A Review of Theories of Beauty

One might assume that the philosophy of art or philosophical aesthetics should solely address the subject of beauty, but the intertwining role of beauty with individual choices and social interactions has compelled cognitive science scholars to explore how beauty is perceived and its main components. In this book, Dr. Saleh Tabatabaei, a cognitive science scholar, provides a critical review of the most important theories of beauty in empirical aesthetics and cognitive sciences. The book begins with Fechner’s empirical aesthetics, then covers Berlyne’s “arousal potential theory,” the application of “information theory” in aesthetics, Gestalt aesthetics, Martin Day’s cognitive “preference for prototypes” theory, Reber’s cognitive “processing fluency” theory, Leder’s cognitive “multi-stage information processing” model, Schmidhuber’s “algorithmic theory of beauty,” and finally, “neuroaesthetics.” A supplementary appendix discusses Ibn al-Haytham’s “proportion theory” in the perception of beauty. This is the very theory borrowed by Renaissance art scholars such as Lorenzo Ghiberti, Leon Battista Alberti, and Leonardo da Vinci.