a contrast between differentially exciting things. The expression “dead asleep” is based on congruence because sleep, in terms of arousal, is closer to death than being awake. Shakespeare uses our collective understanding of this to be entertaining in the opening quote, while his suggestion that death is “Devoutly to be wish'd,” and brings unknown dreams, makes the lines overall a complicated mixture.

Aesthetic congruences and contradictions describe a significant portion of the structure of human language. Idioms can be sorted into one or the other type, and similar numbers seem to fall into each category, but the incidence of the contradictory type (mixtures) is higher in poetry, lyrics, the names of paintings, songs, fictional stories and other material specifically created to be aesthetically pleasing.

Because congruent expressions contain two or more references to phenomena in the same mental category, they can be thought of as combining qualities or concepts that reinforce each other, either on the more or less exciting side, while contradictory expressions can be thought of as mixtures, with the components counteracting each other to some extent and resulting in relative moderation with respect to arousal.

“Dead calm,” “dead silence” and “dead of night” are congruent idioms (combinations), based in part on unconscious associations between list 1 qualities and death. People are well aware that calmness, quiet and darkness are different from being dead. No one is actually mistaking one for the other, but they make more sense to us than mixtures of death like “dead restless,” “dead loud” and “dead of day.” The latter expressions, although they don’t exist, happen to be very close in their structure to some that do: “the quick and the dead,” “loud enough to wake the dead,” “die laughing,” and “Day of the Dead.”

Some idioms are made up primarily of references to things from the same excitement category, but they refer to something in the opposite category, making them contradictory overall despite the congruence of their content. “Ride off into the sunset” is exciting in its references to motion, outwardness and the sun, but it’s made less so by its meaning, to die. The contradiction between its content and meaning is at least part of the reason it’s popular. The phrase itself is actually a composition of dynamism (ride), outwardness (off), inwardness (into), heat (sun), brightness (sun) and downwardness (set), giving it a four to two balance of excitement before accounting for however unexciting it is due to meaning death. Death euphamisms are generally structured this way, using qualities from the more exciting side of primitive perceptual dimensions to make it sound a little more satisfying. Curiously, along with dynamism, outwardness is one of the most common qualities in list 2 that happens to be used this way. We speak of the deceased, which is Latin for “going away,” as if they’ve travelled outward, “departed,” “gone to the great beyond,” “passed away,” “crossed over,” or, in Shakespeare’s famous quote, “shuffled off.”

Thus, one can identify two major patterns in language that appear to originate through distinct mechanisms, although both of them are related to arousal. One is made up of combinations that amuse us because they vindicate universal associations. Another, evidently more amusing pattern, is made up of expressions that do just the opposite, violating the same associations. The former pattern is demonstrated in the following section, and the later in Monoaesthetic Mixtures.

Differential Excitement in Language

The following lists give examples of common expressions that connect list 1 and 2 qualities to more or less excitement, as proposed above, to higher and lower arousal emotions (e.g., anger, sexuality, happiness, intoxication, insanity, depression, sadness, boredom, sobriety and sanity), and to the concepts of truth, lies, fantasy, reality, humor, seriousness and so on.

Expressions that demonstrate mental categories are included. For example “lower your voice,” “quiet down,” “deep voice” and “keep it down” connect the list 2 qualities of quietness and low pitch to downwardness (quiet/low pitch=down). The lists are laid out so that qualities from list 1 alternate with their opposites from list 2. Some of the expressions are followed by descriptions of their meanings, in parentheses, especially if the meaning isn’t well known.

Heat and Coldness

Heat (39): a flame (romantic relationship), a hot date, a hotbed, a hotspot, a short fuse (excitable), a smoke show (sexuality), add fuel to the fire (more/fluid/hot), all fired up, ball of fire (energetic), barnburner (exciting), blow a fuse (anger), breathing fire (angry=fluid/hot), burning desire (heat=sexuality), burning with rage (heat=anger), fan the flames, fired up (excited), five-alarm fire, furious (heat=anger), he/she is hot (sexuality), heated argument, hothead (excitable), hot damn, hot diggity dog, hot-tempered (anger), in heat (sexuality), in hot water, in the hot seat, inflame the situation (excitement), inflammatory, playing with fire, spitting fire (angry=fluid/hot/out), temper tantrum, the heat of passion (sexuality), things are heating up, torrid romance, steam coming out of the ears (fluid/out~in), in the heat of the moment, emit smoke from seven orifices (fluid/many/out, Chinese idiom), heat wave (heat=fluidity), too hot to handle, sell like hotcakes (heat=fast).

Cold (23): a cool head (calmness), chill, chill out, chillin, cool calm and collected, cold comfort, cool as a cucumber (calmness), cool down (calmness), play it cool, cool your heels (slow down), cool your jets (calm down), lower the temperature (calm down), out cold (unconscious), cold shoulder (indifference), cold as ice (unemotional), cold fish (unemotional), in the cold light of day (reality), chillax (cold=calm).

Fluidity and Solidness

Fluidity (65): add fuel to the fire, all gas and gaiters (nonsense), bad blood (disagreement), before the wind (fast), blood was boiling (anger), blow air with the bellows (a Spanish idiom for sex), blow it out of the water, blow off steam, blow smoke (lie), blow the lid off, blow your top (anger), blown out of proportion, boil over (intense emotions), breeze away (speed), cause a stir (cause excitement), cooking with gas (speed), cream of the crop, don't make waves, drooling over, fan the flames, foaming at the mouth, full of piss and vinegar (energetic), fuming (angry), gaining steam (more/fluid), gaslighting (dishonesty), get a second wind (energy), gushing, have a gas, have a meltdown, have the wind up (be anxious), huffing and puffing (upset), in full flow (fast), juicy, lickety split (fast), mad as a wet hen (anger), make a splash (exciting), on cloud nine, open the floodgates, out for blood (anger), outpouring, pleased as punch, simmer down, sleazy (sexuality), slick as a whistle (high pitch), smoke-show (sexuality), souped-up, sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, spitting fire (very angry), spitting mad (very angry), steam your beam (very angry), steamy (sexuality), stewing (angry), stir things up a little, stir up trouble, take my breath away, take the wind out of your sails, the calm before the storm, trouble is brewing, turbulent times, waiting with bated breath, walking on air (ecstatic), weak sauce, where there's smoke there's fire, windmills in your head (crazy), winds of change (fluidity=novelty).

Solidness/Dryness (18): bone idle (stasis), carved in stone (certain), crystal clear (certain), feel it in my bones (certain), hard times (difficulty), hard-pressed (difficulty), home and dry (ending), like watching paint dry (boring), bored stiff, rock bottom, solid argument (reality), solid as a rock (stability), hard as nails (unsentimental), hard-nosed (realistic), the hard way (difficult), dry as dust (boring), es un peñazo: “it is a big rock” meaning boring in Spanish, 따분하다: “stale” meaning extremely boring in Korean.

Dynamism, Speed, Stasis and Slowness

Dynamism and speed (21): a fast temper (anger), a quick temper (anger), actions speak louder than words (dynamism=loudness), all shook up (many/dynamic/up), drive me crazy (dynamism/disorder), drive me wild (dynamism/disorder), emotional (motion), flip out (dynamic/out), get a rush (excited), get some action (sexuality), go crazy (dynamic/disorder), go for broke (dynamic/disorder), go hog wild (dynamic/disorder), go mad, go nuts, raring to go, life in the fast lane (exciting life), riding high, running amok, running roughshod, time flies when your having fun (fun=speed).

Stasis and slowness (10): bored to death (unexciting), dead on (correct), dead set (certain=stasis), no great shakes, slow (boring), slow your roll (calm down), slow on the uptake (unintelligent), a bit slow (unintelligent), unmoved (unexcited), snooze fest (boring).

Disorder and Order

Disorder (50): a firecracker, a crook (impropriety), a smash hit, banging, bend the truth (falsehood=disorder), daybreak (bright=disorder), break of day (bright=disorder), crack of dawn (bright=disorder), break into song (sound=disorder), break the rules (impropriety=disorder), bursting at the seams, bust a nut (sexuality), bust up, by cracky (surprise), crack a smile (happiness=disorder), crack the whip, crackhead (intoxication), crackpot (insanity), deranged (insanity), dirty language (impropriety=disorder) dirty rat (offensive), dirty trick (dishonesty), don’t twist my arm (annoyance), get all bent out of shape, get bent (offensive), get cracking (energy), get dirty (sexuality), get freaky (sexuality), get kinky (sexuality), get nasty (sexuality), having a blast, in your wildest dreams, just for a twist (novelty=disorder), let it rip (dynamism=disorder), like gangbusters (energetic), loose cannon, make a crack, nervous breakdown, not all it’s cracked up to be (not that exciting), on a tear (speed=disorder), play dirty (dishonesty), read the riot act, rough you up, shaken up, storming mad, twist the truth (lies), twisted, wisecrack, with a twist (novelty=disorder), wrongheaded (falsehood=disorder), you’re cracking me up (humor).

Order (11) a clear conscience (goodness), come clean (truth), conscience is clean (goodness), even-keeled, get square (fairness), level-headed (calm), on the level (honest), on the square (honest), shape up (goodness=order), straighten up, with clear eyes (reality).

Brightness, Darkness, Warm and Cool Colors

Brightness and warm colors (16): a heavy purse makes a light heart (lightness=happiness), all moonlight and roses (many/light/red=positive), all sweetness and light, bedazzled, bright and breezy, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (bright/spiky), dazzled, eyes light up, in its heyday, it dawned on me (bright=novel), light at the end of the tunnel (positive), light up the room, light-hearted, lighten the mood, like a red flag to a bull (anger), newsflash, tickled pink (excited), red hot (exciting), see through rose-tinted glasses (optimism).

Darkness and cool colors (6): baby blues, dark times, dark days, darken the mood (sad=dark), feel blue (blue=sad), have the blues (sad), dead of night (darkness=stasis), broyer du noir: “crush some dark” in French meaning to feel very depressed, verlo todo negro: “see everything dark” in Spanish meaning pessimistic and negative.

Sound, Loudness, High Pitch, Silence, Quietness and Low Pitch

Sound, loudness and high pitch (17): alarmed, alarming, all cry and no wool (many/loud/high-pitched), all horns and rattles (spiky/loud/high-pitched), barking mad (crazy), buzzing, mad as a hornet, no screaming hell (not exciting), on the fiddle (dishonest), rattled, uproar (up/loud=excitement), whistling Dixie (optimistic), whistling in the dark (optimistic), whistling past the graveyard (optimistic), ticked off, with bells on, no big whoop (not exciting=big/loud), commotion (sound=motion).

Silence, quietness and low pitch (6): ho-hum, nothing to shout about, peace and quiet (calm), lower your voice (quiet=downward), quiet down (quiet=downward), keep it down (quiet=downward), a deep voice (low pitch=downward/inward).

Up and Down

Up (50): a bang-up time (up/fun), a blowup (fluid/up/exciting), a toss up (uncertain), above and beyond, all riled up, all shook up (many/dynamic/up), all worked up, all wound up, amped-up, blow your top, crank it up (intensify), fed up, flight of fancy (unrealistic), floating on air (happy), fly off the handle, flying high, get off your high horse (superiority), get your hopes up, go through the roof, high alert, high spirits, high stakes (up/spiky), high strung, hopping mad, I’ve had it up to here, jumping for joy (happiness), on the upside, on top of the world, over done, over the moon (happy), over the top (up/up), overall (generality), overhyped, overwhelming, overzealous, raise the stakes, raising a ruckus, raising hell, raising red flags (up/bright/fluid), riding high, sensory overload (too exciting), super! (excited), suspense (up=uncertain), up in arms, up to no good, upheaval, uplifting (happy), upset (angry), exalted (superiority), escalate.

Down (34): a Debbie downer (sad), a downer (sad), below par, bring down a peg or two, calm down (down/less excitement), dampen down, dial it down (lower the intensity), diddly squat (down=none), down and out, down in the doldrums (sad), down in the dumps (sad), down in the mouth (sad), down on your luck, down trodden, down with (agreement), downplay, drop by (downward=entry), drop in (downward=entry), feeling down, feeling low, hit rock bottom (solid/down), let down (disappointment), low spirits (down~fluid), on the downside, settle down, simmer down, something got you down?, subdued, under the weather, understatement, underwhelming, deescalate, grave (down=death=serious), dead serious (death=serious), sinking feeling (sad=down).

Out and In

Out (13): a bad trip (intense), all shot to hell, away with the fairies (crazy), bliss out, blown away (overwhelmed), blown out of proportion (fluid/out/big), extrovert, far and away, flipping out (dynamic/out), freaking out, jump out of your skin, go all out (dynamic/many/out), out for blood (out/fluid/red=angry), out of it, rip off (disorder/out=dishonest).

In (18): it’s a pity (sad=down/in), bottom of the barrel (down/in=unexciting), come to grips (understand), down in a hole (down/in/in), heart in my boots, in a funk, in the doldrums, in a dark place, from the bottom of my heart (down/in=honest), introvert, keep it down (quiet), pull it back, pull it together, reel it in, shortcomings, stuck in a rut, take it easy (in=calm down), with a heavy heart.

Spikiness, Length and Roundness

Spikiness (11): a barb, a sharp tongue, bristle with rage (angry), my hair stood on end, on pins and needles (excited), prick (insult), prickly, razor sharp (witty), sharp (smart), sharp sound (spiky=high pitch), spike the pinch (spiky=drug use), cortisol spike (spiky=excitement).

Length (5): a long shot (unlikely=long/out), an arm and a leg (many=long), go to any length, go to great lengths, my patience is wearing thin (thin=angry), widespread (general), with a broad brush (general).

Roundness/Dullness (8): cold as balls (coldness=roundness), see eye to eye (agreement), in point of fact (round=real), on point (correct), dull (boring), dull as dishwater (boring), in point of fact (round=true).

Large and Small Size

Large size (11): a big deal (exciting), a whale of a time, a huge deal (exciting), at large (outward), big into, big on, big up, bold, larger than life (dynamism), no small matter (exciting), the big cheese (dominance).

Small size (10): don’t sweat the small stuff, feel small, lay low and sing small, small fry, small time, small talk, small wonder (unsuprising), small potatoes, take it with a grain of salt (in/single/small/solid), the worlds smallest violin.

Multiplicity

More (18): all the rage, at sixes and sevens (craziness), double or nothing, double trouble, double-tongued (deceitful), excessive, extraordinary, feel like a million bucks (happy), from zero to sixty, hit for six (upset), hope springs eternal, in full flow (fast), in full swing (fast), in seventh heaven (happy), like a dog with two tails (very excited), on the double (fast), two-faced (deceitful), utmost.

Less (10): a nothing burger, an empty shell, bar none (certain), emptiness, glass half empty, feel nothing inside, inner void, nothing special, nothing to write home about, too little too late.

Aesthetics

Aesthetic phenomena can be explained by universal biases in animal brains and sensory systems, rather than improbable coevolutionary connections to differential survival.

Some kind of aesthetic activity is apparently a feature of all the 3,000 or so distinguishable cultures that are to be found on the earth’s surface. This suggests strongly that art grows out of some fundamental characteristics of the human nervous system.

—D. E. Berlyne, Aesthetics and Psychobiology (1971)

Aesthetics receives strangely little attention in scientific and philosophical circles, given the evidence of a sense of beauty in thousands of species and the ubiquity of aesthetic phenomena in biology and human culture. Examples include music and song, dance, flowers and fruits, poetry and lyrics, stories, characters, plays, paintings, decoration of all kinds, games and sports, toys, clothing, architecture, gods, myths, heroes, rituals, temples, films, bodies and gestures, cosmetics, clothing, hairstyles, celebrations and holidays, gardens and parks, parties, festivals, products, logos, names, bright solids like gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, ivory, teeth, pearls and coins, soft body parts like breasts, lips and tongues, surprising things such as jokes, gambling, plot twists and presents, and figurative language including idioms, metaphors, oxymorons, hyperbole, irony, paradox, proverbs, understatements, euphemisms and alliteration.

Not every aesthetic thing is accounted for, of course, and attractive natural features of the world like streams, waterfalls, beaches, sunsets, eclipses, starry night skies, mountains, falling snow and rainbows aren’t included, although they’re aesthetic, and of special interest because they show it’s not unusual for animals to be amused by phenomena that weren’t created or didn’t evolve to amuse us. Our sense of beauty is broad enough to incorporate stimuli we have no reason to be concerned with, a subtle suggestion that its origin is disconnected from whatever purposes we imagine it to serve, and that preferences in general predate the evolution of beautiful things.

The existence of beauty itself doesn’t need an explanation. It exists because we select for it while ignoring or rejecting what we judge to be relatively unexceptional or displeasing. The mystery is why we find some experiences more desirable, or at least more tolerable, than others, why we so often agree about what they are, with each other and other animals, and what it is about the structure of aesthetic things that makes us like them. Aesthetics is primarily concerned with the source and persistence of psychological biases such as those for music over noise, dance over normal movement, flowers over leaves, colorful patterns over colorless invariance and generally with the existence of a common set of biases for attractive things, rather than the things themselves.

Even though the primary functions of the brain must be survival and reproduction, it’s also responsible for a wide variety of phenomena that can’t be understand as functional in these ways. Brains have to mix the physical characteristics of solids and fluids in order to maintain their structure, capture and transport energy, transport particles, support electrical impulses and perform any other essential physiological function. At the same time, somehow, it embodies animal preferences. It might not even be possible to put together a brain that functions well physiologically without introducing some amount of non-functional noise, or psychological by-products, such as aesthetic preferences for auditory and visual mixtures of regularity and variation. Certain types of preferences (and behaviors) are probably selected for indirectly through the apparent physical prerequisite that solidness and fluidity must be combined in the construction of a brain. Preferences and behaviors that don’t contribute in any obvious way to survival, or which greatly exceed in their magnitude that which would serve any apparent fitness-related purpose, might be explained as such by-products.

Darwin didn’t suggest that ornaments, songs and dances evolve because they indicate obscure, beneficial hereditary advantages, or that they come about through random, incomprehensible genetic feedback loops. He said they evolve in response to widespread preferences for similar stimuli in many different kinds of animals, through an aesthetic system of bias and effect (1871):

On the other hand, I willingly admit that a great number of male animals, as all our most gorgeous birds, some fishes, reptiles, and mammals, and a host of magnificently coloured butterflies, have been rendered beautiful for beauty’s sake. But this has been effected through sexual selection, that is, by the more beautiful males having been continually preferred by the females, and not for the delight of man. So it is with the music of birds. We may infer from all this that a nearly similar taste for beautiful colours and for musical sounds runs through a large part of the animal kingdom.

In Darwin’s view, something about the “common constitution” of the nervous system must be responsible for the evolution of beauty in animals (1888):

How the sense of beauty in its simplest form — that is, the reception of a peculiar kind of pleasure from certain colours, forms and sounds — was first developed in the mind of man and of the lower animals, is a very obscure subject. The same sort of difficulty is presented if we enquire how it is that certain flavours and odours give pleasure, and others displeasure. Habit in all these cases appears to have come to a certain extent into play; but there must be some fundamental cause in the constitution of the nervous system in each species.

What’s needed in order to account for similar preferences in so many species, from the “lower” animals to “man,” is something that’s the same about the brains of insects, fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals, ruling out factors like brain size, body size, intelligence, encephalization quotient, ecology or recent evolutionary history, leaving few potential common factors to consider, one of them being the physical complexity of plasma membranes in neurons, that which makes a brain thoroughly soft by comparison to other body parts and nonliving matter. Like beauty, complexity of this kind in the brain hasn’t received much attention, perhaps because it’s assumed to be an unimportant side effect of other properties. Instead, it appears to be essential to sensation, consciousness and preferences, so that a brain works more like a highly sensitive thermometer than a computer, with more exciting perceptual qualities corresponding to a greater increase in brain temperature than less exciting qualities.

In ancient Greece the word “aesthetic” meant the experience of a perception or feeling. Now, of course, it means beautiful or the study of beauty. The transition, connecting the senses with attractiveness, is comparable to the contemporary situation of “sensation” and “sensational,” or the word “like,” meaning both “similar to” and “attracted to,” or the meanings of “taste,” and the concept that art imitates life and vice versa. Empedocles’ claim that we see “fondness by fondness,” almost 2,500 years ago, also fits the idea that there’s a correspondence between beauty and the structure of the mind. If the correspondence is real, in some way, it would be as though we already knew it, collectively, and inadvertently constructed language to reflect the fact.

The present, thermoaesthetic perspective is a departure from mainstream views in that the unconscious biases responsible for beauty are assumed to have come into existence during the process of sensory system evolution, always in advance of their effects, as opposed to arising repeatedly in unlikely coevolutionary interactions between the sexes with unrealistic connections to survival. For instance, an appreciation for patterns of brightness mixed with darkness arose with sensitivity to light and dark and remained in place throughout the evolution of animals. That for contrasting colors and rainbows arose with color sensitivity and persisted despite the diversity that makes animal species different otherwise. Those for complex alternating patterns of sound with silence and dynamism with stasis go back to the ability to hear and detect motion, and so on.

Notes

Or shall we seek our answer, rather, in some psychological theory, like many of the most distinguished nineteenth-century ethnologists—Bastian, for instance, Tylor, and Frazer—attributing such cross-cultural accords to “the effect,” as Frazer put it, “of similar causes acting alike on the similar constitution of the human mind in different countries and under different skies”? Do such images, that is to say, take form naturally in the psyche? Can they be assumed and even expected to appear spontaneously, in dreams, in visions, in mythological figurations, any place on earth, wherever man has made his home?

— Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gander (1987)

Universality

On the whole, birds appear to be the most aesthetic of all animals, excepting of course man, and they have nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have.

— Charles Darwin (see Prum 2017)

To say tastes are unique, that they can’t be accounted for, or that beauty is “only in the eye of the beholder,” is a way of saying beauty and taste are random and dismissing the massive overlap of agreement about what’s likable and what isn’t. An extreme version of this view depicts a scenario in which one person has no idea what any other person will like or dislike, so that every time somebody happens to come up with and create something others find beautiful it’s a fortunate accident.

In reality, on the contrary, we know almost exactly what kinds of things we can say or do in any situation to be charming, repulsive, or something in between, and this wouldn’t be possible without a shared set of inclinations, or “common sense.” Similarly, artists can make art using their own sense of beauty because of how closely it tends to correspond with that of their audience. To some extent, our feelings about stimuli must be the same due to common elements of sensory systems, as Edmund Burke (2005) pointed out in A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757:

We do and we must suppose, that as the conformation of their organs are nearly or altogether the same in all men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the same, or with little difference. We are satisfied that what appears to be light to one eye, appears light to another; that what seems sweet to one palate, is sweet to another; that what is dark and bitter to this man, is likewise dark and bitter to that; and we conclude in the same manner of great and little, hard and soft, hot and cold, rough and smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine, that their senses present to different men different images of things, this sceptical proceeding will make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even that sceptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a doubt concerning the agreement of our perceptions. But as there will be little doubt that bodies present similar images to the whole species, it must necessarily be allowed, that the pleasures and the pains which every object excites in one man, it must raise in all mankind, whilst it operates naturally, simply, and by its proper powers only: for if we deny this, we must imagine that the same cause, operating in the same manner, and on subjects of the same kind, will produce different effects; which would be highly absurd.

In the current context a single bias is taken to be responsible for all the independent instances of a given aesthetic effect, regardless of whether it was created culturally or evolved by mate choice. This has the advantage of agreeing with conventional thinking and the terminology already in place due to our collective understanding of aesthetic things. For instance, we think of birds as singing real songs and dancing real dances, conventionally calling their behavior by the same name as our own versions of the same conduct. The differences are not enough, apparently, to cause us to think of them in different terms.

To some extent, we know we’re hearing a song because sound, loudness, high notes and surprising variation are punctuated over short periods by silence, quietness, lower-pitched notes and predictable repetition. Relative simplicity regarding these qualities tends to characterize less amusing, less intricate, nonmusical communication. All of what we refer to as dancing in birds, fish, spiders and others, which can be as simple as expressing a little extra motion or asymmetry in the central, lower or posterior areas of the body, is understood as dancing just as real as our own, and in all cases there must be something about the brain that allows an animal to distinguish it from other types of motion.

Flowers must differ visually from leaves in some essential way that allows them to be recognized as such and admired by people and pollinators, and the brains of all species that admire flowers must have features that facilitate the admiration. The areas of the brain responsible for flower evolution are biased to select for complexity to the extent that the flowering part of a plant is complicated, visually, relative to its leaves and stems. The name “flower” itself, alluding to flow, is a clue to how we recognize them and how they seduce us.

The rule of discernibility applies to all conventionally aesthetic things. Jokes are somehow distinct from serious statements. Poetry sounds different than prose. Playing feels different from working. Myths and fantastical stories differ from everyday life. In each case, some process occurring in the part of the brain responsible for judging its appeal tells us whether we like it or not, and it’s predictable that the process is somehow the same every time from the fact that we put the things we like together in a group, calling them all “aesthetic,” for instance. There must be specific, determinable features that differentiate what we like from comparable but less interesting experiences.

Sensory Bias

What an odd thing it is to see an entire species — billions of people — playing with, listening to, meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call ‘music.’

— Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia (2008)

For beneath the first depth, namely that of the earliest civilizations — which are but the foreground of the long backward reach of the prehistory of our race — there rest the centuries, millenniums, indeed the centuries of millenniums of primitive man, the mighty hunter, the more primitive root-and-bug collector, back for more than half a million years. And there is a third depth, even deeper, and darker, below that, below the ultimate horizon of humanity. For we shall find the ritual dance among the birds, the fish, the apes and the bees.

— Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (2020)

Currently popular scientific approaches to beauty don’t address its structure, and they ignore the problem of its persistence and consistency across widely unrelated species. The most prevalent perspective regarding music, dance and elaborate shapes and coloration maintains that they evolve to demonstrate a good body or good genes, somehow more reliably than other attributes, indirectly benefiting a mate with a coevolving preference for the trait by allowing them to capture and pass on the genetic goodness to their own offspring. Such approaches don’t explain the complexity of sexually selected traits, or why, of all the things animals could do to prove themselves, and the vast number of more direct vitality-determining biases that could evolve, countless numbers of varied species have relentlessly converged on the particular scenario of preferring a complicated song, dance, shape or pattern.

