Is Beauty In The Eye Of The Beholder?

Thesis Statement

Beauty is a matter of opinion, formed at a young age by the people around one, the environment, and the media.

Introduction

Beauty is in the eye of he beholder;' one statement has never held so much truth. In a world with so much freedom the definition of what is considered beautiful is variable. One person may find beauty in a flower, or a flock of geese flying south for the winter, while another may consider them images far to common to encompass real beauty.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” appears to have a nearly literal meaning. It indicates that beauty means something different to each individual. What one person finds beautiful, another may not. As English philosopher David Hume put it, “Beauty in things exists in the mind that contemplates them” (Johnston, 183). The concept of beauty being in the eye of the viewer may date as far back as ancient Greece. In another age, Shakespeare, in Love's Labor Lost, wrote “Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye/Not uttered by base sale of the chapmen's tongue.” The exact phrase was first used in the 19th century by Irish novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford in her book Molly Brawn. As to human beauty, there is some research that indicates that the human standards for beauty may be genetic. It is nature's way of ensuring the best reproductive selection. Poets and painters tend to disagree, arguing that human beauty encompasses more than biology (Douglas, 321). It is contained not just in the body but also in the mind. Inward beauty enhances outward appearance.

Some scientific research on what makes us find someone beautiful points to our DNA. Perceptions of beauty are essentially a function of evolution. They are mostly uniform and help to ensure the selection of a healthy mate for reproductive purposes.In our daily life we pass by many things, sometimes we give them attention by observing then in a way that our minds are set to and sometimes we don't even bother to look. We might see and find the beauty in these things using the ways of knowledge such as reason, emotion and languages. When I think of these things I come to conclusion that they must belong to a certain area of knowledge such as science, religion, arts and mathematics. However in order to examine these things we need the ways of knowledge, so after all the areas of knowledge depends on the ways of knowledge. Most of the times it turns out that not every person on earth looks at the things as others do. As it is said in the claim 'we see and understand things not as they are but as we are'. I believe there is more than one vision for each thing.

Discsssion

Long before discoveries about genetics, Greek mathematicians were finding, not that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in geometry. Human beauty could be gauged by how closely it conformed to the ...