Beauty and Science: Why I Want to Take Beauty Seriously

Imagine a presentation slide: harmonious colors, orderly typography, polished images. It is hard to point to anything wrong with it. Yet there is little you want to remember.

Now imagine a room. Its furniture, lighting, and decoration all follow a fashionable style. It looks wonderful in photographs. Living in it might not feel nearly as comfortable.

Conversely, a slightly irregular cup, a blurry photograph, or an unadorned piece of writing can sometimes make us pause. They may not meet a particular standard of sophistication, but they establish a connection with us.

There seems to be something between “it is well made” and “it moved me.”

That is where I want to begin a series called Beauty and Science.

The name originally belonged to a WeChat public account I wanted to create. I have not let it go, because I increasingly want to understand what we are saying when we call something beautiful. Why does that feeling matter? Is it merely decoration for life, or does it participate in how we understand the world and choose how to live?

This is not a finished collection of answers. It is an open exploration, willing to be revised.

Why “Beauty and Science”?

The word I care most about in this name is and.

Not the science of beauty. I do not want to place beauty inside a scientific framework first, then wait for a formula to tell us what deserves our affection.

Nor do I want to position beauty against science, as though analysis and explanation necessarily diminish feeling. Understanding how sound is produced does not prevent music from moving us. Understanding how a form is organized need not destroy its capacity to surprise us.

I want to place the two alongside each other, allowing them to illuminate and constrain one another.

Science can help us ask: Is there evidence for a judgment? Can an explanation be tested? Does a pattern we regard as universal hold only under particular conditions?

Thinking about beauty leads me to keep asking: Even once we know how something happens, what does it mean to people? Why is one person moved while another remains indifferent? What kinds of things do we actually want to bring into our lives?

This is not an attempt to divide science and beauty into sealed territories. Scientific research can investigate aesthetic experience, and our understanding of beauty also depends on knowledge. I simply want to preserve a distinction: explaining an experience is not the same as experiencing it for someone; explaining how a preference developed does not establish that it deserves to be maintained.

I did not simply call this series Aesthetics, either. That is not a rejection of the discipline. I do not want the name to turn readers away before they enter. There should be room here for theory, but also a route back to a table, a car, a passage of writing, and particular feelings that have not yet been organized into terminology.

Beauty and Science is the space I am leaving for those journeys back and forth.

Aesthetic judgment has a standpoint, but a standpoint is not superiority

I do not believe that discussing aesthetics requires pretending to have no standpoint.

When we say a building looks good, are we considering its outline, its materials, or its relationship with the life around it? When we praise a presentation slide, is it because it resembles a professional template, or because an important idea has finally become clear?

Different judgments conceal different concerns.

Some people value order; others respond to vitality. Some seek restraint; others need warmth and intensity. Even the same person may change at different stages of life: once preferring fullness, later needing empty space; once pursuing distinction, now cherishing familiarity and stability.

When I say aesthetic judgment has a standpoint, I do not mean that everyone must join a stylistic camp. I mean that judgment takes place between a particular person and a particular way of living.

Having a standpoint, however, does not entitle us to rank people as refined or inferior.

If I use prices, brands, credentials, and terminology to demonstrate my taste, but cannot explain what is actually good about something, I may be defending an identity rather than seriously discussing beauty.

This does not mean that works cannot be compared. We can discuss whether proportions are coherent, whether information is clear, and whether form supports expression. We can identify carelessness, perfunctory work, and imitation. What matters is directing judgment toward the object and the reasons, rather than turning a disagreement into contempt for another person.

For me, an aesthetic standpoint worth maintaining should at least withstand these questions: Why do I like this? In what situation does it work? Whose experience does my standard overlook? What kind of work might make me willing to change my mind?

A provisional distinction between aesthetic judgment and taste

I want to propose a temporary distinction that helps discussion, rather than announce the only correct definitions of these terms.

Aesthetic judgment is closer to how we perceive, distinguish, and evaluate. Taste is closer to the tendencies those judgments form through our choices over time.

Knowing how to appreciate different forms does not mean wanting to bring all of them home. Recognizing the merits of a work does not mean that it suits one's own life.

“I can see that it is good” and “I would choose it” can coincide, but they can also remain separate.

This distinction matters to me. Without it, learning about aesthetics can become memorizing an approved list: which buildings, paintings, and brands one ought to like to demonstrate understanding.

I would rather learning produce a different result: more attentive looking, more honest feeling, and more precise expression of judgment. Where we once could only say, “I cannot explain it; it just does not look right,” we become able to identify the difficulty. Where we once followed other people's preferences, we become able to acknowledge that something is widely respected but does not move us.

Knowledge can increase our opportunity to understand something, but it should not force us to perform a feeling we do not have.

Equally, genuine openness is not simply insisting, “This is what I like, and it is none of your business.” Not connecting with a work on first encounter does not mean it will never have anything to offer. We can give it time, and leave room for our own experience to change.

Why discuss beauty in ordinary people's lives?