We shouldn’t think of this convergence as somehow inevitable, that songs for instance represent such a large subset of the possible vocalizations an animal can make that the event of evolving to sing is hard to avoid statistically, any more than we think it’s inevitable a large proportion of human cultures would resort to singing instead of talking as a means of relaying relevant information simply because we’ve run out of more direct alternatives. The same argument applies to other aesthetic phenomena. They come about entirely because we select for them over less desirable stimuli, not because they’re inevitable or likely as members of a limited set of possibilities.

The second most popular scientific explanation for beauty and preferences, also a coevolutionary approach that doesn’t address the consistency, complexity or persistence of aesthetic traits is Fisherian runaway sexual selection (Fisher 1930, O’Donald 1967, Lande 1981, Kirkpatrick 1982), in which preference/trait pairs result from mathematically conceivable genetic feedback loops for no particular reason, or “beauty happens,” as Prum puts it in The Evolution of Beauty (2018), which otherwise argues against good genes as a realistic mechanism. Fisher’s model assumes an initial period in which a trait favored slightly by natural selection also randomly happens to be favored by certain mates, causing genes for the trait and those for the preference to increasingly occur together in succeeding generations. The preference and trait reinforce each other in a positive feedback loop, and the process continues until sexual selection for the trait and natural selection against it are in balance. The sequence of steps involved and the number of times they would need to play out independently but somehow lead to similar results across species makes this an extremely unlikely scheme compared to good genes, and especially compared to the idea that preferences simply exist by default.

The sensory bias model of sexual selection is a recently developed (West-Eberhard 1979, 1984; Ryan 1990, Ryan and Keddy-Hector 1992, Basolo 1996), relatively simple and intuitive alternative to good genes and Fisherian runaway. It predicts that side effects arise in the process of sensory system and brain evolution, causing preferences that generate selection for matching traits despite potentially reducing survival, arguably circling back, after more than 100 years of science, to Darwin’s original thinking (1896):

When male animals utter sounds in order to please the females, they would naturally employ those which are sweet to the ears of the species; and it appears that the same sounds are often pleasing to widely different animals, owing to the similarity of their nervous systems, as we ourselves perceive in the singing of birds and even in the chirping of certain tree-frogs giving us pleasure.

Sensory bias can be distinguished from other models in that the preference for a trait evolves prior to and in a different context than the trait preferred, non-coevolutionarily. Such biases could be originally adaptive, evolving through direct selection, by improving prey detection ability for instance, or they could be “hidden,” in that they’re an incidental by-product with no original, subsequent or current fitness-related function (see Ryan 1990, Enquist and Arak 1993, Endler and Basolo 1998, Arnqvist 2006).

Sensory bias appears to have played a role in the evolution of “courtship trembling” behavior in Neumania papillator water mites (Proctor 1991, 1992), complex mating calls in the Tungara frog Physalaemus pustulosus (Ryan and Rand 1990), complex swords in swordtail fishes (Basolo 1990, 1995, 1996), long, flowing tails in widowbirds (Pryke and Andersson 2002), orange spots in the guppy Poecilia reticulata (Rodd et al. 2002), song structure in Costa’s hummingbird Calypte costae (Clark and Feo 2009), song repertoires in birds (Collins 1999), nuptial food gifts in insects (Sakaluk 2000), egg-spots in Cichlids (Egger et al. 2011), mud pillar (Christy 1995) and sand hood (Christy 2003) building in the fiddler crabs Uca beebei and Uca musica, red pelage and skin colors in primates (Fernandez and Morris 2007), pollinator attraction in orchids (Schiestl and Cozzolino 2008), Anoline lizard head bobbing patterns (Fleishman 1992) and mate color preferences in birds (Møller and Erritzøe 2010). Preferences for entirely novel signals, like red leg bands in zebra finches Taeniopygia guttata (Burley et al. 1982), white crests in finches (Burley and Symanski 1998) and gene transfer-induced red color in zebrafish (Owen et al. 2012) indicate that preferences can exist independently of favored traits.

That organisms so widely separated taxonomically, ecologically and neurologically as humans, in every culture, whales (Payne and McVay 1971), bats (Behr and Helversen 2004), mice (Holy and Guo 2005), frogs (Searcy and Andersson 1986), about 5,000 species of birds (Hartshorne 1973), numerous different types of insects and other animals have an apparent preference for complex, song-like auditory stimuli strongly suggests the involvement of common elements in sensory systems, and it’s difficult to imagine so many different populations and species being subject to a common ecological factor that could possibly drive direct, adaptive selection leading all of them to a desire for song.

There’s no reason to believe other animals have strange, unidentifiable but somehow functional reasons for performing and enjoying songs and dances, particularly when we know that for us the reason is only the pleasure we take in experiencing the patterns that make them up. The problem with assuming independent origins of preferences for song in many different singing animals might be illustrated by the absurdity of the idea that unique preferences for the behavior had to evolve separately in every human culture rather than being in place to begin with, especially given the lack of a function for human song (Darwin 1871):

As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.

The 300 distinct notes and 66 types of songs of the winter wren Troglodytes troglodytes (Kroodsma 1980), or the 58 elements, 15 separate behaviors and 10 plumate ornaments distinguished by Scholes (2006) in the dance of Carola’s parotia (Parotia carolae) represent behaviors that are undeniably more complicated than what would suffice for the purpose of conveying a signal of condition. Unless we assume the songs of wrens came into existence fully formed, without increasing in complexity over time, these birds have been amused by every shorter, simpler evolutionary version of the song in addition to the current one. Parotias must have been impressed by every historical parotia dance, and by every new element as it was added, at the same time consistently rejecting potential mates who didn’t perform movements approaching the extremely complicated sequence currently in use. The existence of such traits is much easier to understand with a general preference for complexity in place prior to and throughout their evolution.

Humans have no adaptive business being so affectionate about flowers, given that we don’t get food from or pollinate any of them naturally. One common theoretical approach in such cases is to trace the origin of a currently inexplicable trait, an attraction to flowers in this case, back to a common ancestor with a species that does have a reason to express it. For humans, an attraction to flowers would seem to go back at least beyond our most recent common ancestor with the many species of nectar-feeding, flower-pollinating birds, or prior to the split between mammals and reptiles, around 300 million years, probably before the first flowers existed. Notably, human interaction with flowers isn’t restricted to those produced by plants. We paint abstract versions of them on objects and canvases, carve or mold them into architecture, stitch them into clothing and tattoo them on our bodies, an indication that animals enjoy the shape in general, not only in the practical, ecological context of foraging.

To explain why insects and birds share a preference for flowers one would predict it was present in the brains of the ancestors of both groups, going back over 500 million years, to a time long before flowers, which, according to Sauquet et al. (2017), appeared somewhere between 140 and 250 million years ago. Preferences for song and dance, judging by their effects, in the courtship of both insects and birds, for instance, probably go back to the same early times, persisting with no regard for the taxonomic distance between species, across massive discrepancies in body size, brain size and ecology, suggesting that every animal has some capacity to understand and admire them by default, as a consequence of universal, inevitable aspects of sensory system structure.

The proposition that every singing species of bird evolved an inclination for musical sounds independently is hardly different from proposing that every species of bird separately evolved the ability to fly, except that in the first case there’s no practical reason for them to do so, and therefore even less reason to believe it happened more than once. There are obvious benefits to flying. It seems very likely that doing so has allowed birds to be, according to Darwin, the second most aesthetic type of animal, and it’s very unlikely to be a coincidence that birds and humans also have in common such an unusual degree of freedom from ecological limitations related to resource availability, predation and unsuitable environmental conditions. This isn’t to say animals don’t evolve the tendency to be attracted to a specific flowering plant, or to enjoy the particular type of singing or dancing of their own species more than others; it’s that they do so in the context of preexisting, ever-present biases for these types of stimuli.

Even if we did historically pollinate a particular flower, for some hardly imaginable, naturally selected purpose, this would only explain our attraction to that kind of flower, not most or all of them. This problem applies in general because so many particular flowers are pollinated by multiple animal species, which themselves pollinate multiple kinds of flowers. Assuming animals like flowers to begin with helps explain the success angiosperms have had in using floral shapes to exploit us. If humans had a history, evolutionarily, of performing a song or dance in a courtship display to compete for mates, traditional thinking would only explain the enticement of whatever particular song we were singing or dance we were doing, not the massive variety of those we’ve created, and no obvious advantage would accrue to a population expanding the use of song or dance outside the context of sex into that of religion, patriotism, ceremony, celebration and general entertainment.

Musical patterns apparently flow through the animal brain from the auditory cortex to the motor areas, translating outwardly into alternating body shapes and actions with the same, semi-predictable, simultaneously regular and random (disorder~order) structure as the music, as though the substance of the brain is offering little resistance. That humans relate dance to music and integrate the two phenomena in practice shows we have an automatic, unconscious way of recognizing some degree of aesthetic overlap or equivalence between them, probably because they have similar effects on the brain.

There’s a growing list of animals that dance to human music, meaning the equivalence is likely recognized universally. Cotton-top tamarin monkeys respond emotionally to human music rendered in a tamarin style (Snowdon and Teie 2010), and research shows that harbor seals (Verga et al. 2022), cockatoos (Patel et al. 2009), rats (Ito et al. 2022) and chimpanzees (Hattori and Tomonaga 2020) enjoy dancing to human music. In these cases, animals that shouldn’t understand and care about music, or dance, or know that the two are related, unconsciously understand all three things, undermining coevolutionary arguments and supporting a universal sensory bias perspective.

Animals will also dance spontaneously, without a musical cue, in response to the sight of another dancing animal. Campbell (2020) gives an account of chimpanzees playing and joining a group dance featuring spinning in place, forming flowing chains of spinning individuals and trotting with synchronized, asymmetric steps in circles around a pole:

Tschengo and another chimpanzee named Grande invented a game of spinning round and round like dervishes, which was then taken up by all the rest. “Any game of two together,” Dr. Köhler writes, ‘was apt to turn into his “spinning-top” play, which appeared to express a climax of friendly and amicable joie de vivre. The resemblance to a human dance became truly striking when the rotations were rapid, or when Tschengo, for instance, stretched her arms out horizontally as she spun round. Tschengo and Chica — whose favorite fashion during 1916 was this “spinning” — sometimes combined a forward movement with the rotations, and so they revolved slowly round their own axes and along the playground. The whole group of chimpanzees sometimes combined in more elaborate motion patterns. For instance, two would wrestle and tumble near post; soon their movements would become more regular and tend to describe a circle round the post as a center. One after another, the rest of the group approach, join the two, and finally march in an orderly fashion round and round the post. The character of their movements changes; they no longer walk, they trot, and as a rule with special emphasis on one foot, while the other steps lightly, thus a rough approximate rhythm develops, and they tend to “keep time” with one another….’ “It seems to me extraordinary,” Köhler concludes, “that there should arise quite spontaneously, among chimpanzees, anything that so strongly suggests the dancing of some primitive tribes.

Like us, although they have no reason to do so, or to find it amusing, chimps are equipped psychologically with both the desire to dance and the knowledge of how it’s done. Due to the existence of music and dance throughout the animal world, it’s predictable that sensory systems and brains embody an understanding of the qualities and dualities involved automatically, perceive them as opposites and find the idea of mixing them together in intricate patterns intriguing.

Mythology has the same problem with aesthetic themes recurring in widely unrelated cultures and stories that evolutionary biology has with certain themes (song, dance, contrasting colors, ornamental ocelli, long flowing tails, Thayer’s law) turning up in widely unrelated species, and, probably, the same kind of solution in the form of universal preexisting biases in sensory systems. As a potential way to understand common features of human psychology and resulting patterns in mythology, Campbell brought up the subject of sensory bias long before it was popular, in Primitive Mythology (1959), the first volume of The Masks of God series, citing an experiment by Adolf Portmann (1953) with the grayling butterfly, Eumenis semele, which showed that males pursue artificially darkened females “in preference even to the darkest female of the species,” early empirical evidence that animals have preferences for versions of each other that don’t exist in nature:

A new and very promising approach is opened, however, when it [mythology] is viewed in the light of biological psychology as a function of the human nervous system, precisely homologous to the innate and learned sign stimuli that release and direct the energies of nature — of which our brain itself is but the most amazing flower.

Wallin (1991) proposes a kind of sensory bias as the mechanism responsible for the evolution of singing behavior, pointing out the “dynamic dichotomy in music is similar to that which characterizes organismal systems,” and a “morphodynamic isomorphism” between the form of music and that of the brain, music’s physiological substrate.

Sensory bias is usually thought of as a proximal explanation, for instance with the bias ultimately having arisen in an ecological context such as predation and later being exploited by traits that it favors happening to evolve in members of the opposite sex. However, the ecological origin step is an unnecessary complication. Especially when the same bias must have originated repeatedly, and it can’t convincingly be connected to anything of value survival-wise, it’s more reasonable to assume the bias is ultimately an incidental result of the basic structure of the brain to begin with, that it transcends and predates any particular ecological adaptation. Thermoaesthetics hypothetically extends Wallin’s isomorphism beyond music and song to other amusing things such as dance, color patterns and language, by way of a more general isomorphism between the dichotomies of liquid crystalline matter in the brain and aesthetic material.

Perplexity AI

Prompt: “How many species sing songs.”

The number of species that sing songs is far greater than commonly perceived, with conservative estimates suggesting over 200,000 species globally. This includes approximately 4,000 songbird species, at least 200,000 insect species producing vibrational songs, numerous marine mammals, various amphibians, select terrestrial mammals, and an increasing number of documented fish species. The true number continues to grow as researchers discover previously unknown vocal behaviors in species once thought to be silent, revealing that song is a fundamental form of communication across the animal kingdom.

Prompt: “How many species perform courtship dances?”

Conservative estimates suggest that several thousand species across the animal kingdom perform some form of courtship dance. Birds alone contribute hundreds of dancing species across multiple families. When combined with the diverse arthropod dancers, marine species, and representatives from other animal groups, the total likely reaches into the thousands.

Aesthetic Complexity

Primitive perceptual opposites interact in complex ways throughout the history of metaphysical thought.

The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony, and all things take place by strife.

— Heraclitus (see Campbell 2008)

Aesthetic phenomena are among the most complex phenomena within the domain of psychology, and this is often used as an excuse by psychologists for being able to say so little about them.

— Daniel Berlyne, Aesthetics and Psychobiology (1971)

Dualities between primitive opposites appear in a suspiciously wide variety of contexts, frequently with qualities from one end of each duality, such as brightness, disorder and fluidity, or those at the other such as darkness, order and solidness, being grouped together as if they’re connected in the mind by default. Cultural, social, philosophical, mythological and religious dualities from around the world, such as those listed below, have almost the same structure as those that delineate primitive sensory systems, particularly with respect to dualities that are also physical opposites in nature.

Cultural dualities: Yin versus Yang in China, Marduk (order) versus Tiamat (chaos) in Mesopotamia, Maat (order) versus Isfet (chaos) in Egypt, Ahura Mazda versus Angra Mainyu or asha (truth and order) versus druj (deceit and chaos) in Iran, Indra (order) versus Vritra (chaos) and Vishnu (order) versus Shiva (chaos) in India, Buddha (calm) versus Mara (chaos), the middle way between dualistic extremes in India, the angel of righteousness versus the angel of evil in the Shepherd of Hermas, Heraclitus’ unity of opposites, the cosmic cycle between order and chaos of Empedocles in Greek philosophy, Aroe (form, stasis, order) versus Bope (flux, dynamism, disorder) in the social structure of the Bororo of Brazil (Maybury-Lewis 1889), the “cyclical oscillation of polar yet complementary opposites” (Maffie 2024) of teotl in Aztec philosophy, Claude Lévi-Strauss’ theory of binary contrast or binary opposition.

In mythology it often happens that primitive opposites weren’t always separate. They split from each other during creation. Bright and dark, order and chaos, and fluid and solid are initially indistinct, cosmologically, just as they actually would have been to animals prior to the evolution of the senses that allow us to tell them apart. Mythological elements split into dualities through the efforts of an original deity, demiurge or some other cosmic force. While cosmological opposite separation might seem like a natural thing to believe in, it isn’t actually that easy to imagine the observations people could have made to give them the impression that some of the opposites most commonly involved in such schemes wouldn’t have always been distinct, as they are now in our nonliving surroundings.

Interactive opposition also appears, arguably, in the ideas of “everything in moderation” and “nothing in excess” (said to be inscribed on the Temple of Apollo), the Buddhist “middle way,” the separation of opposites from Apeiron in the cosmogony of Anaximander, the balance of “love” and “strife” in the cosmic cycle of Empedocles, and the balance between Dionysus, god of wine, pleasure, irrationality and chaos versus Apollo, god of purity, reason and order described in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1995).

The Indian concept of Yoga proposes that what we perceive generates a reproduction of itself in the matter of the brain, made possible by the fact that its substance can easily be altered with respect to certain physical qualities. In The Masks of God, Volume 2: Oriental Mythology, Joseph Campbell (2014) translates the definition of the art of Yoga from Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, line 1.2, as “the (intentional) stopping of the spontaneous activity of the mind stuff,” implying the brain is in constant motion. Bongiovanni (2018), with “Union” being the meaning of the word “Yoga,” translates the same line a little differently: “Union is restraining the thought-streams of the mind,” as if the motion in the brain is like a fluid. Campbell adds volatility, ripples, brokenness, speed and outwardness to the dynamism and fluidity used to describe the unstoppable motion of the mind:

The archaic psychological theory implied in the definition holds that within the gross matter of the brain and body there is an extremely volatile subtle substance, continually active, which assumes the forms of everything presented to it by the senses, and that by virtue of the transformations of this subtle matter we become aware of the forms, sounds, tastes, odors, and pressures of the outer world. Furthermore, the mind is in a continuous ripple of transformation — and with such force that if one should try without yogic training to hold it to a single image or idea for as long, say, as a minute, almost immediately it would be seen to have already broken from the point and run off into associated, even remote, streams of thought and feeling. The first aim of yoga, therefore, is to gain control of this spontaneous flow, slow it down, and bring it to a stop.

That there’s something subtle and volatile about the brain is undeniable, with this usually being thought to emerge from its complex chemistry, electricity, and/or its numbers of cells and connections, but the contents of language and the analogies we use to describe our minds are usually physical, involving fluidity, motion, disorder, solidness, stillness and geometric shapes, as in the following mind analogy used to explain Yoga, from Campbell (2014):

The analogy is given of the surface of a pond blown by a wind. The images reflected on such a surface are broken, fragmentary, and continually flickering. But if the wind should cease and the surface become still — nirvāṇa: “beyond or without (nir

To the extent that something fleeting, disordered, fragmented or flickering is more exciting than something steady, clear, perfectly formed and quiet, the analogy is a mixture of more and less exciting things. Campbell suggests the qualities of the excited pond are more fun than those of the still pond, and adds that the ability to experience both is ideal.

The Pythagoreans and Alcmaeon

Aristotle says in Metaphysics (1908) that a certain school of “the so-called Pythagoreans” believed the world was composed of ten pairs of opposites, strangely similar to those that differentiate Yin from Yang:

Other members of this same school say there are ten principles, which they arrange in two columns of cognates — limit and unlimited, odd and even, one and plurality, right and left, male and female, resting and moving, straight and curved, light and darkness, good and bad, square and oblong. In this way Alcmaeon of Croton seems also to have conceived the matter, and either he got this view from them or they got it from him; for he expressed himself similarly to them. For he says most human affairs go in pairs, meaning not definite contrarieties such as the Pythagoreans speak of, but any chance contrarieties, e.g. white and black, sweet and bitter, good and bad, great and small. He threw out indefinite suggestions about the other contrarieties, but the Pythagoreans declared both how many and which their contrarieties are.

Alcmaeon is credited with the discovery that the mind resides in the brain, rather than the heart or somewhere else, and the partially true observation that our eyes are filled with fire and water (Huffman 2021). He proposed that “the majority of human things come in pairs” and created an early version of humorism theory: “the equality (isonomia) of the powers (wet, dry, cold, hot, bitter, sweet, etc.) maintains health” while “monarchy among them produces disease.”

The idea isn’t just that too much heat, coldness, wetness or dryness is unhealthy. It’s also that they need to be present in moderate amounts and intricately mixed together to sustain life. Much of what Alcmaeon said happens to be true as a statement about the special physical situation of life, or how we survive by avoiding both freezing into a solid and melting into a fluid.

In the Pythagorean duality system, pairs of opposites are said to be arranged with qualities in the same group being associated psychologically, all of those on one side being “good,” for instance, compared to those on the other, all of which are relatively “bad.” The Pythagorean categories in Greek philosophy are notable because, like Yin versus Yang, they include the duality disorder~order (Huffman 2019):

Opposites played a large role in most Presocratic philosophical systems. The Pythagoreans who posited the table of opposites differed from other early Greek philosophers not only in the normative view of the opposites but also by including strikingly abstract pairs such as straight and crooked and odd and even, in contrast to the more concrete opposites such as hot and cold, which are typical elsewhere in early Greek philosophy.

Straightness, squareness, limitation, stillness, lack of change, singularity, light and right are aligned on the good side for the Pythagoreans, while crookedness, length, freedom, motion, multiplicity, dark and left are supposedly bad. In the practical world, bad things are almost always unwelcome, and we favor the good. Aesthetically, though, bad things are accepted and indispensable; they happen all the time in the interest of providing a contrast to the occurrence of good things. Eliminating them would leave us with a lack of interesting narratives for stories, myths, folklore, literature, plays, movies and so on. Without evil character’s, heroes would have no one to kill. Without an element of disorder art and decoration would be boring, jokes wouldn’t be funny, and music and dance would be almost impossible. In an aesthetic context, neither quality in a pair of opposites is dominant, or necessarily superior. Both are valuable, and almost equally so. One of them, however, in this case evil, disorder, chaos or badness, by whatever name, is fundamentally more exciting than the other, what we might call goodness, order, rightness or peace.

Many other things we normally try to avoid nevertheless play an essential role in aesthetic phenomena. Death and confinement, for example, appear in popular stories at high rates even though in reality we prefer almost exclusively to be alive and free. In these cases we favor qualities on the more exciting side, in contrast to our negative feelings about chaos and evil. Thus, aesthetically, neither higher nor lower excitement is universally “better.” In traditional psychological terms, having a positive valence, or degree of attractiveness, is not consistently the same as being arousing or unarousing, and negative valence isn’t equivalent to high or low arousal either.

The mind being in the brain raises the question of what makes a brain such a suitable substrate for consciousness. Most likely, its condition of extreme physical softness in comparison to other organs and tissues, and other matter, has something to do with how it works. If the complexity of a material is measured by how intimately it mixes fluidity with solidness, the brain is the most complex organ in the body and object in the known universe.

There are probably direct connections between this softness and a brain’s ability to sense stimuli, process information and make decisions. It matters a lot for other body parts to be in a particular physical phase. Blood, bones and teeth didn’t evolve to be liquid and crystalline for no reason. Hearts and other muscles wouldn’t be capable of alternating between relatively relaxed and tense conditions if not for their intermediate and adjustable consistency. Why, then, would we expect that the physical state of the brain is an inconsequential side effect that plays no role in its functionality?

It would be more reasonable to imagine brain softness itself having side effects, perhaps in the form of certain otherwise inexplicable, widespread predilections. The argument also applies to life as a whole. It’s liquid crystalline, rather than liquid or crystalline, and accordingly complicated, with a wide range of both adaptive and nonadaptive consequences, probably including thermoregulation, the need for liquid water and death.

While everything else in the local universe can only change physically in one direction or the other, either into a fluid or a solid, depending on its temperature, life can do both. Robert Frost highlights this in his poem “Fire and Ice,” where he also connects fire to hate and desire, as though it obviously represents these emotions, and the coldness of ice their opposites. He calls death by ice “destruction,” even though burning would be a more destructive way to die than freezing, resulting in an interesting contradiction, an aesthetic effect with the specific structure destruction~ice and the general structure disorder~cold/solid. Overall, the poem expresses in aesthetic form the same idea that Alcmaeon was saying we should consider philosophically, that we can either freeze or melt:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Teotl and Partially Broken Dualities

In the Americas, despite being separated from Greek and Eastern philosophy by thousands of years and living on the far side of the planet, the Aztecs (Mexica) also saw the world in terms of fundamental, interactive opposites. They believed in what James Maffie (2023) describes as a “single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, energy or force,” which they called “teotl”:

Teotl’s process presents itself in multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form of the endless opposition of contrary yet mutually interdependent and mutually complementary polarities which divide, alternately dominate, and explain the diversity, movement, and momentary arrangement of the universe. These include: being and not-being, order and disorder, life and death, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, dry and wet, hot and cold, and active and passive. Life and death, for example, are mutually arising, interdependent, and complementary aspects of one and the same process. Life contains the seed of death; death, the fertile, energizing seed of life. The artists of Tlatilco and Oaxaca, for example, presented this duality artistically by fashioning a split-faced mask, one-half alive, one-half skull-like (see Markman and Markman 1989:90). The masks are intentionally ambiguous. Skulls simultaneously symbolize death and life, since life springs from the bones of the dead. Flesh simultaneously symbolizes life and death, since death arises from the flesh of the living. The faces are thus neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead all at once.

Life versus the nonliving, in contrast to the ambiguity in teotl, and regardless of a human desire to think otherwise, doesn’t particularly defy metaphysical classification. Being alive is pretty clearly delineated from being dead. The former doesn’t, very much, “spring from the bones” of the later, and live flesh isn’t exactly an unquestionable symbol of death. In other cases, it’s best to accept that there’s a complex middle ground between being only one thing and being two, an indefinite realm where reality almost defies our categories, but they still partially apply, with opposites that are simultaneously conflicting and cooperative.

We don’t have to like that living versus nonliving is a proper duality, or to respect it as such in art and myth. Nothing stops us from creating amusing exceptions like the “neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead all at once” masks of the Aztecs, artificially creating what Maffie calls “dialectical polar monisms.” The similarly ambiguous arrangement between Yin and Yang qualities has been called “dualistic monism.” Here, the phenomenon is simply called a “mixture,” assuming, of course, that one of the participating opposites is, on average, more exciting to the brain and mind than the other.

Ghosts, zombies, vampires, and the rest of the undead are further examples of how the duality of living versus nonliving can be partially broken so that dualistic monism applies. So are immortal beings who die, or have a small, mortalizing defect like the heal of Achilles, or Baldr only being susceptible to a sprig of mistletoe, and the countless gods and characters who die and then come back to life, including Innana in her trip to the ancient Mesopotamian underworld, Odin when he sacrifices himself in the world tree Yggdrasil, and Christ in the crucifixion and resurrection.

