Show Notes
Are homo sapiens the only organisms capable of creating and experiencing beauty? Can we find beauty in God? Why do we see the hand of an Artist in the Natural, if God does not exist?
Beauty is one of the most fundamental truths of the world. Everyone can understand it, but why? Where does evolution come from and what is its benefit to humanity? Nicholas Humphrey argues that our attraction to the beautiful is primarily a psychological phenomena, that we have used to train ourselves throughout history. His expansion upon Hopkins musing that "all beauty may be called rhyme" illuminates how our minds search for and reward a hunt for similarities, not identical matches, between objects, people, and organisms. If our body needs nutrients, our minds are stimulated by beauty.
Nicholas Humphrey is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics and a Bye Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. As a theoretical psychologist, his research focuses on the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. He is the author of twelve books, including Consciousness Regained (1983), The Inner Eye (1986), A History of the Mind (1992), Soul Searching (1995), The Mind Made Flesh (2002), Soul Dust (2011), and Sentience (2022). His honors include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the Pufendorf Medal, and the 2026 Dennett Prize, awarded by the International Center for Consciousness Studies for significant advances in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, or artificial intelligence.
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