Talk of aesthetics can quickly turn toward masters, masterpieces, museums, or expensive ways of living.

I would rather begin with ordinary life.

How can we express an idea clearly? How can we arrange a home with limited space and a limited budget? How can we find the right expression for a gift? How can everyday objects become not merely usable, but things we enjoy living with?

In the contemporary Chinese context, discussing these questions also means acknowledging practical pressures. Work must be delivered, renovation costs controlled, and many conditions of life cannot be changed at will. We should not stand in a privileged position and blame others for failing to turn their lives into beautiful photographs.

I especially do not want to summarize the problem by declaring that “Chinese people have no aesthetic sense.” Such a judgment comes too easily and does little to produce understanding.

Rather than labeling people, I want to ask: If someone is continually expected to get things right, finish quickly, and meet established standards, how much opportunity do they have to express their feelings seriously? If art education is understood mainly as mastering techniques and passing examinations, where should appreciation, comparison, discussion, and judgment take place?

Mocking the public cannot answer these questions.

I hope this series offers neither another anxiety-producing checklist nor a reminder of how much “aesthetic capital” one still lacks. I hope it offers a practice that can begin with whatever is close at hand: look again, try a comparison, describe the difference, and ask why it matters to you.

Beauty should not become available to people only after they reach a particular income, status, or lifestyle.

Beauty is neither only in the object nor only in the mind

An old question remains unavoidable: Is beauty objective or subjective?

For now, I prefer to approach it through relationships.

An object has its own structure: proportion, rhythm, material, color, content. These do not disappear because we fail to notice them. But a particular experience emerges when a particular person encounters that object with their memories, knowledge, bodily sensations, and circumstances.

The same old photograph means something different to a stranger and to the person pictured in it. Disagreeing about whether it is moving does not necessarily mean that one of them has seen it incorrectly.

One working hypothesis of mine is that beauty involves both how an object is organized and whose experience it enters, and in what way.

This is not a proven universal law, nor an attempt to solve every problem with the word “relationship.” It is simply a reminder not to focus exclusively on objects or exclusively on personal preferences.

Furthermore, a person can use a work to let someone else feel something that previously existed only within their own mind. A passage of writing, a form, or a photograph can become an interface between two inner worlds.

The other person says, “You have expressed a feeling I could not put into words.” In that moment, more than information has arrived. A connection in understanding has formed.

This is the “subject–object–intersubjectivity” relationship that continues to interest me: how I give experience a perceptible form, and how another person recognizes something of their own experience in it. Resonance need not mean complete agreement. It can also mean seeing the other person for the first time through our differences.

Still, resonance does not exhaust beauty. Moving someone is not automatically the same as being beautiful, still less as being true or good. A persuasive presentation can carry a mistaken idea; an appealing form can conceal a real problem.

That is why beauty and science should be discussed together: neither dismissing feeling nor allowing feeling to decide in place of evidence.

When generation becomes easier, judgment cannot be omitted

AI makes me want to write about these questions even more.

My concern is not only whether it can draw, write, or design, but a question closer to the person using it: If generating ten options becomes easier than generating one used to be, how do we decide which to keep?

If making something “more polished” or “more professional-looking” becomes easy, the next questions are: Is it accurate? What does it express? Who is it for? What does it offer beyond conforming to a familiar appearance?

Without answers, it becomes easy to fall back on vague instructions: make it more sophisticated, give it more texture, make it more impressive.

The result may become increasingly finished while moving further from what we actually wanted to say.

I do not want to use this to declare that “aesthetic judgment is the last moat in the age of AI.” That is too convenient. It turns a complex problem into another slogan.

I would rather make a specific demand: when tools make expression easier, we still need to articulate aims, distinguish differences, understand context, and take responsibility for the result we adopt.

Generative capability answers “What else can be made?” Human judgment must also answer “Why this one?”

That judgment does not have to rely exclusively on human intuition. Tools, knowledge, and other people's opinions can all help. But accepting a result should not be mistaken for having understood the reasons for choosing it.

Beginning with an honest “why”

I want to continue writing along these lines.

Sometimes I will start with an everyday object and ask why it feels comfortable or awkward. Sometimes I will examine distinctions among beauty, aesthetics, art, aesthetic judgment, and taste. Sometimes I will turn to scientific research to see under which conditions my intuitions hold. At other times I will return to design and AI practice, testing whether attractive-sounding principles actually help us make better things.

When discussing research, I will try to distinguish evidence from interpretation. When making personal judgments, I will make my standpoint clear. This series does not need to pretend to know everything, and it should not package uncertain ideas as settled conclusions.

I hope it will speak to anyone willing to look carefully and feel attentively, not just those already familiar with the vocabulary.

We do not have to learn every theory before we are entitled to discuss beauty. We can begin with something specific: a moment of liking, a feeling of discomfort, or a response we cannot quite explain.

Then ask one more question: Why?

The purpose of Beauty and Science is not to prescribe what you should like. It is to explore with you how “I feel” can become a more considered, richer judgment—one we can also communicate to others.

This is the beginning.