Hel, ruler of Hel and daughter of Loki in Norse mythology, is said to be half flesh-colored and half blue, and therefore was probably thought of as both dead and alive at the same time (Crawford 2015, 2018), just like the Aztec masks. It’s a simple detail that makes her more complicated and interesting than she would be otherwise. Dante’s Satan, like Hel, is only half alive in that his lower body is frozen. The circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno overall are reminiscent of Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice,” with punishments ranging from burning in the fiery molten river Phlegethon to being forever trapped in ice. Either way, a person needs to remain alive in some sense, although they’ve supposedly died, in order to experience any kind of hell or other afterlife.

Thermal Dualities in Culture

The idea of a partially broken duality is perhaps most evident in the physics of life, where thermal opposites are caught up in the ultimate dualistic monism, dialectical polar monality, unity of opposites, liquid crystal or mixture of more and less exciting things. In answering the question of whether life is fluid or solid, for instance, it’s not that we’re failing to recognize bodies are actually one or the other, or that life is definitely neither and beyond such metaphysical classification. Life is best described as fluid, solid, both and neither all at once, and this is true of other thermal dualities as well: hot~cold, dynamic~static, disorder~order, all of which are also surprisingly prevalent in philosophical lists of opposites, and unexpectedly likely to be juxtaposed in aesthetic phenomena.

While an appreciation for mixtures of thermal opposites is reflected in the structure of any society, these are particularly clear in what Maybury-Lewis (1989) says about the Bororo of Brazil:

The Bororo… have an all-pervasive dual organization that is at once cosmic, symbolic, and social (see Crocker 1985). It is expressed through the two major classes of spirits that exist in Bororo cosmology: the Aroe and Bope. The Aroe are associated with essence and pure form, as opposed to the Bope who are associated with process and flux. The Aroe are thus static, where the Bope are dynamic. The Aroe are associated with order, the Bope with disorder. The Aroe are comparatively sterile, as compared to the Bope who are associated with both creativity and destruction. The Aroe are rather distant, whereas the Bope are immediate and their influence is both sought and felt.

Fluid qualities (flux, dynamism, disorder) are associated with each other in a mental category, those of the Bope spirits, and solid qualities (form, stasis, order) are grouped together in the concept of the Aroe. The creation of such categories implies associations between those qualities, and consequently a degree of opposition between qualities we don’t normally think of as being opposed, such as destruction versus stasis or motion versus form.

Scientists would have to agree the spirit classes are a suspiciously good description of a liquid crystal, despite having been created by people with no direct knowledge of mesophases or small-scale physics. The same opposites are involved, and arranged appropriately with respect to how they vary thermally. To the extent that flux, dynamism and disorder are perceptually more exciting than form, stasis and order, the Bororo system is a mixture of more and less exciting things. It’s difficult to imagine such a system evolving in the absence of a universal reflex-like preference for a balance between the opposites they apply to the spirits.

Physically, fluid~solid is usually a definitive duality. Few opposites are as clearly demarcated in nature as fluidity versus solidness, or liquid versus crystalline, with the process by which something in one of these states changes into the other normally happening suddenly, at a very specific temperature, assuming invariable pressure. It follows, because matter in a fluid state is disordered and dynamic while that in a solid state is ordered and static, that disorder~order, dynamic~static and other thermal opposites are also definitively dualistic in nonliving matter.

At the same time, however, within living things, especially for brains, these are partly distinct and partly indistinguishable, making bodies and brains impossible to categorize in a dualistic or monistic framework. A brain has the same metaphysical ambiguity as the Aztec masks, being neither-fluid-nor-solid-yet-both-fluid-and-solid all at once, and the same structure as Bororo society, mixing the same qualities into monistic dualities that the Aroe and Bope spirits do.

Aesthetic complexity has thus been recognized and valued for a long time from various otherwise diverse perspectives, by cultures all over the world, since the origins of philosophy, mythology and social structure, continuously so throughout history to the present day, likely because we find it intuitive and amusing, but also because it describes a basic biological reality.

Complexity Theory

Parallels can be drawn between the present thesis and contemporary ideas in complexity theory used to model living systems like the “edge of chaos” (see Lewin 1999) and class four cellular automata. Wolfram (2002) categorizes one-dimensional cellular automata into four distinct classes. Class one, the simplest, tend to collapse rapidly into an infinite fixed state, or an orderly, repetitious pattern. Class two are less regular, developing a slightly more intricate pattern than class one and then repeating the pattern forever. Class three are very random, sometimes running more than a million time steps with no detectable structure, analogous to chaotic systems. The fourth class is special. They were described last, hence the name, but behaviorally they belong between classes two and three.

Class four automata show a mixture of order and randomness that often leads to great complexity, corresponding to the edge of chaos in dynamical systems. Christopher Langton has pointed out that class one and two automata can be taken to correspond to the physical solid state, class three to the fluid state and class four to a phase transition between them (Waldrop 1992).

Under certain sets of rules they yield attractive, complex patterns of order and chaos that resemble those on the surfaces of animals (Wolfram 2002). Recent research (Manukyan et al. 2017) on the “quasi-hexagonal lattice,” “green and black labyrinthine pattern of skin colour” in occelated lizards has shown that “cellular automata are not merely abstract computational systems, but can directly correspond to processes generated by biological evolution.”

Mixtures

Aesthetic phenomena tend to be made up of mixtures of qualities from the more and less exciting ends of primitive perceptual dimensions.

Well did Aristotle say that virtues in contrast to vices are judicious means between contrary extremes. But the principle holds much more generally than even Aristotle saw. It applies, for example, in aesthetic matters. Beauty, too, is a mean. It is not the opposite to ugliness. Ugliness is an incongruity, a disorder, a jolt; but the sheer absence of incongruity and disorder is not beauty. Rather, beauty and all aesthetic value is what, in the words of Kurt Sachs the musicologist, ‘lies between the fatal extremes of mechanism and chaos.’ By ‘mechanism’, understand a too strict and unrelenting orderliness, and by ‘chaos’, a sheer lack of order. In the first case there is too little surprise, sense of tension, or interest in how things may come out; in the second case there are no definite expectations to be met with pleased surprise or to awaken any desire to experience the outcome. With mechanism we are merely bored, with chaos merely confused. In neither way does the sense of beauty arise.

— Charles Hartshorne, Wisdom as Moderation: A Philosophy of the Middle Way (1987)

List 3 below shows the primitive perceptual opposites from lists 1 and 2 as dualities, separated by tildes (~), with the more exciting quality on the left and the less exciting quality on the right. This is meant to emphasize the idea of perceptual opposites occurring in juxtaposition, as what could be called aesthetic mixtures: heat mixed with coldness (hot~cold), fluidity with solidness (fluid~solid), dynamism with stasis (dynamic~static) and so on.

Primitive aesthetic mixtures (list 3): hot~cold, fluid~solid, dynamic~static, fast~slow, disorder~order, bright~dark, warm color (red, orange, yellow)~cool color (green, blue, purple), sound~silence, loud~quiet, high pitch~low pitch, up~down, out~in, left~right, long~round, long~short, spiky~round, big~small, more~less, novel~familiar.

The term “mixture” is borrowed from Galen’s De Temperamentis, “On Mixtures.” His title is a form of the Latin word temperamentum, meaning to be mixed properly, or in due proportion. In Galen’s treatise the physical qualities hot, cold, wet and dry vary in the body and interact to influence a person’s health and disposition, most ideally into an optimal condition of moderation between extremes.

Language-based aesthetic mixtures are essential to the structure of idioms, poetry, lyrics, scripture, slang, clichés, fables, nursery rhymes, chants, prayers, euphemisms, greetings, riddles, jokes, mottos, epitaphs, epithets, kennings, koans, slogans, the names of songs, albums, bands, books, companies and products, and they seem to exist throughout every type of aesthetic material in which linguistic references to phenomena exhibiting animal sensory opposites can appear in pairs or sequences. Nonlinguistic cultural instances of mixtures occur at high rates in music, dance, mythology, fictional stories, art, decoration, games, architecture and elsewhere.

Mixtures also describe traits used to attract mates in animals, which indicates the biases favoring them are universal, and that they originate with sensory systems and persist despite the diversification of other traits, rather than evolving independently or in conjunction with the traits they favor. Thus, mixtures appear in every aesthetic realm, and any particular mixture appears often enough across the realms that if it proves to be common in one of them there’s a good chance it will also be found in others, assuming the respective medium allows it to be conveyed.

Mixtures of up and down can be understood perceptually and expressed visually by almost any animal. Based on its popularity elsewhere, for instance in language, poetry and myth, it’s predictable such motion tends to evolve through mate choice as a feature of courtship rituals. There are conspicuous examples of the mixture up~down in the dances of hummingbirds, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, nighthawks, skylarks, tropicbirds, American woodcocks, bowerbirds, manakins, cranes, ducks, grebes, grouse, penguins, finches, Anolis lizards, geckos, bearded dragons, Indian dancing frogs, turtles, tortoises, fiddler crabs, mudskippers, stickleback, seahorses, sea dragons, scorpions, fruit flies, mayflies, damselflies, grasshoppers, jumping spiders, peacock spiders and others.

Every aesthetic instance of up~down can be thought of as the effect of a single, universal bias that supports both its origin and persistence, and by the same approach it’s possible to use the popularity of the mixtures out~in, motion~stasis, disorder~order, bright~dark or other mixtures in one type of aesthetic material to predict it’s occurrence in others.

There’s nothing inevitable, based on current evolutionary theory, about the inclusion of mixtures in aesthetic things, which could have any structure, no consistent structure at all, or be avoided altogether with no negative consequences regarding survival. There’s no need for animals to sing songs, let alone songs in which the auditory qualities in list 3 are intricately juxtaposed, or to dance, especially in ways that mix the given dualities of motion and direction, or to be colored in elaborate ways that contrast bright with dark and warm colors with cool colors. Lack of an obvious adaptive purpose is a feature that ties aesthetic things together, which could be taken to suggest the possibility of a single, ultimate explanation for their existence.

Because they were established as opposites early in animal evolution, the qualities in lists 1, 2 and 3 predate other concepts and can be used metaphorically or figuratively in all languages and in the communication of any species that’s capable of making reference to them. All animals understand them by default, and in a similar way, so they make convenient signals.

As a result of the ability to tell the difference between up and down, species have evolved to communicate by moving their bodies, limbs or other features in these directions. Such movements have probably always had meaning to an observer, at least in the sense that upwardness has conveyed a somewhat greater degree of arousal, and downwardness has done the opposite.

At the same time, mixtures of upward and downward orientations and motions have always been intriguing, so that individuals born with genes that compel them to integrate them into their courtship rituals have succeeded disproportionately at reproducing and passed on those genes more effectively than individuals who lack them. This same kind of scenario applies to the other perceptual dimensions of direction, and also to those of motion, color, sound, shape and size.

Mixture frequency, the rate at which mixtures occur per unit of sensory information, with units potentially being words, sounds, colors, shapes, periods of time, movements or other things, is higher in aesthetic material than in non-aesthetic, practical sensory material, such as that used purely to convey important information. Mixture frequencies are higher in a poem, for instance, than a nonfictional report, in a comic routine than a lecture, in a game than a work project, in a mythical or religious text than a science book, or in singing and dancing than speech or the average sequence of motions made in the usual, practical routine of an animal.

Each pair of qualities in list 3 can be thought of in at least three ways: (1) as a primitive duality of differentially exciting opposites in the animal mind, (2) as the structure of a universal psychological bias, and (3) as an essential ingredient in aesthetic phenomena, which evolve to match the structure of the bias. All three perspectives are isomorphic, or structurally similar, in that they incorporate opposites, arguably implying a sequence of causation. Mechanisms of sensation lead to sensory biases, and these biases cause outward aesthetic effects. The mechanism underlying our ability to tell red from blue entails a preference for red~blue mixtures, which is responsible for biological and cultural aesthetic selection favoring their evolution in bodies and artifacts.

Aesthetic isomorphism can be used to predict the contents of aesthetic material, or to identify sensory dualities. We know that all sufficiently visual animals have the ability to distinguish motion from stasis, which allows us to predict that courtship routines and play behavior will alternate between those qualities perceptually. In reverse, we know that fluidity is mixed with solidness aesthetically in creation stories, mythology, poetry and language, and therefore that the duality fluid~solid should be thought of as a primitive perceptual dimension, alongside those we recognize more traditionally as such bright~dark, high pitch~low pitch, up~down and so on. This is also true for disorder~order. Although it’s not normally thought of as a basic sensory dimension, its importance in the structure of aesthetic material tells us that it should be.

Physical qualities in list 3 include Galen’s hot~cold and fluid~solid (wet~dry), as well as dynamic~static and disorder~order. These are of special interest because they represent aesthetic biases that closely resemble the physical dualities that heat, fluidity, dynamism and disorder form with coldness, solidness, stasis and order (see Leslie 2016). The correspondence in this case could be called physical isomorphism, because it extends beyond the realm of biology into state of matter physics. It wouldn’t necessarily be improbable for a physical duality to be isomorphic with an aesthetic one, but there are at least four such corresponding dualities. Others like expand~contract and free~confined could be added to the list, and at some point it becomes difficult to believe the correspondence is coincidental.

The closest psychological idea to that proposed here concerning preferences and excitement might be Daniel Berlyne’s aesthetic model of an inverted-U relationship between pleasantness and arousal. Berlyne demonstrated that both low and high arousal stimuli and mental states are unlikable compared to moderate levels, which are the most pleasing. Likability, or “hedonic tone,” increases from a low point to a maximum for an observer as stimuli become more arousing, before decreasing again as they gradually exceed the observer’s tolerance.

Perceptual variables shown by Berlyne to increase animal arousal levels and vary on a graph of hedonic tone in the shape of an inverted-U include novelty, complexity and surprisingness. In Berlyne’s model complexity as a variable increases with perceptual multiplicity, disorganization, irregularity, incongruity and asymmetry, qualities that might be more accurately described as disorderly than complicated.

Thermoaesthetics hypothetically extends Berlyne’s idea to all primitive perceptual opposites, and assumes the relevant biases for moderation and against extremes have exististed since the evolution of sensory systems, although they can presumably be modified by natural or sexual selection. Hedonic tone is predicted to follow an inverted-U as light level varies for an observer from zero (darkness) to half light to extreme brightness, as pitch moves from low to moderate to high or as the texture of an object changes from solid to soft to wet. In contrast to Berlyne’s perspective, complexity is assumed to correspond to moderate rather than high arousal.

Tildes (~) are used throughout the present text to indicate aesthetic mixtures (list 3), or that the qualities involved are differentially exciting opposites, while slashes (/) or equal signs (=) indicate associations or combinations of qualities in the same psychological category of more or less excitement (list 1 or 2).

Fluid~solid, disorder~order, up~down and out~in are mixtures, for example, while fluid/disorder, fluid/up, fluid/out, solid/order, solid/down and solid/in are combinations. More specifically, with regard to popular expressions, “the land of milk and honey” (fluid~solid), “a diamond in the rough” (disorder~order), “bottoms up” (up~down) and “day in and day out” (out~in) are mixtures, while “break into tears” (fluid/disorder), “hell or high water” (fluid/up), “pissed off” (fluid/out), “a clean slate” (solid/order), “rock bottom” (solid/down) and “come on hard” (solid/in) are combinations.

Conceptual Relatives

Each of the qualities given in list 3 has a number of more specific conceptual relatives that behave the same way the quality does in aesthetic material, presumably because we use primitive sensory opposites as categories into which other, more recently derived phenomena are sorted.

Solidness is essentially the same as hardness, and it’s related in the mind to earth, land, rock, stone, metal, wood, teeth and bone. Fluidity relates to flow, flowers, water, rivers, streams, oceans, smoke, air, clouds, spirals, spirits, souls, ghosts, tears, saliva, breath and blood. Heat relates to the sun, spring, summer and fire, dynamism to wakefulness and life, stasis to sleep, calmness and death, brightness to mornings and day, darkness to twilight and night, high pitch to screaming and singing, low pitch to drums and thunder, spikiness to sharpness, horns, claws, fangs and crosses, roundness to eyes, heads, babies and the moon, length to fingers, tails and snakes, upwardness to being high, over or above, the tops of things, ascent, lifting, climbing and heaven, downwardness to lowness, being on the bottom or below, descent, sinking, falling, dropping and hell.

Simple geometric shapes, symmetry, straightness, regularity, form, patterns, rules, laws, rightness and roundness (spheres, circles, points, spots, dots) are related to the idea of order in the mind, while chaos, crookedness, brokenness, cracks, craziness, asymmetry, disarray, irregularity, the unexpected, strangeness, missing, being wrong, spikiness and length are conventionally disorderly.

We think of something far away or leaving us as outward and something close or coming toward us as inward. The central section of a scene or object is related to inwardness in the mind, while peripheral parts are thought of as outward. We assign inwardness to containers and anything with an inward dimension, such as houses, caves, bags, hats and ships. Behaviors in which something from the outside world enters the body, like breathing in or eating, are also inward, while the expulsion of something from the body is understood as outward. Inwardness applies to our hearts, minds and brains, and entrances to the body, and outwardness to bodily extensions or protrusions such as hands, fingers, feet, noses, hair, wings and tails.

Some of the conceptual relatives corresponding to list 1, 2 and 3 qualities are given for reference below. Because they behave aesthetically in the same way as the primitive qualities they relate to, fire and ice can be juxtaposed amusingly just as heat and cold can. The idea of being clean, a relative or order, is amusingly juxtaposed to being broken, a relative of disorder, in an expression such as “clean break.” The idea of “all” is a conceptual relative of larger numbers of things (many), and it behaves similarly as an aesthetic opposite to the idea of singularity (few), a relative of small numbers, in expressions like “once and for all,” “come one come all” and “all for one and for all.” More exciting qualites are marked with asterisks.

Conceptual Relative Lists

Heat* (34): blaze, blistering, boil, boiling, burn, burning, burnt, char, ember, fever, fiery, fire, flame, furnace, fuse, heat, hot, ignite, inferno, molten, scorch, scorching, simmer, simmering, sizzle, smolder, spark, stew, stewing, summer, sun, swelter, torch, warm.

Coldness (34): arctic, biting, bitter, blizzard, chill, chilled, chilling, chilly, cold, coldness, cool, cooling, crisp, freeze, freezing, frigid, frost, frostbite, frosty, frozen, gelid, glacial, glacier, hail, ice, iceberg, icy, numb, shiver, sleet, snow, snowy, thaw, winter, wintry.

Dynamism* (130): accelerate, action, active, activity, agile, agitate, alter, alteration, altered, animate, animated, awake, awakening, blur, bolt, bounce, bound, burst, bustle, buzz, careen, cascade, change, changing, charge, chase, churn, commotion, current, dance, dart, dash, dynamic, dynamism, electric, energetic, energy, erupt, fast, flail, flap, flicker, flit, flow, fluctuate, flurry, flutter, flux, fly, frantic, frenetic, frenzy, gallop, galvanize, go, gush, haste, hasty, hectic, hop, hurry, hurtle, jerk, jolt, jump, kinetic, launch, leap, life, live, lively, living, momentum, motion, move, nimble, oscillate, play, pulse, quake, quaking, quick, quicken, quiver, race, racing, ran, rapid, restless, rocking, rouse, run, rush, scamper, scramble, scurry, shake, shaky, shift, shock, shudder, skip, speed, speedy, spin, spring, sprint, spun, spurt, stir, streak, stream, surge, sway, swift, swing, swirl, throb, torrent, tremble, tumult, turmoil, twirl, twitch, velocity, vibrate, wake, waking, whirl, whirlwind, whiz, wriggle, zip, zoom.

Stasis (143): anchor, anchored, arrest, asleep, becalmed, buried, bury, calm, chain, check, clamp, coagulate, coma, comatose, constant, corpse, crawl, creep, curb, dawdle, dead, deaden, deadly, death, deathly, die, doldrums, dormant, doze, drowsy, dying, entrenched, equilibrium, fixed, fossil, fossilized, frozen, grave, halt, harden, hibernate, hibernation, hold, hush, idle, immobile, immobility, immovable, immutable, inanimate, indolent, inert, inertia, lag, languid, languor, lazy, lethargic, lifeless, linger, listless, lock, locked, loiter, lull, marble, moor, mortal, motionless, mute, pacify, paralysis, paralyze, pause, peace, peaceful, perish, permanent, perpetual, persist, petrified, pin, pinned, placid, plod, poise, quiescent, quiet, remain, repose, rest, restful, restrain, restrained, rigid, rooted, sedate, sedentary, serene, settle, settled, silence, sleep, sleeping, slack, slow, slumber, sluggish, snooze, solid, somnolent, soporific, stable, stagnant, stagnation, stale, stand, standing, standstill, stasis, static, stationary, statue, stay, steady, stiff, stiffen, still, stillness, stone, stony, stop, stuck, tether, torpid, torpor, tranquil, transfix, trap, unchanging, unconscious, unmoved, unmoving.

Fluidity* (148): air, amorphous, aqueous, bathe, billow, blood, blow, blowing, breath, breathe, breeze, brine, cascade, condense, current, damp, deluge, dew, dissolve, douse, downpour, drain, drench, drift, drip, drizzle, drool, drop, ebb, eddy, ethereal, evaporate, exhale, float, flood, flow, flowing, fluid, fluidity, flush, foam, fog, formless, froth, gale, gas, ghost, glide, gossamer, gush, gust, haze, humid, humidity, immerse, inhale, juice, kiss, kissing, lake, leak, liquefy, liquid, lubricate, melt, melted, melting, milk, mist, moist, moisture, nebulous, ocean, oil, oily, ooze, permeable, permeate, plume, porous, pour, puddle, puff, rain, ripple, runny, saliva, saturate, sea, seep, shower, sigh, sinuous, slick, slide, slime, slip, slippery, slither, smoke, soak, sodden, soggy, soul, spill, spiral, spirit, spit, splash, spout, spray, sprinkle, spurt, steam, stream, submerge, supple, surge, swamp, sweat, swell, swim, tears, thaw, tide, torrent, trickle, undulate, vapor, venom, waft, wash, water, watery, wave, wet, whirlpool, wind, wispy.

Solidness (145): adamant, alloy, anvil, armor, armored, bark, barrier, bastion, bedrock, block, board, bone, boulder, brass, brick, brittle, bronze, buttress, calcify, calcified, carapace, cement, compact, compress, concrete, copper, cornerstone, crystal, crystallize, dense, density, diamond, durable, earth, firm, firmness, fist, flint, fortify, fortress, foundation, frame, frozen, girder, glass, granite, granular, gravel, grit, gritty, ground, hard, harden, hardness, hardy, heavy, hoof, horn, impenetrable, impermeable, inflexible, iron, ironclad, ivory, jaw, keystone, knuckle, land, lead, marble, matter, metal, mettle, mortar, mountain, muscle, nail, oak, obdurate, obsidian, obstinate, ossify, pebble, petrified, petrify, pillar, plank, plate, quartz, rampart, rib, ridge, rigid, robust, rock, root, rugged, scale, shell, shield, skeleton, skull, slab, soil, solid, solidify, solidity, spine, stalwart, staunch, steel, steely, stiff, stolid, stone, stout, strength, strong, stubborn, sturdy, substance, teeth, thick, timber, tooth, tough, toughen, tree, tusk, unbending, unyielding, wall, weight, weighty, wood.

Disorder* (141): anarchy, askew, asymmetric, awry, bedlam, bizarre, blemish, blur, break, broken, cacophony, chaos, chaotic, clash, clutter, confusion, contaminate, corrosion, corrupt, corruption, crack, cracked, cracking, crazy, craziness, crooked, crumble, crumbling, crush, debris, decay, decompose, defect, deform, deformed, demolish, deranged, destroy, destruction, disarray, discord, discordant, disjointed, disorder, disordered, disorderly, disorganized, disrupt, dissonance, dissonant, distort, distorted, entropy, erode, erosion, erratic, error, fault, faulty, flaw, flawed, fracture, fragment, fragmented, fray, frayed, garbled, glitch, gnarled, grotesque, haphazard, havoc, impure, incorrect, irregular, jagged, jarring, jumble, jumbled, lopsided, lunacy, madness, mayhem, mess, messy, mishmash, miss, misshap, mistake, muddle, noise, pandemonium, pollute, ragged, random, randomness, riot, rip, rot, rotten, rough, rubble, ruin, rupture, rust, rusty, scatter, scattered, shatter, shattered, shred, skew, slant, smash, smear, smudge, spatter, splatter, splinter, split, stain, strange, strewn, taint, tangle, tangled, tattered, tear, tilted, torn, twist, twisted, unbalanced, uneven, unhinged, upheaval, uproar, warp, weird, wreck, wreckage, wrong.

Order (120): accord, accuracy, accurate, align, aligned, alignment, arrange, arranged, array, axis, balance, balanced, cadence, calibrate, calibrated, clarity, clean, clear, code, coherence, coherent, concentric, concord, congruent, consistency, consistent, consonance, consonant, correct, discipline, disciplined, equal, even, exact, figure, flat, flawless, form, formula, frame, framework, geometric, grid, harmonic, harmonious, harmony, immaculate, intact, lattice, law, level, line, logic, logical, matrix, measure, measured, method, methodical, neat, norm, normal, order, ordered, orderly, organization, organize, organized, parallel, pattern, patterned, perfect, periodic, perpendicular, polished, precise, precision, principle, pristine, proportion, proportional, pure, purity, ratio, rational, refined, regular, regulate, regulation, repetition, rhythm, right, rule, seamless, sequence, series, settle, settled, shape, smooth, sort, sorted, spotless, square, stable, standard, steady, straight, straighten, structure, structured, symmetric, symmetrical, symmetry, system, systematic, tempo, tidy, true, uniform.

Brightness/Warm Colors* (95): aura, beacon, beam, blaze, blazing, blinding, bright, brighter, brightness, brilliance, brilliant, burnished, candle, color, coruscate, dawn, daybreak, daylight, dazzle, dazzling, effulgent, fire, fireworks, flame, flare, flash, flashes, flashing, garish, glare, glaring, glaze, gleam, gleaming, glimmer, glint, glisten, glister, glitter, glittering, gloss, glow, glowing, gold, halo, illuminate, illumination, incandescent, iridescent, lamp, lantern, light, lighthouse, limelight, lit, lucent, lucid, luminosity, luminous, luster, moonlight, neon, noon, opalescent, pearly, polished, radiance, radiant, ray, reflected, resplendent, scintillate, sheen, shimmer, shimmering, shine, shining, shiny, silver, sparkle, sparkling, splendor, spotlight, star, sun, sunbeam, sunlight, sunny, sunrise, sunshine, torch, twinkle, twinkling, vivid, white.

Darkness/Cool Colors (91): aqua, azure, black, blackened, blackness, bleak, blind, blot, blue, cave, cavern, cerulean, cloak, cobalt, crepuscular, curtain, cyan, dark, darken, darkened, darkening, darkness, dim, dingy, drab, dull, dungeon, dusk, dusky, ebony, eclipse, evening, glaucous, gloaming, gloom, gloomy, gray, green, indigo, inky, jade, jet, lavender, leaden, lightless, mask, matte, midnight, moonless, murky, navy, night, nightfall, obscure, opaque, overcast, penumbra, periwinkle, pitch, purple, sable, sapphire, shade, shaded, shadow, shadowy, shady, shroud, silhouette, slate, smog, somber, starless, stygian, subterranean, sundown, sunless, sunset, swarthy, teal, tenebrous, tomb, turquoise, twilight, ultramarine, umbra, unlit, veil, veiled, verdant, violet.

Loudness/High Pitch* (46): alarm, bang, blare, blast, boom, chirp, clang, clatter, crash, cry, deafening, din, high, high-pitched, howl, loud, loudness, noise, piercing, pitched, resonant, reverberate, ring, roar, rumble, scream, screech, sharp, shout, shriek, shrill, singing, siren, squeal, thunder, treble, twitter, uproar, wail, warble, whine, whistle, yell, yelling.

Quietness/Low Pitch (42): bass, croak, deep, drone, drum, drums, drumming, dull, faint, foghorn, gravelly, groan, growl, grunt, guttural, hoot, hum, hush, low, low-pitched, lull, mellow, moan, muffled, mumble, murmur, mute, muted, purr, quiet, quietness, resonance, rumble, silence, silent, soft, softness, sonorous, subdued, throaty, thunder, whisper.

Upwardness* (53): above, acme, altitude, apex, apogee, arise, ascend, ascendant, buoyant, ceiling, celestial, climb, crest, crown, elated, elation, elevate, elevation, elevated, empyrean, exalted, float, fly, heaven, height, heights, high, higher, hoist, lift, lofty, mount, over, overhead, peak, pinnacle, rapture, rise, rooftop, sky, soar, summit, superior, top, tower, uplift, uplifted, up, upright, upward, upwardness, zenith.

Downwardness (50): abyss, base, beneath, below, bottom, bow, bowed, chasm, collapse, crouch, deep, depth, depths, descend, descent, dip, dive, down, droop, drop, fall, floor, gravity, gulf, hades, hang, heavy, hell, humble, inferior, kneel, low, lower, nadir, netherworld, pit, plummet, plunge, prostrate, sag, sink, slide, slump, stoop, submerge, tartarus, topple, tumble, underneath, underworld.

Outwardness* (69): away, beyond, bloom, blossom, branch, broadcast, burst, cast, dilate, disclose, dispense, disperse, display, disseminate, distend, distribute, effusive, eject, emanate, emit, exhibit, expand, expansive, expel, expose, exposed, express, extend, exterior, external, extrude, exude, exuberant, far, flourish, gape, give, giving, grow, jut, leave, manifest, mushroom, open, opening, out, outer, outside, outward, outwardness, project, projection, protrude, radiate, reach, reveal, shed, show, splay, sprawl, spread, sprout, stretch, swell, tendril, throw, unfold, unfurl, unveil, wing.

Inwardness (53): absorb, brain, burrow, cave, collect, come, conceal, confined, contain, contained, contract, core, cover, curl, deep, depth, door, draw, embrace, enclose, enter, entrance, envelop, fold, gather, get, heart, hidden, hide, hole, hollow, in, ingest, inside, interior, inward, mind, mouth, near, nest, nucleus, pit, pull, receive, root, secret, shrink, sink, swallow, trap, trapped, withdraw, womb.

Long/Spiky* (60): antler, arrow, band, barb, beak, blade, bristle, claw, cord, dagger, elongated, fang, feather, finger, hair, jab, jagged, knife, lance, line, long, needle, pierce, pike, pin, point, pointed, pointy, prick, prickly, prong, quill, ray, ribbon, rod, saber, serrated, sharp, spear, spike, spikiness, spiky, spur, staff, stalk, stem, stick, sting, string, sword, tail, talon, thorn, thorny, thread, tine, tip, tusk, whisker, wire.

Short/Round (57): arc, arch, around, ball, bead, blob, brevity, brief, bubble, bud, bulbous, bulge, cheek, chubby, circle, circular, coil, coin, compact, convex, curve, curved, curvy, curt, disc, dome, dot, dots, drop, dwarf, egg, encircle, eye, globe, head, hemisphere, orb, oval, pearl, pebble, plump, pupil, ring, round, rounded, roundness, seed, short, snub, socket, sphere, spherical, squat, stubby, terse, tiny, truncated.

Large Size* (56): ample, awesome, behemoth, big, breadth, broad, bulky, colossal, colossus, considerable, elephant, enormous, expand, expanse, expansive, gargantuan, giant, gigantic, grand, grandeur, greatness, grow, growing, hefty, huge, hulking, immense, immensity, infinite, large, largeness, leviathan, loom, magnificent, magnitude, mammoth, massive, mighty, monolith, monumental, prodigious, scale, size, sizable, spacious, staggering, stupendous, substantial, super, titan, titanic, tremendous, vast, vastness, voluminous, whale.

Small Size (44): atom, baby, compact, crumb, dainty, diminish, diminutive, dust, elfin, fine, fleck, grain, iota, less, little, meager, microscopic, mini, miniature, minor, minuscule, minute, mite, morsel, mouse, narrow, particle, petite, pinch, scrap, shrinking, slender, slight, sliver, small, smallness, smidgen, snippet, speck, teeny, thin, tiny, trace, wee.

Many* (68): a lot, abundance, abundant, aplenty, army, assorted, bountiful, brimming, bunch, cluster, congested, copious, countless, cram, crammed, crowd, crowded, diverse, endless, flock, full, glut, heap, herd, hoard, horde, host, innumerable, laden, legion, loaded, majority, manifold, many, manyness, mass, mob, more, mound, multiple, multiplicity, multiply, multitude, myriad, numerous, opulent, overflow, packed, pile, plenitude, plentiful, plenty, plethora, plural, profuse, proliferate, replete, rich, richness, several, stack, sumptuous, surplus, swarm, teem, teeming, throng, too much, various.

Few (42): alone, austere, bare, bereft, dearth, deplete, dwindle, empty, few, fewness, gone, handful, isolated, lack, less, lone, minimal, none, one, only, paucity, poverty, rare, rarity, remnant, scanty, scarce, seldom, simple, single, sole, solitary, spare, sparse, spartan, stark, uncommon, vacant, vanish, vestige, void, zero.

Novelty* (45): alien, anomaly, avant-garde, brand-new, curious, cutting-edge, debut, different, enigmatic, exotic, extraordinary, first, foreign, fresh, freshness, ingenious, innovative, invention, latest, mysterious, mystery, new, newness, novel, novelty, odd, original, peculiar, quirky, radical, recent, revolutionary, strange, surprise, uncanny, unexpected, unfamiliar, unheard-of, unique, unknown, unprecedented, unusual, weird, young, youth.

Familiarity (43): again, ancient, antique, archetypal, banal, canonical, classic, cliché, comfortable, common, conventional, cozy, customary, established, everyday, expected, familiar, familiarity, fixed, habit, hackneyed, hoary, home, homely, known, mundane, normal, old, ordinary, recognizable, recognized, remembered, repeated, ritual, routine, same, stale, standard, traditional, typical, unremarkable, usual, worn.

Aesthetic Indifference

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)

Activity conquers cold,
but stillness conquers heat.

— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Strangely, any mixture of perceptual qualities (list 3) from opposite psychological excitement categories (lists 1 and 2) results in a duality with a structure descriptive of aesthetic phenomena, not only those involving direct opposites.

This works for Somov's painting, contrasting death with the humor of a harlequin, rather than contrasting the direct opposites life and death or humor and seriousness. It also works for the quote from Rochefoucauld, opposing death to the sun instead of life and the sun to death instead of darkness. The quote is amusing because it’s true, in a way, and because of the extreme contrast and differential excitement between the phenomena it refers to. There’s also the suggestion of dynamic stasis, a direct mixture, and of dynamic roundness, another indirect mixture, in an unsteady eye. In Shakespeare’s quote the contrasts are between heat and its indirect opposites sadness and death (hot~sad/static), instead of the direct opposites hot and cold, life and death or happiness and sadness.

One can randomly choose any quality on the more exciting side, from list 1 for instance (or any of its conceptual relatives), juxtapose it with anything on the less exciting side, such as a quality from list 2 (or its conceptual relatives), observe aesthetic material in which the mixture might be conveyed and find that it occurs at an unexpectedly high rate.

Mixing the seven qualities hot, fluid, disorder, bright, dynamic, upward and outward in all possible ways with their opposites results in the set of 49 mixtures given below in list 5. Seven of these are direct opposites, and therefore possible to learn from the outside world, while 42, the majority (~86%), are indirect, and therefore unlearnable, and yet they happen to be almost as important aesthetically as direct opposites, as anyone who looks for them will find.

For simplicity, the “warmer” colors red, orange and yellow could be thought of as types of brightness, and the “cooler” colors purple, blue and green as types of darkness, so that, for instance, anything black and white, red and blue or yellow and green exemplifies the mixture bright~dark (the contrast effect). Also, roundness can be thought of as a type of order, and spikiness and length as types of disorder, justified based on the symmetry versus relative asymmetry of the former compared to the latter. Directly opposite qualities are marked with asterisks.

Direct and indirect aesthetic mixtures (list 4): hot~cold*, hot~solid, hot~order, hot~dark, hot~static, hot~down, hot~in, fluid~cold, fluid~solid*, fluid~order, fluid~dark, fluid~static, fluid~down, fluid~in, dynamic~cold, dynamic~solid, dynamic~static*, dynamic~order, dynamic~dark, dynamic~down, dynamic~in, disorder~cold, disorder~solid, disorder~order*, disorder~dark, disorder~static, disorder~down, disorder~in, bright~cold, bright~solid, bright~order, bright~dark*, bright~static, bright~down, bright~in, up~cold, up~solid, up~order, up~dark, up~static, up~down*, up~in, out~cold, out~solid, out~order, out~dark, out~static, out~down, out~in.*

List 4 doesn’t include mixtures of sound (pitch and volume), left and right, size (big and small), multiplicity (many or few) or novelty. Including these qualities, and treating color as a separate variable from brightness and round~long/spiky as a separate dimension from order~disorder generates a long list of mixtures (324, see Appendix 1), more than it’s convenient to consider at one time, although almost all of them probably correspond to biases and therefore predict the structure of aesthetic phenomena. Examples of mixtures of shape, sound, size and multiplicity are given throughout the text and in Monoaesthetic Mixtures.

Due to aesthetic indifference, the term “mixture” as it’s used here means a juxtaposition between any of the qualities or concepts on the left side of the listed dualities with any of those on the right side. Heat is an opposite of coldness, as usual, but also of solidness, stasis, order and so on. Upward is the opposite of downward, but also of the other less exciting qualities in dimensions of direction: inward, backward, central, the right side, and of every less exciting quality in lists 2 and 3.

Biases for indirect mixtures of up with less exciting directions are largely responsible for the structure of words and expressions such as “up and coming” (generally up~in), “coming right up” (in/right~up), “back up,” “upright,” “freeze up” (cold~up), “hard up” (solid~up), “shape up” (order~up), “stay up” (static~up) and “over night” (up~dark). Upwardness is not present in the literal referents of these expressions. We attach it to them for aesthetic reasons, because it contributes a degree of excitement and satisfying contradiction to an otherwise less exciting quality.

Aesthetic indifference and differential excitement explain the structure of expressions that don’t make sense otherwise. Consider, for example, the idiom “in the cold light of day.” The meaning of the phrase, to consider something carefully, without the interference of strong emotions, has nothing whatsoever to do with temperature or brightness, at least outside the human mind, raising the question of why these qualities are part of the expression. Referencing coldness makes sense because it’s associated with reality, more so than heat. Referencing light and day also makes sense, but for a different reason. They add contradiction and complexity to the expression, making it a mixture, more so than “in the cold dark of night.” With the word “in” at the beginning the phrase has a one to one ratio of more and less exciting things, assuming its specific aesthetic structure is in/cold~light/day (-1-1+1+1=0), and that “day” is a conceptual relative of brightness. If “day” is also treated as a relative of heat, the phrase is slightly more exciting, with the general structure in/cold~light/bright/hot (-1-1+1+1+1=1).

Thermal Indifference

Since all energy used for brain metabolism is finally transformed into heat, intense heat production appears to be an essential feature of brain metabolic activity. 

—Kiyatkin (2019)

As temperature changes in matter, especially within the uniquely narrow thermal window of an animal brain, qualities related physically to fluidity increase or decrease together, and solid qualities do the same in the opposite direction. Within a cell, neuron or brain, every possible pair of fluid versus solid qualities constitutes a pair of opposites, a phenomenon that could be termed thermal indifference.

In a brain, fluidity is as opposite to stasis and order as it is to solidness. Dynamism is as opposite to solidness and order as it is to stasis. Disorder opposes solidness and stasis in addition to order, and this goes for any other fluid and solid attributes, such as freedom versus contraction, or expansion versus confinement. Thermal indifference can be depicted by a set of dualities between direct and indirect opposites related to temperature variation, such as the following, in which direct opposites are marked with asterisks.

Thermal indifference: fluid~solid*, fluid~static, fluid~order, dynamic~static*, dynamic~solid, dynamic~order, disorder~order*, disorder~solid, disorder~static.

Direct opposites might be observed as such in the outside world, and could therefore be learned through experience, although it appears animals understand them as fundamentally different at birth, or soon thereafter. The other dualities listed are indirect, and can’t be as easily learned from the environment because the qualities making them up don’t consistently appear to us as opposites in nature.

That we appreciate these and other unobservable dualities despite a lack of environmental cues from which to conceive of them almost certainly means the mechanism of consciousness is partially thermal and related to liquid crystallinity. The qualities that participate in aesthetic mixtures exhibit the same kind of indifference, and all of the given thermal dualities happen to describe the structure of aesthetic phenomena, an extremely unlikely coincidence that implies a connection between physical conditions in the brain and our sense of beauty, as Leslie (2016) has proposed.

Hue Heat

The Hue Heat Hypothesis (HHH) is based on the idea that light and colours of the environment can affect thermal perception and influence thermal comfort. Specifically, it states that, when spectral power distribution of light reaching an observer’s eye is characterized by long wavelengths in the visible spectrum, the space is perceived as warmer; conversely, when small wavelengths are predominant, the space is perceived as cooler.

— Bellia et al. (2019)

The sensation of heat is unconsciously opposite not only to coldness, but also to the sensation of the color blue, while red feels like an opposite to both blueness and coldness. This is well-established by studies with temperature and color as variables, known as hue heat experiments. Hue heat is one of several results in psychology that demonstrate how we recognize imperceivable dualities, or consider certain qualities to be opposites even though we shouldn’t think of them as such based on experience. It also demonstrates that such dualities can be unconscious.

People will hold a hot blue vessel longer than a hot red one and a cold red vessel longer than a cold blue one (Ziat et al. 2016). Blue coloration counteracts or moderates heat, and red counteracts coldness, meaning hot and blue are indirect opposites in the mind even though we wouldn’t learn this from normal experience, where it’s not true in any obvious perceivable way apart from cultural signals that exploit the associations. It’s only true in the mind and the substance of the brain, and the same goes for cold and red. The fact that people expect a red object to be hotter than an otherwise equivalent blue object, and vice versa, is evidence for mental categories, one of them containing redness and heat and the other blueness and cold, and one could attribute a degree of aesthetic value to the surprise felt by a person discovering the contradiction that red is colder or blue is hotter than they expected.

It’s also been found that red light decreases cold pain thresholds and increases the perceived loudness of louder sounds, or increases sensitivity to higher temperature and sound volume (Landgrebe et al. 2008), and that people feel warmer observing orange than blue (Matsubara 2004, Chinazzo et al. 2017) and in yellow light than blue light (Albers et al. 2015): “Subjects tend to have slightly warmer thermal sensations in yellow light and slightly colder sensations in blue light.” Such studies show we associate the warmer colors red, orange and yellow with each other in a category that is, in a thermal sense, opposite to cooler colors like green, blue, purple and black. Based on loudness making people feel hotter, high volume is likely to be in the hotter mental category, along with brightness and warmer colors, which would explain why we sometimes refer to them as “loud,” and why higher temperature, light and volume are described as upward, which is also on the more exciting side, and their opposites are called downward.

Adding blue to heat or heat to blue creates a perceptual mixture with a sort of moderation, familiarity and interesting complexity that red heat and blue coldness don’t convey. More generally, with cooler colors and black grouped together under the term “dark” and warmer colors and white under “bright,” we favor the mixtures hot~dark and bright~cold over the perceptual, psychological combinations hot/bright and cold/dark. This isn’t just true in an experimental, contact time or latency-based context, but also in poetry, language, fictional stories and mythology, and Gloger’s rule can be interpreted to demonstrate that animals in colder environments prefer more brightly-colored mates while hotter species prefer darker mates.

A simple reason for the hue heat effect is that red, orange and yellow light excite and therefore heat the visual sensory system and brain slightly more than blue light. Assuming that this heat corresponds to some extent with psychological excitement in animals can explain the widespread use of warm colors for warning purposes, and why they so often evolve to characterize courtship signals and sex organs.

There’s plenty of empirical evidence that darker colors like blue are universally related to sadness and redder colors are happier and more provocative, as Clarke and Costall confirmed (2008):

Consistent with the claim by Levy (1984) that cool colors sedate and warm colors provoke active feelings; the present study also found that ‘warm’ colors such as red, orange, and yellow did evoke the more active emotions (by ‘active emotions’ I refer to Levy’s (1984) use of this term when speaking of emotions or feelings that involve physical arousal, and by the use of ‘passive’ those that sedate).

Sounds might feel louder when a person is perceiving red because both redness and loudness increase brain temperature, reinforcing each other to produce an overall less pleasant experience than coldness mixed with loudness or quietness mixed with heat would produce. Most likely, switching one or more quality in the combination hot/loud/bright to its opposite in a perceptual field decreases brain temperature and the overall excitement felt by an observer, while inverting qualities in the combination cold/quiet/dark would increase excitement from a lower point.

It’s predictable that animals have a preference for darker and bluer motion, chaos and fluidity and an aversion for brighter and redder versions of exciting qualities, and that there are corresponding unconscious associations: hot/red/motion/disorder/fluid and cold/blue/stasis/order/solid, with the qualities in each group combining to reinforce each other by way of their common influence on the temperature of the observing animal’s brain. People should be more tolerant or interested in visual brightness and disorder, for instance, when it’s cold or blue than when it’s red or hot, and poetry, myths and dreams, as reflections of the mind, might be expected to incorporate mixtures such as blue~fluid and bright~solid at high rates. Other perceptual dimensions can be added to this scheme, high and low pitch, up and down or out and in, for example, and the same predictions apply, such that high-pitched downwardness and inward brightness are amusing and common in aesthetic phenomena, and so on.

Experiments like those done with temperature, color and sound as variables might be done comparing preferences and aversions for mixtures versus combinations of all primitive perceptual qualities. People should prefer slightly lower pitched sounds, rounder objects and slower movement when it’s hotter and higher pitched sounds, spikier objects and faster movement when it’s colder, for example.

Perplexity AI Research

Perplexity Computer’s response to “Find out if the color red is associated with heat, anger, danger, high arousal and other exciting things.”

Yes — the evidence is extensive and converges from multiple directions. Here’s what the research shows:

Physiological Arousal

Red literally activates the body. Exposure to it increases blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, and adrenaline levels, putting the autonomic nervous system into a low-level alert state even when no actual threat is present. Gerard (1958) showed that red light raises blood pressure, respiratory movements, and eye-blink frequency, while blue light decreases all three. A controlled study found that participants rated red-colored images as significantly more arousing than blue ones regardless of whether the content was positive or negative — supporting the “arousal theory of color” that red is arousing per se, not just in context.

Heat

Red is cross-modally linked to warmth. Rooms painted red feel warmer than rooms painted blue at the same actual temperature — a measurable perceptual effect, not just a metaphor. As you’ve already researched with the hue–heat hypothesis, this association is robust enough to influence thermostat behavior and clothing choices.

Anger

The link is both metaphorical and perceptual. A study by Fetterman et al. found that inducing anger makes people more likely to categorize ambiguous color stimuli as red, confirming that “seeing red” is not just an expression but a genuine top-down perceptual bias. Red also primes faster recognition of angry faces compared to gray or blue primes. Cross-linguistically, the ANGER IS HEAT metaphor — which maps onto red — appears in dozens of unrelated languages.

Danger

Red is used for stop signs, fire engines, sirens, and warning flags because its long wavelength makes it one of the most visible colors in the spectrum, and its evolutionary salience (blood, fire, poisonous animals) triggers automatic vigilance. Infants prefer red when primed with a safe (smiling) face but avoid it when primed with a threatening (angry) face, suggesting the danger association is present very early.

Dominance, Aggression, and Competition

At the 2004 Athens Olympics, competitors randomly assigned red uniforms in boxing, wrestling, and taekwondo won significantly more often than those in blue, an effect attributed to red signaling dominance and triggering testosterone boosts in the wearer and intimidation in the opponent. Red also increases impulsiveness, risk-taking, and confrontational behavior.

Sexual Attraction

People wearing red are consistently rated as more attractive by the opposite sex. One hypothesis is that arousal-related blood flow reddens the skin, making the color a signal of sexual receptivity and vitality (Verywell Mind, NC Museum of Art).

Summary

Red is associated with heat, anger, danger, high arousal, dominance, passion, urgency, and sexual attraction — and these are not independent associations. They appear to be bound together by a common thread: red functions as a general intensifier of arousal, and the specific valence (love vs. rage, excitement vs. threat) is determined by context. This is exactly what the color-in-context theory (Elliot & Maier, 2012) proposes and what your “primitive aesthetic mixtures” framework would predict for the hotcold, redblue axis.

Aesthetic Reflex

Leslie (2016) describes the resemblance between physical complexity in the brain and mixtures of fluid qualities with those of solidness in culture. She says something strangely close to what Empedocles said 2,500 years ago, that we somehow understand perceptual fluidity (water, aether), solidness (earth) and beauty (fondness) in terms of similar qualities internally. She proposes a kind of aesthetic reflex between opposites, so that experiencing too much fluidity makes us crave solidness and vice versa:

What if a mode of thought were in intimate connection with phases of matter,… What if the hard form that is crystal, in periods of its prevalence, produced thought that is crystalline? What if an abundance of liquid made thought fluid, or if its absence made thinking desirous of fluidity to combat its parchedness?

This is based on the effectiveness of comparisons between liquid crystal properties and the structure of language, aesthetic material and large-scale social patterns:

Does anything connect the world of liquid crystals’ discovery to the stop-starting rhythm of animation, invented in the same moment, or to the jerkiness of proletarian revolution, which comes only haltingly, … What are the connections between liquid crystals, those in the laboratory and in our devices, and in us, in our bodies and in our thoughts?

It’s not only that fluid thoughts cause solid thoughts and vice versa. It’s also that fluid qualities such as dynamism and chaos cause a desire for stasis and order, and stasis and order for dynamism and chaos. This could be taken to suggest the action of a reflexive, elastic-like mechanism in the structure of the brain, likely a physical one given that the qualities involved are those related to thermophysical variation in matter, especially matter in a liquid crystalline condition. Extremes of other perceptual dualities have the same reflexive tendency. Too much heat makes us desire cold and vice versa. Too much brightness causes a desire for darkness, darkness for light, loudness for quiet and silence for sound, high and low pitch for each other, redder and bluer colors for each other, and more and less exciting things for their opposites in general.

Other Mixtures

While the dualities in list 3 are of interest because they happen to be fundamental and common, there are many more, mostly relatively derived dualities that have similar aesthetic value, and which also seem to be made up of components we think of as opposites with respect to excitement, such as those listed below.

Other aesthetic mixtures (list 5): evil~good, forward~backward, front~back, divine~mortal, life~death, soul~body, happy~sad, angry~content, accidental~deliberate, expansion~contraction, passionate~indifferent, fantasy~reality, dominant~submissive, formless~form, free~confined, loose~tight, open~closed, light~heavy, thin~thick, rough~smooth, future~past, lies~truth, question~answer, rare~common, unknown~known, beginning~ending, everywhere~nowhere, first~last, win~lose, yes~no, affirmation~negation, joy~suffering, you~me, enemy~friend, accusation~apology.

Some of these could be seen as derivatives of more basic dualities. Evil~good might sometimes be interpreted as a specific relative of disorder~order, life~death of dynamic~static and form~formless of solid~fluid. Some could probably be included in list 3 as primitive opposites. Our understanding of light versus heavy and rough versus smooth, for example, might go back as far as or beyond that of spiky versus round. Others, like lies versus the truth and winning versus losing, are clearly more recent conceptions.

These opposites behave the same way as those in list 3, so that anything on the exciting side (written first in each duality) can be coupled with anything on the less exciting side to generate the structure of a common aesthetic theme. Evil versus good and life versus death are derived dualities that have always been popular as juxtapositions in myths and stories, evil and life being more exciting than goodness and death. Ideas of the “good life” and the “evil dead,” therefore, have aesthetic appeal through contradiction that “good dead” and “evil life” do not. We counter the unpleasantness of death by mixing it with life, but also with brightness, redness, fluidity, upwardness, outwardness, evil and divinity, and the unpleasantness of evil with goodness, but also death, darkness, solidness, downwardness and inwardness.

Mixture Direction

(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,
(2) Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.

— Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (1957)

What is ice which gives you fire, and which your fire freezes still more?

— Giacomo Puccini, Turandot

The structure of a mixture can be written with either the more or less exciting quality first, as in hot~cold versus cold~hot or long~short versus short~long. Here they’re mostly written with the supposedly more exciting quality first, although some match the order of occurrence in the aesthetic phenomena they describe.

It’s possible that reversing a mixture will alter its likability and excitingness. Fire~ice might be more intuitive, or congruent with our expectations, and more exciting than ice~fire, for instance, while ice~fire is more surprising, contradictory and moderately exciting, because the initial elements of a sequence automatically come off as more exciting than subsequent elements.

Mixtures in general might show a slight bias on average to fit a preference for excitement going up or down in an experience over time. People might prefer the most surprising or uplifting part of a story, the high-pitched part of a word or the punchline of a joke to happen at its end rather than its beginning, for example.

Inverse Mixtures

Any mixture can be inverted by changing each of its constituent qualities to its opposite. Due to aesthetic indifference, this always results in another mixture, although the inverse of a pair of direct opposites is almost identical to the original, aside from a change in mixture direction. The inverse of dynamic~static is its reverse mixture static~dynamic, which is essentially the same, but the inverse of dynamic~down is static~up, which is very different. The inverse of evil~good is good~evil, almost the same, except that people might like the phrase “good and evil” a little more than “evil and good” or vice versa. Inverting up~good, which would describe God in comparison to the Devil, gives evil~down, a description of the Devil in comparison to God.

It’s typical for both a mixture and its inverse to describe aesthetic phenomena (and corresponding biases), although there’s no traditional theoretical reason to expect this. For instance, biases corresponding to the structures up~dark and bright~down apparently add together in generating selection for vertical color differentiation in visual animals, causing the evolution of darker hues in the upper part of the body and brighter hues below (Thayer’s Law), with the pressure in favor of the overall pattern being stronger than what either bias would contribute by itself. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say there are four forces at work in this case: the favorable biases up~dark and bright~down, along with those of aversion for the combinations up/bright and dark/down.

The mixture bright~round (with brightness including warmer colors) also describes the structure of ornamental coloration in animals, and so does its inverse long~dark (dark including cooler colors). Here again there are most likely four forces: attraction in mate choice for both of the given mixtures, and aversions for both the combinations bright/long and dark/round.

Biases for mixtures of color and shape have lead, apparently, to brighter and warmer coloration of the head, thorax or abdomen and darker and cooler coloration of the legs and antennae in many insects, and to a prominent pattern observable in birds in which the central, rounder body is brighter and/or warmer in color than the longer, thinner wings. The appeal of the mixtures dynamic~dark and bright~static, along with relative displeasure at the sight of the combinations static/dark and dynamic/bright, are additional biases that likely contribute to the given coloration patterns in birds.

Mixtures of direction and shape, for instance up~round and its inverse long~down, are also typical in animals, across many taxa, and they include extreme cases of sexual traits, where biases are clearly responsible, such as the elevated, rounded train of a dancing peacock or the long, downward tail of a dancing male widowbird.

The mixtures bright~round, long~dark, bright~static, dynamic~dark, up~round and long~down describe aesthetic material in human culture almost as consistently as they do sexually selected traits, indicating both that the preferences are a default condition of the animal mind and that in general they arise in an aesthetic rather than ecological context.

In almost all cases, the inverse of a particular mixture matches an aesthetic pattern that’s nearly as common as the pattern matching the original, including all possible pairs of the given physical opposites: fluid~solid, dynamic~static and disorder~order. This provides evidence in favor of a causal relationship between aesthetic and thermal indifference, and between brain temperature and aesthetic preferences (thermoaesthetics).

Degrees of Relative Excitement

One could assign a positive or negative value, most simply either 1 or -1, to each quality in a perceptual pattern and add them together to estimate the degree to which the pattern should, hypothetically, excite an observer or influence temperature in the brain. Such values and their sum could be called “degrees” (deg) with positive values corresponding to more excitement, negative values to less and intermediate amounts to mixtures, perceptual complexity and aesthetic (hedonic) value.

This system isn’t meant to imply that brain temperature is altered by 1 degree in response to list 1 qualities or by -1 in response to list 2 qualities. Seeing red probably results in a greater increase in brain temperature than seeing blue, for instance, but not, of course, in an increase of exactly two degrees or any amount corresponding to a particular integer, and the perception of cool colors might increase brain temperature, but slightly less so than warm colors. Biological and cultural patterns can be used to predict relative changes in brain temperature in response to various perceptions, not the absolute quantity of degrees of change, although these can presumably be measured in practice, compared and discovered to either support or oppose the present thesis.

If a quality can be shown to be more exciting than what we would typically think of as its opposite, it has positive degrees of excitement regardless of how we feel about it otherwise. Units of degrees reflect excitement levels, not our opinions about whether something is good or bad. Both gods and devils, being divine, would be assigned a positive degree even though most people would normally call the latter negative. Anger, also, which we would normally call a negative emotion, has a positive degree of excitement because it’s an exciting experience, regardless of how much we like it.

Any mixture (defined as a juxtaposition of differentially exciting perceptual qualities) involving only two qualities would have zero total degrees of excitement (deg=0). Any combination of two qualities from the exciting side, both with 1 degree, will have 1+1=2 degrees overall. Combinations of two less exciting things would be doubly unexciting, deg=-2.

Many phenomena exhibit more than one quality simultaneously. A rock is both solid and static (-2 deg). The sun is hot, bright, yellow, upward and round (1+1+1+1–1=3 deg), making it more exciting than a rock by about 5 degrees. The rising sun (up/bright=2) is exiting compared to the setting sun (down/bright=0). The moon is upward, solid, sometimes bright, other times dark, sometimes spiky and other times round (1–1+1–1+1–1=0), or complicated and moderately exciting by comparison to the sun or a rock. A waterfall (fluid/dynamic~down=1) is slightly exciting, but balanced by downwardness relative to a geyser (fluid/dynamic/up=3), or a volcanic eruption (up/hot/bright/dynamic=4). An animal is both static and dynamic, fast and slow, noisy and quiet, long and round, inward and outward, and so on, making it an unusually complex mixture, and one can imagine some of this complexity having evolved to fit that of sensory systems.

This system is an oversimplification in that the actual amount of excitement felt by an observer varies between qualities. The color yellow, although it’s assigned a value of 1, the same as red, should in reality be somewhat less exciting, green more so than blue, and so on with other colors, green actually being close to neutrality. The excitement attached to qualities perceived with different sensory systems or subsystems in the same modality can’t actually be equivalent. Outwardness might be more exciting than upwardness, downward less so than inward or vice versa. In fact, there’s linguistic evidence to conclude visual qualities are generally more exciting than auditory ones, which themselves are more exciting than olfactory ones.

Various species appear to have evolved to exploit the fact that brains combine the effects of more exciting qualities, using bright and redder coloration, length, spikiness, high pitch, large numbers and other list 1 qualities to discourage predators, the frightening experience of a swarm of bees (many/bright/high pitch=3) or a long, hissing, spitting snake (long/high pitch/fluid/out= 4) being examples. Employing these combinations would be a convenient evolutionary strategy because it should work to some extent on any adversary.

Humans tend to make references to the same frightening qualities when we’re angry. As phrases about anger from “sources across the web,” Google lists the top five as “fuming” (hot/fluid=2), “ballistic” (dynamic/up/out=3), “red” (redness=1), “drive someone crazy” (dynamic/disorder=2) and “blow a fuse” (disorder/hot=2). “Blow your top,” “fly off the handle” and “pissed off” are also in the list, with the respective structures disorder/up=2, up/out=2 and fluid/bright/out=3.

Notably, multiplication of less exciting things increases their perceptual excitingness. This would explain why, in animals with sexually selected spots, the spots are typically dark, and why the cultural, fictional multiplication of eyes and heads (many~round) is so common, as well as traditional religious expressions that repeatedly mention inwardness like “Holy of Holies,” “Holiest of Holies” or the chant of the four beasts that go around with God in the Bible (Coogan et al. 2018):

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

A red (deg=1) and blue (deg=-1) phenomenon (1–1=0) is intermediate, neutral and complicated excitement-wise relative to a red and yellow (deg=1+1=2) or blue and purple (deg=-1–1=-2) object. A black (-1) and white (+1) pattern is more complicated than pure black (-1) or white (1), and it happens to be widely characteristic of both animals and aesthetic artifacts: orcas, pandas, penguins, zebras (and numerous animals with “zebra” in their name), tuxedos, soccer balls, piano keys, chess boards, chess pieces, the Yin Yang symbol and so on. The black~white pattern in animals is often emphasized and displayed to mates in courtship routines, in which cases it evolved to explicitly satisfy a bias. In octopuses it can be a dynamic pattern in which a male turns pale and flashes black stripes across its body to impress a female.

A song-like sequence of sound mixing high pitch with low pitch (1–1=0) and/or sound with silence (1–1=0) is intermediate and complex relative to uninterrupted high-pitched noise (+2), uninterrupted low-pitched noise (-1) or silence (-1), and language is the same way, with extremely complicated variation in pitch and loudness, particularly so in poetry.

Distortion (+1) of a perfect geometric grid (-1) results in a pattern with an intermediate degree of excitement, 1–1=0. Reshaping a perfectly round or spherical shape to be somewhat elongated or spiky results in a more moderate and complex experience for the observer, which is almost certainly why eggs, flower petals and ornamental ocelli are this way (see Disruptions of Roundness). Reshaping it further, into an extremely long or spiky form, makes it exciting beyond what animals prefer.

Due to aesthetic indifference, any higher degree quality or concept can interact aesthetically with any lower degree quality or concept, not only its direct opposite. The mixtures long~round and red~round both have 0 degree structures, and so does long~dark, while long redness is more exciting (2 deg) and dark roundness is less so (-2 deg). As a result, sexually selected patterns throughout the animal kingdom tend to be characterized by the former structures. Up~dark and down~bright are zero degree structures while down/dark and up/bright are offset from zero by 1 degree, thus animals are likely to be darker dorsally and brighter ventrally (see Painted by Nature).

It’s common for a single, given aesthetic pattern, such as a poem, to incorporate alternating references to more and less exciting phenomena, creating an amusing rhythm that adds up to 0 or nearly 0 total degrees. Consider the famous quote from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (2022):

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create! [anything~nothing (many~few, deg=1–1=0)]
O heavy lightness! serious vanity! [light~heavy (deg=1–1=0)]
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! [disorder/disorder~good/order, deg=1+1–1–1=0]
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, [hot/bright/fluid/light~cold/heavy (deg=1+1+1–1–1=1)]
sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! [dynamic~static/static (deg=1–1–1=-1)]
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?

Three of the nine lines have 0 degrees of excitement, one line has 1 degree and one has -1, resulting in deg=0 overall. These aren’t necessarily all the mixtures present. Hate could be more exciting than love, health more than sickness (or vice versa), vanity more than seriousness, brawling, hate and love more than “O” and laughter and love more than negation in “not laugh” and “no love.” Adding these mixtures still results in 0 total degrees for the lines. Shakespeare is listing contradictory opposites here, and many of the opposites he chose are those from list 3.

Monoaesthetics

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Bartlett 2022)

Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

— William of Occam, Quodlibeta Septem (Bartlett 2022)

The lists in the following sections contain thousands of specific examples of aesthetic phenomena that match the structure of perceptual and conceptual mixtures of the more and less exciting opposites given in list 4 (reproduced below), including, among other things, popular expressions, lines of poetry, famous quotes, the names of characters, poems, books, paintings, songs, albums, bands and movies, the contents of myths, fictional stories, works of art, dreams, hallucinations and sexually selected traits in animals.

Direct and indirect aesthetic mixtures (list 4): hot~cold*, hot~solid, hot~order, hot~dark, hot~static, hot~down, hot~in, fluid~cold, fluid~solid*, fluid~order, fluid~dark, fluid~static, fluid~down, fluid~in, dynamic~cold, dynamic~solid, dynamic~static*, dynamic~order, dynamic~dark, dynamic~down, dynamic~in, disorder~cold, disorder~solid, disorder~order*, disorder~dark, disorder~static, disorder~down, disorder~in, bright~cold, bright~solid, bright~order, bright~dark*, bright~static, bright~down, bright~in, up~cold, up~solid, up~order, up~dark, up~static, up~down*, up~in, out~cold, out~solid, out~order, out~dark, out~static, out~down, out~in.*

Aesthetic structures addressed in the specific mixture lists are summarized below. Numbers in parentheses show the total of the linguistic and cultural examples of each structure, as of this writing. For instance, there are 69 examples of mixtures with the structure hot~cold, 12 linguistic and 57 cultural (12+57=69). One can immediately see from the summary that indirect mixtures are just as important in aesthetic phenomena as direct mixtures, which are marked with an asterisk.

Hot: hot~cold* (12+57=69), hot~solid (19+24=43), hot~static/slow (7+23=30), hot~order (3+2=5), hot~dark/cool colors (4+21=25), hot~silence/quiet/low pitch (0+2=2), hot~down (7+31=38), hot~in (21+13=34), hot~right (1+0=1), hot~round/short (12+50=62), hot~small (4+3=7), hot~few (2+1=3), hot~familiar (1+0=1), hot~back (2+0=2), hot~end (2+0=2).

Fluid: fluid~cold (11+11=22), fluid~solid* (55+28=83), fluid~static/slow (14+14=28), fluid~order (6+2=8), fluid~dark/cool colors (9+14=23), fluid~silence/quiet/low pitch (2+2=4), fluid~down (19+9=27), fluid~in (57+13=70), fluid~right (1+0=1), fluid~round/short (20+5=25), fluid~few (2+5=7), fluid~familiar (1+1=2), fluid~good (3+0=3), fluid~back (4+0=4).

Dynamic: dynamic~cold (5+3=8), dynamic~solid (41+50=91), dynamic~static/slow* (40+30=70), dynamic~order (17+3=20), dynamic~dark/cool colors (8+7=15), dynamic~down (23+18=41), dynamic~in (62+12=74), dynamic~right (1+0=1), dynamic~round/short (25+12=37), dynamic~small (2+0=2), dynamic~few (8+3=11), dynamic~good (10+0=10), dynamic~back (7+0=7), dynamic~end (3+0=3).

Disorder: disorder~cold (7+2=9), disorder~solid (27+13=40), disorder~static (13+2=15), disorder~order* (23+10=33), disorder~dark/cool colors (4+11=15), disorder~silence/quiet/low pitch (3+0=3), disorder~down (18+29=47), disorder~in (36+11=47), disorder~round/short (27+10=37), disorder~small (1+2=3), disorder~few (8+1=9), disorder~good (2+0=2), disorder~back (4+0=4), disorder~end (2+0=2).

Bright/warm colors: bright/warm colors~cold (2+4=6), bright/warm colors~solid (5+28=33), bright/warm colors~static/slow (5+12=15), bright/warm colors~order (1+5=6), bright/warm colors~dark/cool colors* (8+48=56), bright/warm colors~silence/quiet/low pitch (1+1=2), bright/warm colors~down (3+7=10), bright/warm colors~in (24+18=42), bright/warm colors~right (0+2=2), bright/warm colors~round/short (18+24=42), bright/warm colors~small (1+6=7), bright/warm colors~few (6+3=9), bright/warm colors~familiar (3+1=4), bright/warm colors~good (4+0=4), bright/warm colors~back (1+0=1), bright/warm colors~after (3+0=3).

Sound/loud/high pitch: sound/loud/high pitch~cold (1+1=2), sound/loud/high pitch~solid (2+8=10), sound/loud/high pitch~static/slow (12+8=20), sound/loud/high pitch~order (6+2=8), sound/loud/high pitch~dark/cold colors (4+3=7), sound/loud/high pitch~silence/quiet/low pitch* (12+3=15), sound/loud/high pitch~down (2+0=2), sound/loud/high pitch~in (11+3=14), sound/loud/high pitch~round (5+3=8), sound/loud/high pitch~few (3+1=4), sound/loud/high pitch~small (1+0=1).

Up: up~cold (2+0=2), up~solid (22+16=38), up~static/slow (17+3=20), up~order (17+5=22), up~dark/cool colors (9+2=11), up~silence/quiet/low pitch (3+0=3), up~round/short (17+18=35), up~down* (24+49=73), up~in (48+17=65), up~right (2+0=2), up~small (1+1=2), up~few (2+3=5), up~good (2+0=2), up~back (4+0=4).

Out: out~cold (5+1=6), out~solid (24+3=27), out~static/slow (14+1=15), out~order (26+3=29), out~dark/cool colors (9+2=11), out~silent/quiet/low pitch (0+2=2), out~round/short (16+6=24), out~down (15+4=19), out~in* (54+10=64), out~right (2+0=2), out~small (1+0=1), out~few (8+1=9), out~good (6+0=6), out~back (4+0=4).

Long: long~cold (1+0=1), long~solid (4+7=11), long~static/slow (4+5=9), long~order (3+0=3), long~dark/cool colors (6+12=15), long~down (4+4=8), long~in (10+3=13), long~right (1+0=1), long~short* (7+0=7), long~round* (9+0=9), long~few (3+0=3).

Spiky: spiky~solid (6+10=16), spiky~static (5+1=6), spiky~dark/cool colors (2+4=6), spiky~round* (12+8=20), spiky~down (2+0=2), spiky~in (6+2=8), spiky~back (2+0=2).

Big: big~cold (1+0=1), big~solid (5+5=10), big~static/slow (2+3=5), big~order (4+1=5), big~dark/cool colors (0+1=1), big~silent/quiet/low pitch (1+0=1), big~down (1+1=2), big~in (8+1=9), big~round (7+1=8), big~small* (10+8=18), big~few (3+1=4).

Many: many~cold (3+2=5), many~solid (13+5=18), many~static/slow (11+6=17), many~order (17+5=22), many~dark/cool colors (6+2=8), many~silent/quiet/low pitch (2+1=3), many~in (39+53=92), many~down (4+3=7), many~round/short (23+19=42), many~small (2+1=3), many~few* (39+44=83), many~familiar (1+0=1), many~good (11+0=11), many~back (7+0=7).

Novel: novel~solid (4+0=4), novel~static (4+0=4), novel~dark/cool colors (4+0=4), novel~silent/quit/low pitch (2+0=2), novel~down (1+0=1), novel~in (9+1=10), novel~round/short (4+0=4), novel~few (4+0=4), novel~familiar* (7+0=7), novel~good (2+0=2).

Monoaesthetics

All the phenomena given as examples of a particular aesthetic structure are assumed to be monoaesthetic, meaning they came into existence as the result of a single, universal bias in the animal mind, with the bias having the same structure as the phenomena listed. The mixture of hot and cold in the expression “a cold day in hell” satisfies a human bias favoring such juxtapositions, and so does the title “Fire and Ice.” Although the phrase and the title originated independently, they have a single cause. It’s desirable to offset coldness with heat or heat with coldness in aesthetic affairs, just as it’s always been desirable for living things to do so physically for comfort and survival. The bias has probably been in place since the capacity to tell hot from cold evolved, and centered on moderate temperature.

A single bias for the mixture bright~dark can be considered responsible for every instance of mate choice-based contrasting bright and dark coloration (e.g., black and white), rather than each case having its own, independent cause, and the same bias in humans can be applied to explain ornamental juxtapositions (mixtures) of bright and dark colors in culture. This extends to mixtures of warmer and cooler colors: red with blue, yellow with green, orange with purple and so on, all of which are like bright~dark in terms of differential excitement, cultural popularity and their evident usefulness in winning mates.

All the occurrences of mixed higher and lower pitch as a musical element can be considered the consequence of a single bias for the mixture, and the same goes for sound versus silence. Monoaesthetics explains why we recognize the songs of birds as songs even though they didn’t evolve for our sake. Songs in general, biologically or culturally, evolve to satisfy biases for mixtures of primitive auditory opposites that exist in all animals. The same sort of argument applies to dance, with motion, stillness, speed, slowness, roundness, length, spikiness, order, disorder, regularity, randomness, outwardness, inwardness, upwardness, downwardness, left, right, familiarity and novelty among the qualities being juxtaposed.

Ultimately, aesthetic things as a whole tend to be monoaesthetic with each other by way of an extremely general structure: more exciting~less exciting. The single concept of a bias in the animal brain for the perceptual effect of differential excitement can explain previously mysterious phenomenal in the areas of linguistics, behavior, art, philosophy, mythology and religion in culture, as well as traits that evolve through sexual selection in biology.

Because all the otherwise independent instances of a particular mixture can be put in a group and thought of as effects of a single, causal bias, monoaesthetics represents a significant reduction in the number of independent events that would be necessary to explain the existence of aesthetic things. Aesthetic indifference, meanwhile, works in the opposite direction by allowing for a great deal of diversity. Since mixtures are derived from any possible pair of oppositely exciting qualities, there are at least as many aesthetic biases in the mind as there are ways to pair more and less exciting psychological opposites.

In the lists that follow the more exciting quality in a duality or mixture is usually given to the left of a tilde, and the less exciting quality to the right, as in “hot~cold,” “fast~slow” or “evil~good,” with the number of expressions matching each structure indicated in parentheses. Nonlinguistic cultural and biological examples are given in separate lists below the linguistic examples.

Each mixture list is preceded by a general aesthetic structure that matches the relatively specific structure of the examples. “The quick and the dead,” for instance, with the specific structure quick~dead, is one of a large number of popular idiomatic expressions with the more general structure dynamic~static. “Going steady” is generally monoaesthetic with “quick and dead,” although it has a different specific structure (go~steady). Both expressions are monoaesthetic with “fast asleep,” although its specific structure (fast~sleep) is different. All three are monoaesthetic with several other popular expressions that have the general structure dynamic~static.

Dynamic~Static/Slow (39): kill switch, the quick and the dead, ride or die, going steady, fast asleep, go to sleep, suspended animation, jet lag, hurry up and wait, it's a waiting game, the calm before the storm, unmoved mover, death march, dead man walking, wake the dead, spinning in the grave, playing dead, dancing on someone's grave, go in for the kill, death spiral, slow your roll, still life, still alive, a matter of life and death, live free or die, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting something, the king is dead long live the king, ready steady go, slow and steady wins the race, steady as she goes, going nowhere fast, asleep at the wheel, change is the only constant, steadfast, bedswerver, live by the sword die by the sword, live dog is better than a dead lion, wake up and die right, festina lente (make haste slowly).

These expressions have the same general structure as the Emily Dickinson poem titles “A Death blow is a Life blow to Some,” “The Stimulus, beyond the Grave,” “She died at play,” “We do not play on Graves” and “Because I could not stop for Death.” In the latter poem, in the fifth line, haste is juxtaposed to slowness, and the seventh line mixes labor with leisure (mixture structures are shown in brackets):

Because I could not stop for Death – [dynamic~death]
He kindly stopped for me – [male~static]
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste [fast~slow]
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too, [dynamic~static]
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring – [dynamic~round]
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun – [bright~down]

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill – [fluid/dynamic~cold]
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – [big~solid]
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground – [up~down]

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day [bright~short]
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Every line of “A Death blow is a Life blow to Some” mixes death with life, one of the most common specific forms of the mixture dynamic~static:

A Death blow is a Life blow to Some [static~dynamic]
Who till they died, did not alive become —[static~dynamic]
Who had they lived, had died but when [dynamic~static]
They died, Vitality begun. [static~dynamic]

In “She died at play,” the girl becomes a softly strolling ghost, a mixture of both death with dynamism and motion with slowness:

She died at play, [static~dynamic]
Gambolled away
Her lease of spotted hours,
Then sank as gaily as a Turn [dynamic~down]
Upon a Couch of flowers.

Her ghost strolled softly o'er the hill [dynamic~slow/dead]
Yesterday, and Today,
Her vestments as the silver fleece—
Her countenance as spray.

The mixture dynamic~static recurs at high rates throughout poetry going back to its origins, and seemingly in every other type of aesthetic material where it can be incorporated. In all cases, we can attribute it to aesthetic selection based a the single bias with the same structure. Due to an unconscious association of dynamism with disorder, replacing the former with the later in the direct mixture dynamic~static leads to another popular mixture: disorder~static, which describes idioms such as the following:

Disorder~static (10): death spiral, a disaster waiting to happen, no rest for the wicked, get up on the wrong side of the bed, strange bedfellows, couldn't lie straight in bed (humorous), sleeping rough, dead broke, die of a broken heart, the calm before the storm.

Because stasis is related to order in the mind, replacing static in dynamic~static with order generates the popular mixture dynamic~order, which also corresponds to the structure of numerous English idioms:

Dynamic~order (17): play it straight, play it square, play fair, go in peace, go back to square one, steer clear, smooth move, keep calm and carry on, marching orders, level playing field, right quick, game plan, go figure, transfigure, go pear shaped, a fair shake, a balancing act.

The expressions listed are mostly figurative, often almost entirely nonsensical, and therefore they can’t be understood based on utility or experience. No one actually means it’s going to be a cold day in hell when they use the phrase. They mean the situation is unusual, like coldness in hell. There are plenty of rare situations one could cite metaphorically to indicate something being unlikely, especially if they can draw the metaphor from either reality or the any of the other many realms of human imagination. The reason we choose to repeat the idea of a cold day in hell is not that it’s a uniquely suitable way to get at the idea of scarcity. It’s because we’re amused by the mixture hot~cold.

Frequency of Cultural Versus Linguistic Mixtures

Cultural examples of mixtures seem to outnumber those of popular expressions, probably because an expression can be used over and over and still be thought of as a single expression, while each name or title is counted as unique. The lists show at least eight popular expressions that mix the opposites hot and cold, and at least 53 cultural examples of the mixture that can be collected with little effort. There are 24 or more expressions mixing up with down, some of which are single words (overlay, layover, eavesdropping), and about 50 aesthetic cultural instances of the mixture. Many~few describes 39 or more expressions, with ~44 cultural examples, and so on. One could consider each time a phrase is used in conversation or writing to be independent, in which case mixtures in expressions might outnumber the cultural ones.

The fact that mixtures appear repeatedly in purely aesthetic cultural contexts points to an aesthetic origin for those occurring in linguistic contexts. That “One in a Million” has been used at least 25 times by different artists as the name of a song, explicitly for amusement rather than information, is reason to believe our normal use of the phrase in conversation is also for amusement.

Some of the lists include a section that refers to the number of fictional books, films, songs, albums or other aesthetic phenomena with names that fit the mixtures from Wikipedia disambiguation or “topics referred to by the same term” pages, which serve as a convenient way to get a sense of popularity. Mixtures with large numbers of entries on disambiguation pages have been chosen, at least semi-independently, by equally large numbers of artists or creators as titles, and subsequently enjoyed by audiences, most obviously because people repeatedly find them amusing. Aesthetic patterns in culture backed up by Perplexity Computer AI research are given with a link to the output. These results should be taken cautiously given the well-know limitations of AI, including its tendency to confirm a query and cite sources that contain no information related to the claims being made.

Biological examples from studies or observations are given in a separate (biology) section apart from linguistic and cultural examples. These might include descriptions of courtship rituals, color patterns and the results of psychological or other experiments that are relevant to the mixture/bias in question.

Some mixture lists are followed by paintings, photos, song lyrics, lines of poetry, popular quotes or dream descriptions containing instances of the mixture, which could be counted as additional instances of cultural examples. Links in the headings of the lists lead to visual examples of the mixture, mostly of animals that express it as a sexually selected trait.

Mixture Lists

Heat

Hot~Cold* (12+57=69)

Language (12): a cold day in hell, a snowball's chance in hell, blow hot and cold, run hot and cold, cold hands warm heart, cold sweat, cold fever, feed a cold starve a fever, freezer burn, icy hot, roast snow in a furnace, hot frosty.

Culture (57): Dante's half-frozen devil, the hot and cold game, the cold fire breathing Japanese chicken monster Basan, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost, Red Hot Ice by Frank Kane, Cold Fire by Dean Koontz, Cold Fire by Tamora Pierce, “Cold Fire” by Rush, The Coldfire Trilogy by C. S. Friedman, Frozen Flame series by Paul J. Bennett, the Chinese drama series Burning Ice, Hot Frosty the movie.

Wikipedia Disambiguation (48): 6 books, 8 films, 3 games, 6 albums and 9 songs named “Fire and Ice,” four films with the name Hot Ice, 11 songs named “Hot and Cold” and a racehorse named “Frozen Fire.”

Quotes

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I'll call them back again to comfort me:
Nurse! What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.

— Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (2022)

Thou shalt see the spring which boils, though the water is colder than marble.

— Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion (2018)

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 fire.

— Homer, Odyssey (2010)

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.

—The Bible, The Revelation of Saint John the Divine 3:15–16 (Bartlett 2024)

Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.

— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Bartlett 2022)

The lamp once out
Cool stars enter
The window frame.

— Natsume Soseki

Perplexity

How common are juxtapositions of hot and cold?

Juxtapositions of hot and cold are extremely common across language, psychology, and the arts; they appear so often that “warm–cold” is practically a default contrast pair in modern culture.

Hot~Solid (19+24=43)

Language (19): boilerplate, burn to the ground, burn your bridges, dumpster fire, fire and brimstone, firewall, firing on all cylinders, guns blazing, hot and heavy, hot off the grill, hot shit, hot stuff, like a cat on a hot tin roof, like a cat on hot bricks, scorched earth, strike while the iron is hot, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, third rock from the sun, out of the frying pan into the fire.

Culture (24): flaming dragon’s pearls in Chinese art, mythological flaming swords, the burning bridge Bifröst, Burning Man, "Of Bronze - and Blaze" and "Talk not to me of Summer Trees" by Emily Dickinson, the Irish fairy tale "Fire on the Mountain," the flaming skeleton horse Bakotsu, the comic book character Hot Stuff the Little Devil, Wikipedia lists five films and 10 songs with the name “Hot Stuff.”

Quotes

The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire.

— Proverb

Hard is the herte that loveth nought In May.

– Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose

(Bartlett 2022)

Hot~Static/Slow (7+23=30)

Language (7): a dead heat, ceasefire, hotbed, like death warmed over, slow burn, slowly boiling a frog, three hots and a cot.

Culture (23): the kenning "flame-farewelled" meaning death, Dies the Fire by S. M. Stirling, "How good his Lava Bed" and "'Twas here my summer paused" by Emily Dickinson, “Death and Fire” by Paul Klee, Wikipedia lists 3 films and 15 novels named Dead Heat.

Hot~Order (3+2=5)

Language (3): straight fire, pure fire, spring cleaning.

Culture (2): Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks, Pure Fire by the band Sun.

Hot~Dark/Cool Colors (4+21=25)

Language (4): burn with a low blue flame, burning the midnight oil, the heat of the night, what in blue blazes.

Culture (21): "A shady friend - for Torrid days" and "Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple" by Emily Dickinson, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare, the Irish fairy tale "Black Stairs on Fire," "Black Friar of the Flame" by Isaac Asimov, the “blue heron fire” yokai Aosaginohi, Wikipedia lists four albums and ten songs named either “Heat of the Night” or “In the Heat of the Night.”

Quotes

Water is best. But gold shines like fire blazing in the night, supreme of lordly wealth.

— Pindar, Olympian Odes (Bartlett 2022)

Try to set the night on fire.

—“Light My Fire,” The Doors (Bartlett 2022)

Hot~Silence/Quiet/Low Pitch (0+2=2)

Culture (2): The Year of the Quiet Sun by Wilson Tucker, “Give Me The Splendid, Silent Sun” by Walt Whitman.

Quotes

And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

— The Bible, Kings 19:12

Hot~Down (7+31=38)

Language (7): drop it like it's hot, fire down below, simmer down, under fire, under the sun, deep fried.

Culture (31): the floor is lava game, the fire dance Anastenaria, Gloger's rule, Wikipedia lists four films, two novels, seven albums and 13 songs named “Under the Sun.”

Quotes

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

— The Bible, King James version, Ecclesiastes 1:9

Hot~In (24+13=37)

Language (24): burning a hole in your pocket, burst into flame, caught in the crossfire, come to a boil, come under heat, depths of hell, ears are burning, feeding the fire, fire in the belly, go up in flames, hellhole, holy hell, housewarming, in heat, in the hot seat, in your hot little hand, packing heat, piping hot, pits of hell, to hell in a hand basket, too hot to handle, get into hot water, more than you’ve had hot dinners, can’t take the heat.

Culture (13): the chariot of fire, the flaming Ghost Ship of Northumberland Strait, the Solar barge of Ra, the fire theft motif, fire swallowing, the flaming chalice, the band name Canned Heat, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling, “Spring comes on the World,” “Would you like summer? Taste of ours” and “The Lamp burns sure - within” by Emily Dickinson, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” by Pink Floyd.

Quotes

We carry Death out of the village,
We bring Summer into the village.

— James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1941)

Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us?

—The Gospel According to Saint Luke 24:32 (Bartlett 2022)

This night of no moon
There is no way to meet him.
I rise in longing—
My breast pounds, a leaping flame,
My heart is consumed in fire.

— Ono no Komachi, “Kokinshū” (Bartlett 2022)

Hot~Right (1+0=1)

Language (1): right hot (British).

Hot~Round/Short (12+50=62)

Language (12): a hotspot, a snowball's chance in hell, circle of hell, firing on all cylinders, great balls of fire, heap coals of fire on my head, hell on wheels, hot as balls, hot potato, hothead, hotter than a hooker's doorknob on nickel night, the boiling point.

Culture (50): the name of Odin "Flaming Eye," the fire-wheel of Nezha, the Greek wheel of fire, Hot Wheels, the bird genus fire-eye (Pyriglena), the fire-eyed goby (Yoga pyrops), the fire-eyed diucon (Pyrope pyrope), Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis, the volcanic Ring of Fire, “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash, the blazing eyes of Athena, Wikipedia lists four films, seven characters, two bands, one album and five songs named “Fireball,” and six films or episodes, four books or novels, a band, two albums, three songs, a type of sunflower, a drinking game, an amusement ride and a ring of the Elvenkind of Tolkien named “Ring of Fire.”

Hot~Small (4+3=7)

Language (4): a little fire is quickly trodden out, a little pot is soon hot, hot little number, it got a little heated.

Culture (3): Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, "To my small Hearth His fire came" by Emily Dickinson, "Little Cinders (Senicitas)" by Salvador Dali.

Hot~Few (2+1=3)

Language (2): hell’s half acre, one swallow does not make a spring.

Culture (1): “The One who could repeat the Summer day” by Emily Dickinson.

Hot~Familiar (1+0=1)

Language (1): an old flame.

Hot~Back (2+0=2)

Language (2): on the back burner, backfire.

Hot~End (2+0=2)

Language (1): burn the candle at both ends.

Fluidity

Fluid~Cold (11+11=22)

Language (11): in cold blood, a cold spell, pour cold water on, wind chill, cold soup, the water cooler effect, freeze your blood, keep your breath to cool your porridge, piss on ice, blow your cool, a cold drink.

Culture (12): the kenning “icicle of blood” meaning sword, “As if some little Arctic flower” and “Some, too fragile for winter winds” by Emily Dickinson, the Irish fairy tale “The Snow, the Crow, and the Blood,” The Winds of Winter by George R. R. Martin, Wikipedia lists one band, four songs and a comic book character named “Cold Blood,” the brand name Frigidaire.

Quotes

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.

—The Bible, Genesis (Coogan et al. 2018)

A cold rain starting
And no hat - 
So?

—Matsuo Basho, "A cold rain starting"

As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.

— Ezra Pound, "Alba"

Fluid~Solid* (55+28=83)

Language (55): blood and iron, a diamond in the sky, every cloud has a silver lining, a melting pot, castles in the air, wet your beak, a watched pot never boils, a well-oiled machine, hard liquor, a stiff drink, a stiff breeze, a hard rain, cast stones against the winds, not my cup of tea, like getting blood from a stone, blood diamond, it makes my blood curdle, a smoking gun, a tempest in a teapot, sweating bullets, smoke and mirrors, raining pitchforks, ride hard and put away wet, soaked to the bone, bleed me dry, gravy train, the same fire that melts the butter hardens the egg, bread and butter, a greasy spoon, god's bloody nails (divine/fluid~solid), spill out into the streets (fluid/out~in/solid), up shit creek, before the ink was dry, from soup to nuts, like a cow peeing on a flat rock, piss on your chips, happy as a clam in butter sauce, milking me dry, scrape the poison from the bones, the land of milk and honey, cloud-cuckoo land, blowhard, milkbone, milk toast, land a blow, able to fog a mirror, the Latin phrase “gutta cavat lapidem” (a drop of water hollows out stone).

Culture (28): decorative water fountains, mermaids tears (sea glass), gargoyles, the wind gem of Kukulkan, the smoking mirror of Tezcatlipoca, Hard Rain (Bob Dylan album), the kenning "blood ember" meaning an axe, ceromancy, the ring Draupnir (which drips more rings), the Bleeding Lance (which drips blood from its point), kissing the Blarney Stone, rain chains, lava lamps, Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell, Mountains Oceans and Giants by Alfred Döblin, Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, "A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree," "How many Flowers fail in Wood," "Before the ice is in the pools," "The Mountains stood in Haze" and "How the old Mountains drip with Sunset" by Emily Dickinson, "To the Thawing Wind" by Robert Frost, the folktale "Stones soup," “Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day” by Anne Brontë, anointment of Adam’s skull by the blood of Christ, Jacob’s anointing of the pillar.

Quotes

Winter seclusion -
Listening, that evening,
To the rain in the mountain.

— Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1828

Fluid~Static/Slow (14+14=28)

Language (14): cry yourself to sleep, still waters run deep (fluid/dynamic~static/down), dead in the water, the dead spit of, only dead fish go with the flow, a watery grave, the kiss of death, dead air, stop the bleeding, stay afloat, lazy river, god rest his soul, slow you blow, die for want of lobster sauce, stay hydrated.

Culture (14): flowers, decorative floral patterns, the kenning "dead-slave" meaning blood, water burials, feeding wine to the dead in Rome, the Sea of Tranquillity, the Dead Sea, Deadpool, "Go slow, my soul, to feed thyself," "Water makes many Beds,""Though the great Waters sleep" and "How slow the Wind" by Emily Dickinson, "Spirits of the Dead" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Quotes

Aye, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for as the Turks say, ‘water sleeps, and the enemy is sleepless.’

— Bram Stoker, Dracula (2023)

No one knew, no one could imagine; no one—not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk—had the slightest clew by which to unravel the mystery; so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man replaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and cocking up his right eye towards the phenomenon, puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly—then waddled back, grunted, paused, and finally—puffed again.

— Edgar Allan Poe, The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (2024)

Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.

— The Bible, Job 38:11 (Bartlett 2022)

I stood beside a lake that appeared to be completely still. A storm came up abruptly and high waves arose, so that my whole face was splashed.

— Dream of a girl with ereuthophobia, see Campbell (2008)

Fluid~Order (6+2=8)

Language (6): clear the air, rinse and repeat, lick into shape, right as rain, spirit of the law, air math.

Culture (2): a straight flush, The band Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Quotes

The spirits of just men made perfect.

— The Bible, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews 12:23

O wynd, o wynd, the weder gynneth clere.

— Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (Bartlett 2022)

Fluid~Dark/Cool Colors (9+14=23)

Language (8): burning the midnight oil (hot/fluid~dark), blue wave, blue blood, turn the air blue, dark cloud on the horizon, nothing but blue skies ahead, blue sky thinking, out of the clear blue sky (cool color/order~out).

Culture (14): the Zen ensō circle, calligraphy, "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix, "Purple Rain" by Prince, "Lavender Haze" by Taylor Swift, The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle, the Irish fairy tale "The Black Cloud," The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang, "Upon a Lilac Sea" by Emily Dickinson, "Dark Night of the Soul" by John of the Cross, "Blue Stream" by Hwong Jini, the Smoke Monster in the series Lost, the yokai Enenra who is made of smoke and darkness, the wine dark sea (epithet in Homer).

Quotes

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

—Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"

The spring that brims and ripples oh I know in dark of night.

— Saint John of the Cross, Song of the Soul Whose Pleasure Is in Knowing God by Faith (Bartlett 2022)

Fluid~Silence/Quiet/Low Pitch (2+2=4)

Language (2): blood and thunder, piss and moan.

Culture (2): Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, "She went as quiet as the Dew" by Emily Dickinson.

Fluid~Down (19+9=27)

Language (19): water under the bridge, teardrop, blow me down, trickle down, watered down, what it boils down to, under your breath, breathing down my neck, meltdown, plant a flag, drain the swamp, under the weather, undercurrent, downstream, sink or swim, under a cloud of suspicion, splashdown, under the influence.

Culture (9): libations, the tears of Ra, the shower of gold with which Zeus impregnates Danae, waterfalls, crying, Watership Down by Richard Adams, "I think that the Root of the Wind is Water" by Emily Dickinson, the Scottish fairy tale "The Daughter Of King Under-Waves," The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë.

Fluid~In (57+13=70)

Language (57): it comes in waves, into thin air, catch my drift, catch wind of, wind bag, sucking wind, get smoked, gathering clouds, a genie in a bottle, land you in hot water, any port in a storm, it's in my blood, blood and treasure, bleeding heart liberal, make a hole in the water, sapsucker, bloodthirsty, bloodsucker, honey trap, buttercup, blood and guts, spill your guts, wine and dine, save your breath, save your soul, a pot to piss in, save it for a rainy day, in the soup, my cup of tea, suck some brew, heart and soul, take a rain check, hunger is the best sauce, my cup runneth over (fluid-dynamic-up~in), mouth breather, in the next breath, inflow, in a stew, influential, get creamed, have a spat, holy water, holy spirit, holy ghost, holy smokes, blow the coals, the ghost in the machine, spellbound, inspire, come on in the water’s fine, come home by Weeping Cross, blood is worth bottling (Australian), frothing at the mouth, blow my cover, put that in your pipe and smoke it, take a licking, home and hosed, got milk? (humorous).

Culture (13): the Grimm's fairy tale "The Spirit in the Bottle," drinking the blood of Christ, the lotus-eaters, the bag of winds given to Odysseus, house-haunting ghosts, blood oaths, "Have you got a Brook in your little heart," "How the Waters closed above Him," "The Sea said 'Come' to the Brook," "There came a Wind like a Bugle" and "I saw the wind within her" by Emily Dickinson, kissing, sex.

Fluid~Right (1+0=1)

Language (1): right as rain.

Fluid~Round/Short (20+5=25)

Language (20): honeymoon, just spitballing, here's mud in your eye, here's spit in your eye, a full head of steam, head in the clouds, airhead, fountainhead, dip your toe in the water, grease the wheels, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, a spot of tea, cry on your shoulder, the rain beats the leopard's skin but it does not wash out the spots (African proverb), when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, eye of the wind, air ball, slimeball, scuzball.

Culture (5): the wind-wheel of Nezha, the Zen ensō circle, the Greek River Okeanos, bubble baths, "The Moon upon her fluent Route" by Emily Dickinson.

Fluid~Few (2+5=7)

Language (2): breathless, a drop in the bucket.

Culture (5): "How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights," "Least Rivers - docile to some sea," "I taste a liquor never brewed" and "The duties of the Wind are few" by Emily Dickinson, The Anointed One.

Fluid~small (4): don't sweat the small stuff, in small doses, a drop in the ocean, sparrows tears (Japanese), (4): "A little overflowing word," "Adrift! A little boat adrift!," "The pungent atom in the Air" and "It's such a little thing to weep" by Emily Dickinson.

Soun ys noght but eyr ybroken, And every speche that ys spoken, Lowd or pryvee, foul or fair, In his substaunce ys but air.

— Chaucer, The House of Fame (Bartlett 2022)

Fluid~Familiar (1+1=2)

Language (1): you cannot put new wine in old bottles.

Culture (1): Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

Fluid~Good (3+0=3)

Language (3): right as rain, well-oiled machine, it's an ill wind that blows no good.

Fluid~Back (4+0=4)

Language (4): wet behind the ears, backwater, like water off a duck’s back, wet behind the ears.

Dynamism and Speed

Dynamic~Cold (5+3=8)

Language (5): play it cool, the trail ran cold, pure as the driven snow, cold brew, cool your jets.

Culture (3): Frosty the Snowman, the band name Coldplay, the movie Cool Runnings.

Quotes

Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast this wintres wedres overshake.

— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls (2022)

Dynamic~Solid (41+50=91)

Language (42): move mountains, drive a hard bargain, turn on a dime, drive me nuts, shaky ground, hit the ground running, throw me a bone, bone shaking, start shit, turn to shit, pack your shit and go, go to the ends of the earth, live off the land, party hard, play hard ball, play hard to get, go hard, go hard or go home, a hard knock life, throw a wrench into the works, off to a rocky start, letting go is hard, a hard and fast rule, landslide, meat wave, leave no stone unturned, shit rolls downhill, a rolling stone gathers no moss, it sent a shiver down my spine, if the tables were turned, hit the ground running, dry run, carry coals to Newcastle, hard carry, in the land of the living, playground, cast the first stone, stir up shit, curb-crawler, shiver me timbers, it's not the meat it's the motion, kick rocks, brass monkeys (British), meat puppet.

Culture (50): Golems, Baetylus (stones endowed with life), the flying mortar and pestle of Baba Yaga, the Japanese bone whale Bake-kujira, Mount Rushmore, the tree of life in the midst of the Garden of Eden, the tree of life Égig érő fa, the tree of life Életfa, the self-playing chessboard of Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, "Like a Rolling Stone" (Bob Dylan song), the band name Stone Temple Pilots, The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein, Sword of Freyr (which fights by itself), witch's brooms, Pinocchio, Marionettes, the living earth Xirang in Chinese myth, rocks and trees dancing to the lyre of Orpheus, action figures, Transformers, pinball, bowling, baseball, cricket, billiards, air hockey, wind-up toys, Slinkys, Matchbox cars, The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison, Bone Dance by Emma Bull, Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, a “Alter! When the Hills do,” “It sounded as if the Streets were running” and “An altered look about the hills” by Emily Dickinson, “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, the walking talking cross in the Gospel of Peter, Poseidon the Earth‑Shaker.

Dynamic~Static/Slow* (40+30=70)

Language (40): kill switch, the quick and the dead, ride or die, going steady, fast asleep, go to sleep, suspended animation, killed in action, jet lag, hurry up and wait, it's a waiting game, the calm before the storm, unmoved mover, death march, dead man walking, wake the dead, spinning in the grave, playing dead, dancing on someone's grave, go in for the kill, death spiral, slow your roll, still life, still alive, a matter of life and death, live free or die, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting something, the king is dead long live the king, ready steady go, slow and steady wins the race, steady as she goes, going nowhere fast, asleep at the wheel, change is the only constant, steadfast, bedswerver, live by the sword die by the sword, live dog is better than a dead lion, wake up and die right, festina lente (make haste slowly).

Culture (30): zombies, vampires, ghosts, cephalophores, draugr, haugbui, aptrgangr, dancing with the dead, the Flying Dutchman, Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, Hindu vetala that inhabit the reanimated dead, The Walking Dead series, the cauldron Pair Dadeni that revives the dead, dance, yoga, mimes, stop motion animation, Live and Let Die (Bond Film), The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells, “A Death blow is a Life blow to Some,” “The Stimulus, beyond the Grave,” “She died at play,” “We do not play on Graves” and “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, still life paintings, “Static-Dynamic Gradation” by Paul Klee, the dying and rising god motif (Inanna/Ishtar, Baal, Dumuzi, Osiris, Dionysus, Odin, Jesus), shapeshifting, Meat Puppets (Band).

Quotes

Evil deeds do not prosper; the slow man catches up with the swift.

— Homer, Odyssey, VIII, l. 329

I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge, and finally to stand still because I had lost my breath.

— Dream of “a stutterer,” see Campbell (2008)

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep.

— Montaigne, Essays (Bartlett 2022)

For if he like a madman lived, At least he like a wise one died.

— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (Bartlett 2022)

Perplexity

Are dynamism and stasis and their conceptual relatives juxtaposed in aesthetic material such as poetry and myth?

Yes. A huge amount of poetry and myth is structured around tensions between movement and stillness, with many related pairs (life/death, time/eternity, flux/form) functioning as aesthetic juxtapositions rather than abstract theses.

Dynamic~Order (18+3=21)

Language (18): play it straight, play it square, play fair, go in peace, go back to square one, steer clear, smooth move, keep calm and carry on, marching orders, level playing field, right quick, game plan, go figure, transfigure, go pear shaped, a fair shake, a balancing act, going according to plan.

Culture (3): Rubik's Cube, The Shapeshifter by Ali Sparkes, The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn.

Dynamic~Dark/Cool Colors (8+7=15)

Language (8): jet black, blue streak, stroke of midnight, tossing and turning all night, cruisin' for a bruisin, that got dark fast, flying blind, nightcrawler.

Culture (7): Voyager in Night by C. J. Cherryh, The Nightrunner by Lynn Flewelling, Shadowplay and Shadowmarch by Tad Williams, "Like Men and Women Shadows walk" and "The last Night that She lived" by Emily Dickinson, the Irish fairy tale "The Midnight Ride."

Quotes

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

—Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (Bartlett 2022)

Dynamic~Down (23+18=41)

Language (23): the rundown, a shakedown, sinking fast, swing low, running low, how low can you go, turned down, downplay, play it down, going down, going under, never live it down, lowlife, a race to the bottom, winding down, mosey on down, one fell swoop, sweep it under the rug, shake a leg, thrown under the bus, wipe the floor with, bottom dweller, undergo, in free fall.

Culture (18): skydiving, high diving, sledding, downhill skiing, bungee jumping, drop towers, slam dunks, spiking volleyballs, spiking footballs, Tetris, snow angels, stadium sports, foot tapping, tap dancing, breakdancing, dancing in animals generally, "I sometimes drop it, for a Quick," "The Love a Life can show Below" by Emily Dickinson.

Dynamic~In (63+12=75)

Language (62): fools rush in, swoop in, motormouth, run your mouth, eat and run, feeding frenzy, take it in stride, going all in, in play, play right into, play it by ear, hyper-focused, push the envelope, turn in, in turn, in a spin, go with your gut, what goes around comes around, a go-getter, get the go ahead, rock the boat, butterflies in the stomach, pull a fast one, catch on fast, eaten alive, hold on for dear life, a lifesaver, in another life, come to life, come alive, hold sway, eating out of my hand, in a tizzy, let's get started, from the get-go, in the driver's seat, drive home the point, in the running, throw in the towel, ransacked, action-packed, come into play, just waltz in here, fast food, don't rush into anything, come thick and fast, run for cover, in the long run, bring to life, bring into play, interact, involve, go hand in hand, in two shakes, get-rich-quick, grab and go, take your turn, take a turn, in a brace of shakes, throw a tub to the whale, poetry in motion, hold with the hare and run with the hounds, go bag, living rent free in the mind of (humerous).

Culture (12): handshakes, flying chariots, the chicken-legged hut of Baba Yaga, snow globes, kaleidoscopes, fencing, pat-a-cake, couple dancing, sex, the Grimm's fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood,” The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, “Who goes to dine must take his Feast” by Emily Dickinson, the Scandinavian fairy tale “The Flying Trunk.”

Dynamic~Right (1+0=1)

Language (1): make all the right moves.

Dynamic~Round/Short (25+12=37)

Language (25): turn a blind eye, head-spinning, heads will roll, run head on, a head start, run head first, get the runaround, running around in circles, run circles around, the circle of life, makes the world go round, a rolling stone gathers no moss, a leopard cannot change its spots, a turning point, get the ball rolling, every time I turn around, jerking around, that's the way the ball bounces, speedhead, play ball, it's a coin toss, go off your dot, turn on a dime, a roving eye, swings and roundabouts (UK).

Culture (14): the name of Odin “Shifty Eyed,” yo-yo's, juggling, hula hoops, spinning tops, carousels, Ferris wheels, roulette, Magic 8-Balls, bobbleheads, the Irish fairy tale “Shaking-Head,” “Runaround” by Isaac Asimov, Dhammacakkappavattana or “Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dhamma,” “Contained in this short Life” by Emily Dickinson.

Quotes

The ever-whirling wheel Of Change; the which all mortal things doth sway.

— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Bartlett 2022)

Dynamic~Small (2+0=2)

Language (2): live a little, it's the little things in life.

Dynamic~Few (8+3=11)

Language (8): we got a live one here (humorous), at one go, you only live once, for once in your life, running on empty, one horse race, less haste more speed, boldly go where no man has gone before.

Culture (3): Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, "How fleet - how indiscreet an one" and "I cautious, scanned my little life" by Emily Dickinson.

Quotes

No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.

— Matsuo Bashō

Dynamic~Good (10+0=10)

Language (10): good speed, good to go, a good go, good going, live well, alive and well, let the good times roll, got a good thing going, no good dead goes unpunished, the good life.

Dynamic~Back (7+0=7)

Language (7): running behind, walk it back, back seat driver, back in the game, go behind my back, go back on your word, fastback (car style).

Dynamic~End (3+0=3)

Language (3): end run, endgame, at the living end.

Disorder

Disorder~Cold (7+2=9)

Language (7): break the ice, cold war, fighting a cold, frozen conflict, crack open a cold one, a bad cold, stone cold crazy (disorder~cold/solid).

Culture (2): Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, throwing snow.

Disorder~Solid (27+13=40)

Language (27): break new ground, break ground, groundbreaking, earth-shattering, a hard nut to crack, bust a nut, shell shock, fight tooth and nail, bad iron, meat grinder, breaking up is hard to do, a bone of contention, when the shit hits the fan, crazy shit, fender bender, that's the way the cookie crumbles, bone-crunching, I'll break every bone in your body, just busting your chops, a turf war, a bombshell, as the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined, constant dropping wears away a stone, asphalt jungle, break the log jam,

Culture (13): kintsugi, the kenning "breaker of trees" meaning the wind, Piñatas, dish breaking in Germany, instrument destruction in concerts, christening with wine bottles, spoon bending, breaking piggy banks, breaking bread, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Tale of the Ragged Mountains by Edgar Allan Poe, bone chewing in dogs, distinct faces in the soldiers of the Terracotta Army.

Quotes

A stone had broken my windshield. I was now open to the storm and rain. Tears came to my eyes. Could I ever reach my destination in this car?

— Dream of a woman who lost her virginity, Campbell (2008).

The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.

— Michelangelo, Sonnet (Bartlett 2022)

Disorder~Static (13+2=15)

Language (13): death spiral, a disaster waiting to happen, no rest for the wicked, get up on the wrong side of the bed, strange bedfellows, couldn't lie straight in bed (humorous), sleeping rough, dead broke, die of a broken heart, the calm before the storm, after a storm comes a calm, break the deadlock,

Culture (2): dying for sins, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” by Francisco Goya.

Disorder~Order* (23+10=33)

Language (23): a right mess (British). mix and match, bad form, a diamond in the rough (disorder~solid/order), break even, break the rules, rules were made to be broken, a fair crack, blockbuster, method to the madness, flat broke, deterministic chaos, damage control, perfect strangers, clean break, a chip off the old block, just plain wrong, clearly confused, clear as mud, civil war, control freak.

Culture (10): music, dance, games, sports, jigsaw puzzles, Conway's Game of Life, kaleidoscopes, Rubik's Cubes, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Patterns of Chaos by Colin Kapp.

Quotes

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

— Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”

Disorder~Dark/Cool Colors (4+11=15)

Language (4): wild blue yonder, black don't crack, night terrors, broyer du noir: “crush some dark” in French,

Culture (11): the archetypal story opening "it was a dark and stormy night," Halloween, "A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds," "Where Ships of Purple - gently toss," "A slash of Blue" and "Wild Nights - Wild Nights!" by Emily Dickinson, "Fragmentary Blue" by Robert Frost, Jacob wrestling with a man (or angel) all night in Genesis, telling scary stories at night, the orderly or chaotic nighttime yōkai parade Hyakki Yagyō, the “black cooked one” Crom Dubh in Irish myth.

Quotes

Wild nights - Wild nights! [disorder~dark, disorder~dark]
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be [disorder~dark]
Our luxury!
Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!

—Emily Dickinson, "Wild nights - Wild nights!"

I came into a place void of all light, which bellows like the sea in tempest, when it is combated by warring winds.

— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Bartlett 2022)

Disorder~Silence/Quiet/Low Pitch (3+0=3)

Language (3): break the silence, drums of war, miss a beat.

Disorder~Down (18+29=47)

Language (19): crackdown, have a breakdown, break it down, break down and cry, deep trouble, let the chips fall where they may, break the fall, downward spiral, drop kick, drop a bombshell, down and dirty, down in the dumps, scraping the bottom of the barrel, lay waste to, come crashing down, the fish rots from the head down, crack under pressure, the root of all evil, laid to waste.

Culture (29): dancing, breakdancing, the moonwalk, wrestling, falling down as a joke, tackling in American football, stadium sports, by Emily Dickinson YoYos, skateboard tricks, olympic diving, 52 card pickup, Tetris, Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, mud wrestling, belly flops, head-banging, monster trucks running over cars, curtsey, Twister, jumping in puddles, white water rafting, coin tossing, dice rolling, confetti, scattering flower petals at weddings, Humpty Dumpty's great fall, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, "How many times these low feet staggered" by Emily Dickinson, "The Valley of Unrest" and A Descent into the Maelström by Edgar Allan Poe.

Disorder~In (36+11=47)

Language (36): a mixed bag, get wasted, get wrecked, get crazy, coming around the bend, rotten to the core, cracker-barrel, crazy drawer, luny bin, foul mouth, dirty mouth, dirtbag, belly flop, bust a gut, take a tumble, burst in, take a spill, in the mix, in the wild, smash and grab, split a gut, bunker buster, getting sloppy, junk in the trunk, break in (interrupt), sowing chaos, trick or treat, junkfood, gatecrasher, feeding frenzy, mad as a hatter, take a walk on the wild side, break my brain, in fighting, a holy terror, mistake,

Culture (11): mazes, kaleidoscopes, kintsugi, witch's cauldrons, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, couple dance, sex, "A poor - torn heart - a tattered heart -" by Emily Dickinson, Random House (Publishing), Namahage.

Quotes

For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.

—The Bible, Genesis 8:21

Disorder~Round/Short (27+10=37)

Language (27): burst your bubble, eye-popping, keep your eyes peeled, green-eyed monster, flipped it on its head, knock the cover off the ball, a spot of bother, a spot of trouble, the breaking point, leave no stone unturned, cherry bomb, a bad apple, upset the apple cart, mess around, that's the way the cookie crumbles, throw you a curveball, screwball, kick the tires, quit busting my balls, don't get your balls in a twist, bash around, rough around the edges, around the bend, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, the wheels fell off, break a butterfly upon a wheel, a broken record, a moonflaw, vicious circle

Culture (10): The kenning "breaker of rings" meaning a king, the name of Odin "Wavering Eye," the randomly spinning Rota Fortunae, Wheel of Fortune, the Gorgoneion, pinball, Picasso paintings, plasma balls, Sumo wrestling, the apple of discord.

Disorder~Small (1+2=3)

Language (1): a little rough around the edges,

Culture (2): A little Madness in the Spring by Emily Dickinson, the little apocalypse.

Disorder~Few (8+1=9)

Language (8): a wild one, one bad apple spoils the bunch, nothing but trouble, not half bad, half the battle, at first go, trouble shared is trouble halved, one hell of a mess, half crazy, unibomber,

Culture (1): Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Disorder~Good (2+0=2)

Language (3): damaged goods, a ragged colt may make a good horse, crazy good.

Disorder~Back (4+0=4)

Language (2): the straw that breaks the camel's back, back breaking work, back the wrong horse, rear its ugly head.

Disorder~End (2+0=2)

Language (2): the war to end all wars, loose ends.

Brightness and Warm Colors

Bright/Warm Colors~Cold (2+4=6)

Language (2): in the cold light of day, white as snow.

Culture (4): Snow White, snowmen, Christmas lights, Gloger's rule.

Bright/Warm Colors~Solid (5+28=33)

Language (5): a shiny object, a red cent, a hard day, pearly whites, star studded.

Culture (28): gold, alchemy (chrysopoeia), trophies, sports medals, military decorations, pearls, crowns, scepters, jewels, jewelry, gold teeth, coloring fingernails and toenails, stained glass windows, gilded domes, Yellow Brick Road, A Hard Day's Night (The Beatles album), the kenning “heaven's jewel” meaning the sun, The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer, Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, The Sunrise Lands by S. M. Stirling, A Hard Day's Night (Beatles album), “Frequently the woods are pink,” “This - is the land - the Sunset washes” and “The Road was lit with Moon and star” by Emily Dickinson, “A Star In A Stone Boat” by Robert Frost, the Scottish fairy tale “Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree,” Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser, Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima.

Quotes

The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick.

— Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Bartlett 2022)

Then higher on the glistering Sun I gaz'd
 Whose beams was shaded by the leavie Tree,
 The more I look'd, the more I grew amaz'd
 And softly said, what glory's like to thee?
 Soul of this world, this Universes Eye,
 No wonder, some made thee a Deity:
 Had I not better known, (alas) the same had I

—Anne Bradstreet, "Upon a Fit of Sickness, Anno. 1632."

How the old Mountains drip with Sunset
How the Hemlocks burn—
How the Dun Brake is draped in Cinder
By the Wizard Sun—

—Emily Dickinson, excerpt from “How the old Mountains drip with Sunset”

Bright/Warm Colors~Static/Slow (5+12=15)

Language (5): carpe diem, better dead than red, kill the goose that lays the golden egg, solstice, a bed of roses.

Culture (12): Day of the Dead, the Death Star, “Waiting for the Sun” (The Doors album), Die Another Day (Bond film), Slow Lightning by Jack McDevitt, “A Toad, can die of Light,” “The Day came slow - till Five o'clock,” “The Sunset stopped on Cottages,” “This slow Day moved along” and “Midsummer, was it, when They died” by Emily Dickinson, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini, “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” by John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.

Quotes

Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

— The Bible, Joshua 10:12

And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday.

— The Bible, The Book of Job 11:17 (Bartlett 2022)

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis [Eternal rest give them, O Lord: and let perpetual light shine upon them]. Mass for the Dead

— The Roman Missal, Mass for the Dead (Bartlett 2022)

Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin’ Whiskey and Rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die This’ll be the day that I die

—Don McLean, “American Pie” (Bartlett 2022)

Bright/Warm Colors~Order (1+5=6)

Language (1): right and rosy.

Culture (5): This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, "The pattern of the sun" and "We shall find the Cube of the Rainbow" by Emily Dickinson, "How Clear She Shines" by Emily Brontë, the Golden Rule.

Quotes

The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

— The Bible, Proverbs 4:18

Bright/Warm Colors~Dark/Cool Colors* (8+48=56)

Language (8): a blue streak, it's like night and day, day or night, dark days, morning noon and night, once in a blue moon, a dim bulb, as clear as black and white, a black day.

Culture (48): the Yin Yang symbol, soccer balls, dominoes, checker boards, piano keys, dice, glow in the dark objects, motley jester attire, mood lighting, makeup, flags, playing cards, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, Superman, Green Lantern, Smurfs, Mickey Mouse, nun's habits, priest costumes, Christmas colors, Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Moonlit Night by Salvador Dali, the band name Green Day, the Grimm's fairy tale "The Blue Light," As the Green Star Rises by Lin Carter, Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny, The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett, Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson, Night of Light by Philip Jose Farmer, Night Lamp by Jack Vance, The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt, Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant, "As plan for Noon and plan for Night," "Good Morning - Midnight," "Sunset at Night - is natural," "To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights," "The first Day's Night had come," "'Tis my first night beneath the Sun" and "A Night - there lay the Days between" by Emily Dickinson, the German fairy tale “The White and the Black Bride,” “Evening Star” by Edgar Allan Poe, “Black Cradle of Bright Life” by Vangel Naumovski, the yokai Aosaginohi which glows blue at night and breathes golden glowing dust, red and blue masks in Namahage, the Sons of Light versus the Sons of Darkness in the Dead Sea Scrolls, rainbow coloration in animals, the contrast effect, alternatingly bright and dark stripes, ornamental ocelli in animal coloration generally, the green light in The Great Gatsby.

Quotes

Anaxagoras, it will be remembered, maintained that snow is black, and this I have since found to be the case.

—Edgar Allan Poe, Loss of Breath (2024)

Our days on the earth are as a shadow.

— The Bible, The First Book of the Chronicles 29:15 (Bartlett 2022)

He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.

— The Bible, The Book of Job 12:22 (Bartlett 2022)

Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness, and there God shines.

— Meister Eckhart, Sermon 181 (Bartlett 2022)

Lead me from the unreal to the real! Lead me from darkness to light! Lead me from death to immortality!

—Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.3.28 (Bartlett 2022)

I see a red door and I want it painted black No colors anymore, I want them to turn black I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.

—“Paint It Black,” The Rolling Stones (Bartlett 2022)

Roses red and violets blue, And all the sweetest flowers, that in the forest grew.

— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Bartlett 2022)

Bright/Warm Colors~Silence/Quiet/Low Pitch (1+1=2)

Language (1): silence is golden.

Culture (1): "It was a quiet seeming Day" by Emily Dickinson.

Bright/Warm Colors~Down (3+7=10)

Language (3): sundowner, go to bed with the sun, under false colors.

Culture (7): red carpets, the Yellow Brick Road, “Yellow Submarine” (The Beatles), buried treasure, “The Sun kept setting - setting - still,” “Under the Light, yet under,” “Whole Gulfs - of Red, and Fleets - of Red” and “The Sun kept stooping - stooping - low!” by Emily Dickinson.

Bright/Warm Colors~In (24+18=42)

Language (24): take a shine to, lightning in a bottle, in living color, have a nice day, a day in the sun, having a day, have our day, yellow-bellied, bleeding heart, light up the room, catch some rays, caught red handed, in broad daylight, as sure as the sun comes up, come rain or shine, come to light, save the day, a guided cage, taco Tuesday, in the coming days, enlightenment, in the spotlight, color inside the lines, in a bad light, hold a candle to.

Culture (18): the light theft motif, the kenning "sun of the houses" meaning fire, Jack-o'-lanterns, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, golden chariots, wrapped presents, Star Gate by Andre Norton, The Great God Pan & The Inmost Light by Arthur Machen, Here Comes the Sun by Tom Holt, The Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, "Glowing is her Bonnet," "Dear March - Come in," "There came a Day at Summer's full" and "Bring me the sunset in a cup" by Emily Dickinson, “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, painting doorposts and lintels with blood at passover, the coat of many colors.

Quotes

They stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colors.

—The Bible, Genesis 37:23

Bright/Warm Colors~Right (0+2=2)

Culture (2): “Red Right Hand” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, the red right hand of God in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Bright/Warm Colors~Round/Short (18+24=42)

Language (18): the twinkle of an eye, a sparkle in your eye, in the flash of an eye, starry-eyed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, take the red eye, wait until you see the whites of their eyes, have the sun in your eyes (to be drunk), a bright spot, bright as a button, a flashpoint, a thousand points of light, lightning round, moonbeam, moonshine, a red cent, headlight, hump day.

Culture (24): the Eye of Providence, Þjazi's eyes, disco balls, halos, crowns, crystal balls, GoldenEye (Bond film), The name of Odin "Flashing Eye," the circle of stars, Christmas tree ornaments, Easter eggs, happy faces, Pac-Man, Santa Claus, Rudolph's nose, balloons, the golden apples of the Hesperides, the Greek fairy tale "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs," the English fairy tale "The Golden Ball," "The Golden Ball" by Agatha Christie, the Scandinavian fairy tale "Maiden Bright-eye," the Slavic fairy tale "The Nine Peahens and the Golden Apples," the flag of Bangladesh, "Ring Around the Sun" by Isaac Asimov.

Her angel’s face
As the great eye of heaven shined bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.

— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Bartlett 2022)

Bright/Warm Colors~Small (1+6=7)

Language (1): a little white lie.

Culture (6): The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, "The Day grew small, surrounded tight" by Emily Dickinson, the Irish fairy tale "Little Red Bird," "Little Red Riding Hood," the Scottish fairy tale "Little Daylight," Little Sunbeam by Eleanora H. Stooke.

Bright/Warm Colors~Few (6+3=9)

Language (6): lackluster, one of these days, one day, from day one, colorless, 0-day.

Culture (3): "It bloomed and dropt, a Single Noon," "Too few the mornings be" and "One Day is there of the Series" by Emily Dickinson.

Rome was not built in one day.

— John Heywood (Bartlett 2022)

Bright/Warm Colors~Familiar (3+1=4)

Language (3): days of old, the good old days, in the old days.

Culture (1): Old Yeller.

Bright/Warm Colors~Good (4+0=4)

Language (5): good morning, good as gold, good day, have a good day, the good old days.

Bright/Warm Colors~Back (1+0=1)

Language (1): back in the day.

Bright/Warm Colors~After (3+0=3)

Language (3): afternoon, late in the day, a day late and a dollar short.

Loudness and High Pitch

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Cold (1+1=2)

Language (1): cold snap.

Culture (1) “The fascinating chill that music leaves” by Emily Dickinson.

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Solid (2+8=10)

Language (2): barking up the wrong tree, musical chairs, all steak and no sizzle,

Culture (8): the Singing Sword of Conaire Mór, the prow of the Argo, talking trees, Triton' conch shell, David's self-playing harp, Binnorie's singing harp, the German fairy tale "The Singing Bone," the bird name Stonechat, the “night-crying stone” Yonaki ishi.

Quotes

If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

— The Bible, The Gospel According to Saint Luke 19:40 (Bartlett 2022)

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Static/Slow (12+8=20)

Language (13): stop the music, buzzkill, whistling past the graveyard, whistle stop tour, die laughing, laugh myself to death, croak, music soothes the savage beast, loud enough to wake the dead, death rattle, the tune the old cow died of, a screeching halt.

Culture (8): “Dying at my music!” “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died,” “I sing to use the Waiting,” “How still the Bells in Steeples stand,” “When Bells stop ringing - Church - begins,” “Where bells no more affright the morn” and “The murmuring of Bees, has ceased" by Emily Dickinson, Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings by Tom Shippey.

Quotes

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - [high pitch~static]
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air - [fluid~static]
Between the Heaves of Storm -
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm [fluid~solid]
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz- [disorder/high pitch~blue]
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -

—Emily Dickinson, "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died"

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Order (6+2=8)

Language(6): loud and clear, clean as a whistle, clear as a bell, squeaky clean, man plans and God laughs, perfect pitch,

Culture (2): The church service Evensong, The Song Remains the Same (Led Zeppelin album).

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Dark/Cold Colors (4+3=7)

Language (5): whistling in the dark, cry-baby the blues, sing the blues, effing and blinding (British), dark undertones.

Culture (3): "Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles" by Emily Dickinson, "The Voice in the Dark" by Agatha Christie, the Orson Welles film “Chimes at Midnight.”

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Silence/Quiet/Low Pitch* (12+3=15)

Language (9): say the quiet part out loud, with a bang or a whimper, you could hear a pin drop, fuddy-duddy, bang the drum, ding dong, King Kong, ping pong, sing song, heebie-jeebies, tickety boo (British), the silence is deafening.

Culture (3): Simon & Garfunkel's “Sound of Silence,” music, language.

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Down (2+0=2)

Language (1): tone it down, undertones.

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~In (11+3=14)

Language (11): a loud mouth, music to my ears, catch some z's, sound bite, catch a buzz, a barrel of laughs, chatterbox, belly laugh, elevator music, hearsay, tong kosong nyaring bunyinya: the empty can sounds the loudest (Indonesian),

Culture (3): The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey, The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by American writer Harlan Ellison, "The Bird her punctual music brings" by Emily Dickinson.

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Round (5+3=8)

Language (5): music of the spheres, cry-baby, cry for the moon, hip hip hooray, a round of applause,

Culture (3): clown noses, baby rattles, the Slavic fairy tale "Laughing Eye and Weeping Eye."

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Few (3+1=4)

Language (3): an empty vessel makes the most noise, nothing to sneeze at, the sound of one hand clapping,

Culture (1): "A Never Naught Song" by Robert Frost.

Sound/Loud/High Pitch~Small (1+0=1)

Language (1): lie low and sing small, the world's smallest violin.

Upwardness

Up~Cold (2+0=2)

Language (2): freeze up, ice over.

Up~Solid (22+16=38)

Language (22): above board, the high ground, the high road, heaven on earth, mind over matter, a stiff upper lip, upper crust, hard up, high and dry, bone up, jump your bones, chalk it up to, raise the bar, make shit up, up shit creek, brass ceiling, glass ceiling, fly in the teeth of, in an ivory tower, castles in the air, pennies from heaven, deadlift,

Culture (16): the Biblical firmament, pyramids, gravestones, ziggurats, monoliths, Stonehenge, obelisks, the kenning "Ymer's skull" for the sky, gravestones, the band name Led Zeppelin, Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov, Stone and Sky by Graham Edwards, Raising the Stones by Sheri S. Tepper, Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg, the Irish fairy tale "The Highest Penny," "A Cap of Lead across the sky" by Emily Dickinson, high hearted (epithet in Homer).

Quotes

A Cap of Lead across the sky
Was tight and surly drawn
We could not find the mighty Face
The Figure was withdrawn -
A Chill came up as from a shaft
Our noon became a well
A Thunder storm combines the charms
Of Winter and of Hell.

— Emily Dickinson, "A Cap of Lead across the sky"

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His han

— Popular Irish blessing

Up~Static/Slow (17+3=20)

Language (17): overkill, over my dead body, waiting in the wings, slow on the uptake, stay up, hold up, wait up, wouldn't lose sleep over, sleep over, raising the dead, dead cat bounce, rest up, a hill to die on, creep up, overstay your welcome, died and gone to heaven,

Culture (3): "It was not Death, for I stood up" and "Love can do all but raise the Dead" by Emily Dickinson, "On a Bird Winging in its Sleep" by Robert Frost.

Quotes

But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

— The Bible, The Book of Job 4:10 (Bartlett 2002)

Up~Order (17+5=22)

Language (17): a tall order, clear it up, upright, above the law, fly straight, aim high, measure up, straight as the crow flies, overrule, straight up, straighten up, shape up, top shape, clean up, a match made in heaven, high level, rocket science,

Culture (5): Egyptian pyramids, Mesoamerican pyramids, Odin's name "Evenhigh," "I think just how my shape will rise" by Emily Dickinson, the t-shaped pillars of Göbekli Tepe.

Up~Dark/Cool Colors (9+2=11)

Language (9): tall dark and handsome, fly by night, flying blind, overshadow, up all night, blue-sky thinking, keeps me up at night, do it up brown, jump blues,

Culture (2): Nightwings by Robert Silverberg, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper.

Up~Silence/Quiet/Low Pitch (3+0=3)

Language (3): hush up, shut up, a hush fell over.

Up~Round/Short (17+18=35)

Language (17): eye in the sky, throw an eye over, head on over, over your head, heads up, heads and shoulders above, keep your head up, keep your chin up, raise the point, pie in the sky, jumping through hoops, wheels up, ball up, button up, oh high, bubble up, Ohio.

Culture (18): domes, arches, celestial spheres, Atlas holding up the Earth, flying saucers, the Egyptian hieroglyphic Ankh symbol, balloons, baseball, basketball, coin flipping, bubbles, snowmen, neck elongation, wheelies, handheld fans, decorative peacocks, bindis, Spaceballs.

Up~Down* (24+49=73)

Language (24): jumping up and down, look someone up and down, searched high and low, as above so below, bottoms up, it's a rollercoaster, upside down, hangover, hung up on, have a hang up, top down, the over under, are you picking up what I'm laying down, overlay, crestfallen, layover, layup, laid up, fall over, eavesdropping, move heaven and earth, high floor low ceiling, fly under the radar, cork high and bottle deep.

Culture (24): dances, Icarus, Phaethon, Yo-yo's, rollercoasters, jumping on beds, trampolines, swinging, baby bouncers, teeter totters, roller coasters, dribbling in basketball, Skyfall (Bond film), “A Pit - but Heaven over it,” “Cocoon above! Cocoon below,” “Not any higher stands the Grave,” “So much of Heaven has gone from Earth,” “The Fact that Earth is Heaven,” “The Pile of Years is not so high,” “The Sky is low - the Clouds are mean,” “Who has not found the Heaven - below” and “I rose - because He sank” by Emily Dickinson.

Wikipedia Disambiguation Pages (29): Wikipedia lists three films, five albums, 20 songs and an arcade game named “Up and Down.”

Quotes

Some people ask, “What if the sky were to fall?”

—Terence, Heauton Timoroumenos (Bartlett 2022)

He [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

—The Bible, Genesis 28:12

Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

—The Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:51 (Bartlett 2022)

As in the cold season their wings bear the starlings along in a broad, dense flock, so does that blast the wicked spirits. Hither, thither, downward, upward, it drives them.

— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Bartlett 2022)

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Bartlett 2022)

Up~In (49+17=66)

Language (49): overcome, get over it, right up your alley, coming right up, up and coming, coming up in the world, come up with, come up to, come up roses, in over your head, over a barrel, up your sleeve, up for grabs, jump right in, eat it up, keep it up, take it up, a takeover, keep up the good work, buckle up, buckle up buttercup, suck it up, a suck-up, fed up, fed up to the back teeth, pull up, wrap it up, choked up, jump down your throat, kick it into the tall grass, hold up, holding up, holed up, get it up, catch up, caught up, top-notch, save up, top secret, all cooped up, knocking on heaven’s door, up the spout (British), and ace up your sleeve, bundle up, hold in high esteem, cover up, jumpsuit,

Culture (17): treehouses, Heaven's Gate (religious group), the flying canoe La Chasse-galerie, Santa's sleigh, Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan song), shooting baskets, upper goals in Mesoamerican ballgames, kicking a field goal, a hole in one, skee-ball, Trapped in Space by Jack Williamson, Tunnel in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein, "Climbing to reach the costly Hearts" and "Except the Heaven had come so near " and "I've known a Heaven, like a Tent" by Emily Dickinson, the Slavic fairy tale "Flying Ship," the Flying Dutchman.

Up~Right (2+0=2)

Language (1): upright, coming right up.

Up~Small (1+1=2)

Language (1): a little slice of heaven.

Culture (1): "Her little Parasol to lift" by Emily Dickinson.

Up~Few (2+3=5)

Language (2): one up, an empty sack cannot stand upright, (3): Odin's name "High One," "Not One by Heaven defrauded stay" and "When One has given up One's life" by Emily Dickinson.

Up~Good (2+0=2)

Language (2): good heavens, up to no good.

Up~Back (4+0=4)

up~back (4): backup, back is up, rear up, bring up the rear.

Outwardness

To go too far is as bad as not to go far enough.

— Confucius, Analects 11:15 (Bartlett 2022)

Out~Cold (5+1=6)

Language (5): chill out, freeze out, ice out, left out in the cold, cool off,

Culture (1): throwing snow.

Out~Solid (24+3=27)

Language (24): out of the woodwork, come out of your shell, shell it out, out of your skull, out of the woods, out of your tree, groundswell, get off the ground, rock out, get your rocks off, throw me a bone, hammer it out, the hard way, give a shit, shooting the shit, beat the shit out of, going to shit, shit out of luck, get the lead out, land and expand, a stone's throw, a distant land, brassed off (British), outlandish.

Culture (3): throwing horseshoes, skipping stones, The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris.

Out~Static/Slow (14+1=15)

Language (14): dead and gone, pulling out all the stops, shoot to kill, beyond the grave, dearly departed, die away, dead and gone, a dead giveaway, give it a rest, pass away, wait it out, creep me out, give pause, fuck off and die,

Culture (1) the Yom Kippur ritual of killing one goat and sending another into the wilderness.

Out~Order (26+3=29)

Language (29): out of sorts, out of line, sort it out, off the grid, figure it out, flat out, rule out, peace out, a straight shooter, square shooter, square off, out of square, squared away, straight away, think outside the box, block it out, smooth it over, straighten it out, bent out of shape, out of shape, out of the blocks, cleaned out, clean out of, out of control, box it out, knock your block off, the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, balance out, dispense with the formalities,

Culture (3): Gungnir the spear of Odin that always hits its target, target shooting, horseshoes.

Out~Dark/Cool Colors (9+2=11)

Language (9): throwing shade, beyond the shadow of a doubt, out of the blue, out of the shadows, out of the clear blue sky, a shot in the dark, blackout, dark cloud on the horizon, lay out in lavender.

Culture (2): tuxedos, "The distance that the dead have gone" by Emily Dickinson.

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.

—The Bible, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans 13:12 (Bartlett 2022)

Out~Silent/Quiet/Low Pitch (0+2=2)

Culture (2): “Great Streets of silence led away” by Emily Dickinson, Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis.

Out~Round/Short (16+6=24)

Language (16): keep an eye out, crying my eyes out, as far as the eye can see, headed out, head off, round trip, a head trip, off with her head, knock the spots off, knock the spots out of, throw you a softball, balls-out, tripping balls, off your dot, point out, point of no return.

Culture (6): throwing snowballs, bowling, hitting baseballs, kicking soccer balls, pinball, "Before I got my eye put out" by Emily Dickinson.

Out~Down (15+4=19)

Language (15): down and out, out of your depth, hang out, drop out, bow out, bottom out, downcast, beyond the grave, the fallout, layout, have a falling out, thrown under the bus, throw down, the bottom falls out, go off the deep end, hunt down.

Culture (4): billiards, golf, Out of the Deeps by John Wyndham, "Neither Out Far nor in Deep" by Robert Frost.

Out~In* (56+10=66)

Language (54): day in and day out, know all the ins and outs of, out of the frying pan and into the fire, near and far, far fetched, in so far as, go suck an egg, out to lunch, pack a punch, get it off your chest, cast your mind, cast a wide net, out of bounds, out of touch, a simple in and out, on the outside looking in, give in, give and take, give with one hand and take away with the other, out of your mind, pan out, the takeaway, all tuckered out, in the offing, easy come easy go, we've come so far, throw yourself into, get out the vote, gotta give it to ya, bring out the best in someone, home free, you can dish it out but you can't take it, beyond the grave, off limits, get out of a pinch, get out of my face, send you packing, sucker punch, when push comes to shove, express, expression, a home away from home, you took the words right out of my mouth, get a word in edgewise, shoot your mouth off, lock em up and throw away the key, out of pocket, come off, come off it, come away empty handed, fly out of the traps, have an out, take leave, holdout, hideout.

Culture (10): darts, baseball, field goals, Skee-Ball, tennis, boomerangs, Thor's Hammer Mjölnir, decorative projections associated with animal entrances, "Away from Home are some and I" "The Outer - from the Inner" and "The Opening and the Close" by Emily Dickinson, the Irish fairy tale "The Well at the World's End."

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

— Tertullian (Bartlett 2022)

For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

—The Bible, The First Book of Samuel 2:33 (Bartlett 2022)

And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

—The Bible, The Book of Job 1:7 (Bartlett 2022)

He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; He has knowledge of everything.

— The Koran 57:3 (Bartlett 2022)

Out~Right (2+0=2)

Language (2): outright, right out of the gate.

Out~Small (1+0=1)

Language (1): give a little, a little goes a long way.

Out~Few (8+1=9)

Language (8): give zero fucks, a one off, the one that got away, only get one shot at it, the odd one out, first out of the gate, few and far between, sit this one out.

Culture (1): Edgar Allan Poe’s The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.

Out~Good (6+0=6)

Language (6): good riddance, have a good trip, in good hands, as good as gone, gone for good, so far so good.

Out~Back (4+0=4)

out~back (4): back off, outback, back of beyond, throw your weight behind.

Length

Long~Cold (1+0=1)

Language (1): it'll be a long day in January.

Long~Solid (4+7=11)

Language (4): long in the tooth, by a long chalk, he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon, long and strong.

Culture (7): obelisks, the bronze serpent Nehushtan, long in the tooth, by a long chalk, he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon, long and strong, serpent stones.

Long~Static/Slow (4+5=9)

Language (4): deadline, hold the line, long dead, the king is dead long live the king.

Culture (5): “A long - long Sleep - A famous - Sleep,” “Her face was in a bed of hair,” “Those who have been in the Grave the longest,” “To wait an Hour - is long” and “Life is death we're lengthy at” by Emily Dickinson.

Long~Order (3+0=3)

Language (3): the long arm of the law, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, strait laced.

Long~Dark/Cool Colors (6+12=15)

Language (6): cast a long shadow, old sins cast long shadows, all night long, night of the long knives, old sins have long shadows, the thin blue line.

Culture (12): eyeliner, Long Black Curl by Alex Bledsoe, the Jolly Green Giant, Gumby, “Presentiment - is that long Shadow - on the Lawn” and “The Night was wide, and furnished scant” by Emily Dickinson, “Black Lines” by Vasily Kandinsky, the French folktale “Bluebeard,” blue ribbons, long-shadowed spear (Homeric epithet), Blackbeard the pirate.

Culture (13): the ouroboros, the wheel of dharma, dreamcatchers, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, scepters, Zen ensō, Celtic crosses, scarab beetles, lollipops, Tinkertoys, the mythical ball-tailed cat, Noughts & Crosses series by Malorie Blackman, ornamenta ocelli, the oblong effect, mandorlas.

Long~Down (4+4=8)

Language (4): down the line, lay it on the line, the bottom line, down to the wire, let your hair down.

Culture (4): long hair, dresses, Rapunzel, the Christian Cross.

Long~In (10+3=13)

Language (10): in the long run, a snake in the grass, pull some strings, pulling your leg, a long time coming, take the long way home, a needle in a haystack, hold an eel by the tail, keep your hair on (British), snake pit.

Culture (3): the mile-wide cauldron of Hymir in Norse myth, the kenning "serpent's lair" meaning gold, "The Brain - is wider than the Sky" by Emily Dickinson.

Long~Right (1+0=1)

Language (3): coming right along.

Long~Short* (7+0=7)

Language (7): the long and short of it, to make a long story short, take a long walk on a short pier, short arms, long pockets, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, give them and inch and they’ll take a mile.

Long~Round* (9+0=9)

Language (9): headline, make heads or tails out of, run headlong, cross your t's and dot your i's, the long and short of it, the longest way round is the shortest way home, fat finger, dickhead, ball and chain.

Long~Few (3+0=3)

Language (3): a one liner, the last straw, the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Spikiness

Spiky~Solid (6+10=16)

Language (6): a bull in a china shop, bullshit, hard-nosed, sharp as a steel trap, when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, tip of the iceberg (spiky~cold/solid).

Culture (10): pyramids, obelisks, unicorn horns, horned helmets, crowns, the crown of thorns, The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone by Greg Keyes, horns and tusks and fangs in animals generally, The Tree of Swords and Jewels by C. J. Cherryh.

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, Th’ assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge.

— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls (Bartlett 2022)

Spiky~Static (5+1=6)

Language (5): slowpoke, a bed of nails, lock horns, seize the bull by the horns, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.

Culture (1): the kenning "sleep of the sword" meaning death.

Spiky~Dark/Cool Colors (2+4=6)

Language (2): a stab in the dark, as black as the ace of spades.

Culture (4): Night of the Long Knives, The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, Swords Against the Shadowland by Robin Wayne Bailey, the Irish fairy tale "The Black Cross."

Spiky~Round* (12+8=20)

Language (12): poking around, x marks the spot, the hairy eyeball, pointy-headed, square the circle, a sharp eye, a sharp cookie, bullseye, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, spearheading, darting around, around the corner, as sharp as a bowling ball.

Culture (8): the Celtic cross, the Eye of Providence, the star and crescent, Nazar amulets, the Wicca pentacle, the Sigil of Baphomet, the globus cruciger, crowns.

Spiky~Down (2+0=2)

Language (2): catch a falling knife, fall on your sword.

Spiky~In (6+2=8)

Language (6): pull in horns, pitbull, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, into sharp relief, casket sharp, cloak and dagger.

Culture (2): sword swallowing, Pitbull (rapper).

Spiky~Back (2+0=2)

Language (2): stab in the back, backstabbing.

Large Size

Big~Cold (1+0=1)

Culture (1): Norse frost giants.

Big~Solid (5+5=10)

Language (6): big boned, groundswell, carry a big stick, big brass, the bigger they are the harder they fall, big iron.

Culture (6): Talos, pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, “The Chalk Giants” by Keith Roberts, the folk song “The Big Rock Candy Mountains” by Harry McClintock, the giant skeleton yokai Gashadokuro, the Iron Giant (movie).

Big~Static/Slow (2+3=5)

Language (2): a sleeping giant, the big sleep.

Culture (4): The kenning “slayer of giants” meaning Thor, “Life, and Death, and Giants” by Emily Dickinson,” the fairy tale “Jack the Giant Killer,” Raymond Chandler's “The Big Sleep.”

Big~Order (4+1=5)

Language (4): a tall order, in great measure, a gentle giant, the law of large numbers (frequently applied incorrectly because it’s amusing).

Culture (1): tall dark and handsome.

Big~Dark/Cool Colors (0+1=1)

Language (1): Big Blue (IBM).

Culture (1): the Jolly Green Giant.

Big~Silent/Quiet/Low Pitch (2+1=3)

Language (2): speak softly and carry a big stick, monumental silence.

Culture (1): Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence.

Big~Down (1+1=2)

Language (1): the bigger they are the harder they fall.

Culture (1): The Grand Canyon.

Big~In (8+1=9)

Language (8): a big heart, the big house, big shoes to fill, big in, big tent, the elephant in the room, have it large, in the grand scheme of things.

Culture (1): Super Bowl.

Quotes

The little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars; fire and lightning and winds are there; and all that now is and all that is not: for the whole universe is in Him [Atman, the Spirit] and He dwells within our heart.

— Chandogya Upanishad, 8.1 (Bartlett 2022)

Big~Round (7+1=8)

Language (7): my eyes were bigger than my belly, get a big head, swollen head, big balls, the big eye, big eyes, The Big Apple.

Culture (1): James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.

Big~Small* (10+8=18)

Language (10): a big baby, big things come in small packages, jumbo shrimp, a big fish in a small pond, all things great and small, on small step for man one giant leap for mankind, little pitchers have big ears, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants (medieval metaphor), great oaks from little acorns grow, make a mountain out of a molehill.

Culture (8): the magical staff Ruyi Jingu Bang that can change size from that of a needle to a pillar, the Abenaki Canoe of Gluskab that expands to hold an army or shrinks to fit in a hand, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Little Big by John Crowley, the Irish fairy tale “Fin MacCool, the Three Giants, and the Small Men,” “The Big and the Little,” by Isaac Asimov, Micromégas by Voltaire, a camel going through the eye of a needle.

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Bartlett 2022)

Big~Few (3+1=4)

Language (3): bite the big one, once in a great while, a large unit.

Culture (1): “Who Giants know, with lesser Men,” by Emily Dickinson.

Multiplicity

One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.

— Plotinus, Enneads (Bartlett 2022)

Many~Cold (3+2=5)

Language (3): too cool, too cool for school, crowned by many winters.

Culture (2): the sword name “Juuchi Yosamu” meaning 10,000 Cold Nights, Ice-nine in Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

Many~Solid (13+5=18)

Language (13): cover a lot of ground, gaining ground, land of plenty, all skin and bones, a lot of irons in the fire, my two cents, all roads lead to Rome, a two way street, all oak and iron bound, a tooth for a tooth (mutiple~solid), full of shit, brick by brick, double in brass.

Culture (5): cairns, coin collections, marbles, Eternity Road by Back McDevitt, 30 Rock.

Many~Static/Slow (11+6=17)

Language (11): death by a thousand cuts, die a thousand deaths, still and all, cowards die many times before their death, get forty winks, kill two birds with one stone, seven deadly sins, all show and no go, all-a-mort, full stop, all together now.

Culture (6): apocalypses, the seven deadly sins, "All but Death, can be Adjusted," "Ample make this Bed" and "Beauty crowds me till I die" by Emily Dickinson, dismemberment of the dead.

With the jawbone of an ass… have I slain a thousand men.

—The Bible, The Book of Judges 15:16 (Bartlett 2022)

Many~Order (17+5=22)

Language (17): all right, all righty then, all right already, even more, even more so, everything will be all right, full-figured, all shapes and sizes, all sorts of, it takes all sorts, it’s all part of the plan, all else being equal, all is fair in love and war, all set, all else being equal, right as ninepence, six figures.

Culture (5): soccer balls, legos, "I many times thought Peace had come" by Emily Dickinson, All Shapes Derive from the Square by Salvador Dali, the ten perfections of Buddhism.

Many~Dark/Cool Colors (6+2=8)

Language (6): blue on blue, a three dog night, zero dark thirty, all night long, all-nighter, all cats are grey at night.

Culture (2): spots in animals, Twelfth Night by Shakespeare.

Quotes

Night hath a thousand eyes.

— John Lyly, Maides Metamorphosis (Bartlett 2022)

Many~Silent/Quiet/Low Pitch (2+1=3)

Language (2): the silent majority, all quiet on the Western Front.

Culture (1): the Elmer Fudd expression “be vewy vewy qwiet.”

Many~In (39+53=92)

Language (39): I'm all in, insomuch as, winner takes all, double take, keep it 100, too much information, come one come all, come again, it's all in your head, as much as I need a hole in the head, not much in the way of, forever hold your peace, altogether, in all honesty, all in all, I'm all ears, get a second wind, one in a million, goody two shoes, all hat and no cattle, a mouth full, an ear full, all duck and no dinner, all mouth and no trousers, all hat and no cattle, as full as a boot, full of holes, wear many hats, gain interest, crowd-puller, in your heart of hearts, six pack.

Culture (53): pots of gold, treasure chests, the cornucopia, the seven bowls, the quiver with infinite arrows Akshaya Tunir, the second coming, bags of Halloween candy, Noah's Ark, the “4,000 holes” in the Beatles song “A Day in the Life,” Bringing It All Back Home (Bob Dylan album), A Million Open Doors by John Barnes, Thebes of the Hundred Gates by Robert Silverberg, Hundred-Gated Thebes, Hekatompylos translation “one hundred gates,” “The Heart has many Doors” by Emily Dickinson, the ceremonial dwile flonking mantra “pot pot pot,” the Noble Eightfold Path, Three Men in a Boat, Wikipedia lists four books, two films, 13 television episodes, 9 albums and 8 songs named “All In.”

Many~Down (4+3=7)

Language (4): hang ten, six feet under, it's all downhill from here, falling apart.

Culture (3): Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne, “Behind Me - dips Eternity” and “Not so the infinite Relations - Below” by Emily Dickinson.

Quotes

Ring around the rosie,
A pocket full of posies.
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down!

—“Ring a Ring o' Roses,” nursery rhyme and folk song

Many~Round/Short (23+19=42)

Language (23): many moons, all around, full circle, we keep going around and around (dynamic~round/round), an eye for an eye, see eye to eye, the third eye, four-eyes, all eyes on, more than meets the eye, two heads are better than one, go head to head, point by point, don't put all your eggs in one basket, have a lot on the ball, ten a penny, a dime a dozen, a third wheel, a fifth wheel, behind the eight ball, not have all your buttons, all my eye.

Culture (19): Argus Panoptes, Cerberus, eye multiplication, head multiplication, “My Eye is fuller than my vase” by Emily Dickinson, the Chinese Nine-headed Bird, the Olympic Rings, polka dots, billiards, marbles, checkers, Christmas tree ornaments, coin collections, poker chips, cookies, gum ball machines, spots in animals generally, the “many eye” yokai Mokumokuren.

Many~Small (2+1=3)

Language (2): a small fortune, three skips of a louse.

Culture (1): “All I may, if small” by Emily Dickinson.

Many~Few* (39+44=83)

Language (39): e pluribus unum, fulsome, be everywhere at once, much ado about nothing, much less, less is more, double or nothing, all rolled into one, all in one, once and for all, first of all, all for one and one for all, seen one seen them all, all dressed up and nowhere to go, come one come all, a bit much, nothing much, a whole lot of nothing, one too many, every once in a while, every single time, I'll try anything once, two's company and three's a crowd, second to none, one in a million, two sides of the same coin, give them an inch and they'll take a mile, all and some, all kinds of one, all the one, one card short of a full deck (humorous), one brick short of a load (humorous), one over the eight, a Jack of all trades and master of none, half a dozen, six of one half a dozen of the other, too clever by half, be all brawn and no brains.

Culture (44): 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “All things swept sole away,” “Not any more to be lacked,” “One and One - are One,” “One Anguish - in a Crowd,” “One Life of so much Consequence!” and “Her Losses make our Gains ashamed” by Emily Dickinson, Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare, the Mexican fairy tale “God Gives a Hundred for One,” Hawaii Five-0, Never Never Land.

Wikipedia Disambiguation: Wikipedia lists four films, four albums and 25 songs named “One in a Million.”

Quotes

All the people arose as one man.

—The Bible, The First Book of Samuel 20:8 (Bartlett 2022)

Fools, they do not even know how much more is the half than the whole.

— Hesiod, Works and Days (Bartlett 2022)

All this happened, more or less.

—Kurt Vonnegut, opening of Slaughterhouse-Five

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

—Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu (Bartlett 2023)

Many~Familiar (1+0=1)

Language (1): extraordinary.

Many~Good (11+0=11)

Language (11): all in good time, it's all good, a good many, all good things must come to an end, the greater good, too good to be true, that’s all very well, that’s all well and good, so good, a lot of good that did, goody two-shoes.

Quotes

Can we ever have too much of a good thing?

— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (Bartlett 2022)

Many~Back (7+0=7)

Language (7): hindsight is 2020, leave it all behind, behind the eight ball, one step forward and two steps back, back forty, behind the 8 ball, behind seven locks.

Novelty

For out of olde feldes, as men seyth, Cometh al this newe corn fro yer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feyth, Cometh al this newe science that men lere.

— Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls (Bartlett 2022)

Familiarity breeds contempt.

— Aesop, “The Fox and the Lion” (Bartlett 2022)

Novel~Solid (4+0=4)

Language (4): fresh meat, break new ground, stranger in a strange land, holy shit!

Novel~Static (4+0=4)

Language (4): a change is as good as a rest, strange bedfellows, will the wonders never cease, never cease to amaze me.

Novel~Dark/Cool Colors (4+0=4)

Language (4): black as Newgate's knocker, orange is the new black, a bolt from the blue, out of the blue.

Novel~Silent/Quit/Low Pitch (2+0=2)

Language (2): march to the beat of a different drummer, thunderstruck.

Novel~Down (1+0=1)

Language (1): a new low.

Novel~In (9+1=10)

Language (9): in for a surprise, in for a shock, go abroad and you'll hear news of home, ring in the New Year, a bearer of bad news, I’ve got news for you, taken by surprise, catch by surprise, come as no surprise.

Culture (1): wrapped presents.

Novel~Round/Short (4+0=4)

Language (4): a whole new ball game, a new ball of wax, oddball, throw a curveball.

Novel~Few (4+0=4)

Language (4): that’s a new one, odd one out, small wonder, one‑hit wonder.

Novel~Familiar* (7+0=7)

Language (7): Out with the old, in with the new (out~old~new~in), you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, the new normal, new wine in old bottles, old news, same meat different gravy.

Novel~Good (2+0=2)

Language (1): as good as new, no news is good news.

Appendix 1: Mixtures of Qualities from List 3

Mixtures of qualities from list 3 (324): heat~coldness, heat~solidness, heat~stasis, heat~slowness, heat~order, heat~darkness, heat~cool colors, heat~silence, heat~quietness, heat~low pitch, heat~downwardness, heat~inwardness, heat~the right side, heat~shortness, heat~roundness, heat~small size, heat~small numbers, heat~familiarity, fluidity~coldness, fluidity~solidness, fluidity~stasis, fluidity~slowness, fluidity~order, fluidity~darkness, fluidity~cool colors, fluidity~silence, fluidity~quietness, fluidity~low pitch, fluidity~downwardness, fluidity~inwardness, fluidity~the right side, fluidity~shortness, fluidity~roundness, fluidity~small size, fluidity~small numbers, fluidity~familiarity, dynamism~coldness, dynamism~solidness, dynamism~stasis, dynamism~slowness, dynamism~order, dynamism~darkness, dynamism~cool colors, dynamism~silence, dynamism~quietness, dynamism~low pitch, dynamism~downwardness, dynamism~inwardness, dynamism~the right side, dynamism~shortness, dynamism~roundness, dynamism~small size, dynamism~small numbers, dynamism~familiarity, speed~coldness, speed~solidness, speed~stasis, speed~slowness, speed~order, speed~darkness, speed~cool colors, speed~silence, speed~quietness, speed~low pitch, speed~downwardness, speed~inwardness, speed~the right side, speed~shortness, speed~roundness, speed~small size, speed~small numbers, speed~familiarity, disorder~coldness, disorder~solidness, disorder~stasis, disorder~slowness, disorder~order, disorder~darkness, disorder~cool colors, disorder~silence, disorder~quietness, disorder~low pitch, disorder~downwardness, disorder~inwardness, disorder~the right side, disorder~shortness, disorder~roundness, disorder~small size, disorder~small numbers, disorder~familiarity, brightness~coldness, brightness~solidness, brightness~stasis, brightness~slowness, brightness~order, brightness~darkness, brightness~cool colors, brightness~silence, brightness~quietness, brightness~low pitch, brightness~downwardness, brightness~inwardness, brightness~the right side, brightness~shortness, brightness~roundness, brightness~small size, brightness~small numbers, brightness~familiarity, warm colors~coldness, warm colors~solidness, warm colors~stasis, warm colors~slowness, warm colors~order, warm colors~darkness, warm colors~cool colors, warm colors~silence, warm colors~quietness, warm colors~low pitch, warm colors~downwardness, warm colors~inwardness, warm colors~the right side, warm colors~shortness, warm colors~roundness, warm colors~small size, warm colors~small numbers, warm colors~familiarity, sound~coldness, sound~solidness, sound~stasis, sound~slowness, sound~order, sound~darkness, sound~cool colors, sound~silence, sound~quietness, sound~low pitch, sound~downwardness, sound~inwardness, sound~the right side, sound~shortness, sound~roundness, sound~small size, sound~small numbers, sound~familiarity, loudness~coldness, loudness~solidness, loudness~stasis, loudness~slowness, loudness~order, loudness~darkness, loudness~cool colors, loudness~silence, loudness~quietness, loudness~low pitch, loudness~downwardness, loudness~inwardness, loudness~the right side, loudness~shortness, loudness~roundness, loudness~small size, loudness~small numbers, loudness~familiarity, high pitch~coldness, high pitch~solidness, high pitch~stasis, high pitch~slowness, high pitch~order, high pitch~darkness, high pitch~cool colors, high pitch~silence, high pitch~quietness, high pitch~low pitch, high pitch~downwardness, high pitch~inwardness, high pitch~the right side, high pitch~shortness, high pitch~roundness, high pitch~small size, high pitch~small numbers, high pitch~familiarity, upwardness~coldness, upwardness~solidness, upwardness~stasis, upwardness~slowness, upwardness~order, upwardness~darkness, upwardness~cool colors, upwardness~silence, upwardness~quietness, upwardness~low pitch, upwardness~downwardness, upwardness~inwardness, upwardness~the right side, upwardness~shortness, upwardness~roundness, upwardness~small size, upwardness~small numbers, upwardness~familiarity, outwardness~coldness, outwardness~solidness, outwardness~stasis, outwardness~slowness, outwardness~order, outwardness~darkness, outwardness~cool colors, outwardness~silence, outwardness~quietness, outwardness~low pitch, outwardness~downwardness, outwardness~inwardness, outwardness~the right side, outwardness~shortness, outwardness~roundness, outwardness~small size, outwardness~small numbers, outwardness~familiarity, the left side~coldness, the left side~solidness, the left side~stasis, the left side~slowness, the left side~order, the left side~darkness, the left side~cool colors, the left side~silence, the left side~quietness, the left side~low pitch, the left side~downwardness, the left side~inwardness, the left side~the right side, the left side~shortness, the left side~roundness, the left side~small size, the left side~small numbers, the left side~familiarity, length~coldness, length~solidness, length~stasis, length~slowness, length~order, length~darkness, length~cool colors, length~silence, length~quietness, length~low pitch, length~downwardness, length~inwardness, length~the right side, length~shortness, length~roundness, length~small size, length~small numbers, length~familiarity, spikiness~coldness, spikiness~solidness, spikiness~stasis, spikiness~slowness, spikiness~order, spikiness~darkness, spikiness~cool colors, spikiness~silence, spikiness~quietness, spikiness~low pitch, spikiness~downwardness, spikiness~inwardness, spikiness~the right side, spikiness~shortness, spikiness~roundness, spikiness~small size, spikiness~small numbers, spikiness~familiarity, large size~coldness, large size~solidness, large size~stasis, large size~slowness, large size~order, large size~darkness, large size~cool colors, large size~silence, large size~quietness, large size~low pitch, large size~downwardness, large size~inwardness, large size~the right side, large size~shortness, large size~roundness, large size~small size, large size~small numbers, large size~familiarity, multiplicity~coldness, multiplicity~solidness, multiplicity~stasis, multiplicity~slowness, multiplicity~order, multiplicity~darkness, multiplicity~cool colors, multiplicity~silence, multiplicity~quietness, multiplicity~low pitch, multiplicity~downwardness, multiplicity~inwardness, multiplicity~the right side, multiplicity~shortness, multiplicity~roundness, multiplicity~small size, multiplicity~small numbers, multiplicity~familiarity, novelty~coldness, novelty~solidness, novelty~stasis, novelty~slowness, novelty~order, novelty~darkness, novelty~cool colors, novelty~silence, novelty~quietness, novelty~low pitch, novelty~downwardness, novelty~inwardness, novelty~the right side, novelty~shortness, novelty~roundness, novelty~small size, novelty~small numbers, novelty~familiarity.

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