[Fis] Fwd: What is Art? The Missing Link

[Francesco Rizzo]

Dear Pedro, Suni, Laszio and all,

 thank you for having called or re-called into question the art of
love or the love of art as

I have done throughout my long research: Science and faith are the
cause and effect of love, Well done,

 Francesco

Cari Pedro, Suni, Laszio e tutti,

grazie per aver chiamato o ri-chiamato in causa l'arte dell'amore o l'amore
dell'arte come ho fatto anch'io in tutta la mia lunga ricerca: La scienza e
la fede sono causa ed effettodell'amore, Bravi.

Francesco



Cari Pedro, Suni, Laszio e tutti,
grazie per aver chiamato o ri-chiamato in causa l'arte dell'amore o l'amore
dell'arte
come ho fatto anch'io in tutta la mia lunga ricerca: La scienza e la fede
sono causa
ed effetto dell'amore, Bravi
Francesco

Il giorno gio 29 gen 2026 alle ore 09:29 Csáji László Koppány <
csaji.koppany en gmail.com> ha scritto:

> Dear Pedro,
> Thank you so much for your refreshment of the conversation of art. You are
> perfectly
> well pointed love as a common denominator, bridging towards animals by the
> human
> evolution, but seems flowering in our homo sapiens emotional complexity.
> Altruism
> might also link to this branch of emotional relationship towards "others"
> (parents, child,
> pair, and beyond, as you wrote). I am thinking on how art interweaves this
> emotional
> factor. In a way, we also has an emotional relationhip towards our own
> artworks or some
> of the others, that can lead to a communal extatic experience (e.g.
> rock/punk etc.
> concerts). We should think on examples which can help us imagining what we
> express.
>
> As for Paul's thoughts, yes, it is important to think of "expanding
> individual potentials
> and accumulating surpluses of rich and fulfilling personal experiences".
> According to
> my 3D vectortial model, Pedro was talking about the "experimental"
> (emotional) part,
> and you shitfed it towards the creative (human potential) part. Both are
> extreemley
> important. The third vector is communication that is in fact linking to
> love, too.
>
> Best regards,
>                             Laszlo
>
>
> Paul Suni <paul.p.suni en gmail.com> ezt írta (időpont: 2026. jan. 28., Sze,
> 20:48):
>
>> Dear Pedro,
>>
>> You bring up crucially important points about art as embodying shared
>> aesthetic forms (Clynes); art as nourishment (extra-trophic), and the
>> taking in and metabolization of aesthetic nutrients as a matter of
>> biological capability - not all aesthetic nutrients can be absorbed by all
>> organisms. Among humans there is selectivity based on capability and taste
>> (or the lack of taste), which occurs on a spectrum from high art (extreme
>> art) to unexceptional mass productions of demi/pseudo art. You end your
>> commentary appropriately noting that such nourishment may be essential for
>> social wellbeing. I agree that wellbeing, art and love belong intimately
>> together, as you emphasize. I think what you are trying to say is
>> provocative and very valuable, but let me nitpick on that a bit, if I may.
>>
>> As a student of wellbeing, I hold it as self-evident that the individual
>> is the primal unit of wellbeing, and I have yet to make the cognitive leap
>> from individual wellbeing to social wellbeing, but I imagine that your
>> reference to social wellbeing is actually to the social context within
>> which individual wellbeing is potentially realized, rather than the
>> experience of wellbeing itself. That would keep us on the same page. You
>> see, my prejudiced view of *social* wellbeing is that it is a particular
>> kind of discourse, a technology of persuasion and oftentimes a coercive
>> language game, whose primary function in groups is putting people in their
>> place and teaching them lessons - socialization, in other words: For
>> example, " if Paul does not agree with this academic committee's notion of
>> wellbeing, Paul should not be regarded as one of us. Paul must produce and
>> accept the kinds of aesthetic nutrients that this committee approves. We
>> are one."
>>
>> Above all, the collective cannot experience any particular aesthetic form
>> on an individual's behalf. Socialization makes collectives happy, by fiat.
>> You see, there is that which the self-identified communist New York Mayor
>> Zohran Mamdani calls, " The warmth of collectivism." That warmth is
>> probably an expansive, love-like feeling inside Mamdani, which may be
>> catalyzed by visions of happy masses singing the praises of the collective,
>> where everyone is of academically endorsed race, gender and moral
>> sentiments.
>>
>> Love ostensibly begins in neoteny, and expands into the social domain,
>> where it can be harnessed as a persuasive technology for political,
>> religious or simply sadistic purposes. Mamdani's idea of the warmth of
>> collectivism brings to my mind Hitler's ovens at Auschwitz and the hell
>> that Mao's cultural revolution put Chinese intellectuals through. I am also
>> reminded of the unspeakable plight of artists and composers in the Soviet
>> Union, not to speak of the countless exploitative love cults throughout
>> history.
>>
>> Nevertheless, love is the perfect correlate of art, in a fundamental
>> sense. Although art does occur in contractive and hateful contexts such as
>> the exuberant manufacture of brutal postmodern ugliness in universities, I
>> choose to regard that kind of academically inspired art as inauthentic - as
>> art in name only. There is no wellbeing in it. The most productive
>> conversations about art that I can imagine involve the notion of art as
>> expanding individual potentials and accumulating surpluses of rich and
>> fulfilling personal experiences - spiritual wealth.
>>
>> Having said that, we must ask what is human potential and what makes an
>> experience rich and fulfilling? I have much to say about that, but I've
>> said enough. Science might quickly retort, as a reflex, that what makes an
>> experience rich and fulfilling is natural selection. Academic literature is
>> replete with rather infantile mannerisms on how to deflect the conversation
>> from the personal interior to impersonal explanations. It is the
>> quintessential mark of academia to silence and cancel interiors -
>> especially  of " the right people."
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Paul
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 12:34 PM Pedro C. Marijuán <
>> pedroc.marijuan en gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear All,
>>>
>>> It is a pity that we have not provided sufficient discussion yet on the
>>> link between biological capabilities (at least, in advanced mammals) and
>>> the emergence of human aesthetic/artistic impulses.
>>> I will make some crazy comments or bold speculations, as you prefer.
>>>
>>> As was pointed weeks ago, in quite different animal species there
>>> appears a clear preference for shapes, colors, movements, compositions,
>>> etc. that show aesthetic value for the human observer. Almost universally
>>> it is related to mating, courtship and also to the rearing of the
>>> offspring. Mammalian parenting, for instance, includes hormonal,
>>> neurological, and social mechanisms with ad hoc forms of sound & visual
>>> communication, lullabies, songs, etc. I referred days ago to Manfred
>>> Clynes' sentic forms--quite easy to find in the way mammals (and humans)
>>> produce their sounds and making "adorable" to their creatures. It is a
>>> common trait of mammalian placental clades (quite probably).
>>>
>>> Well, that stock of frequently (neotenic) preferences for forms and
>>> sounds, and related emotions, gets expanded along human evolution. Again,
>>> courtship, man-female bonding, and child rearing are in the center. A term
>>> almost absent from any discussions appears: "love". It is at the very
>>> nucleus of our species survival. Yes. It creates a transcendent attachment
>>> to your pair, to your children--and beyond. Falling in love is something
>>> that in my opinion is not far from the complex that generates the extreme
>>> forms of art, those of the very, very few that have civilization
>>> consequences. Actually, that capability would be distributed along a
>>> continuum, with most people unable to feel or sense real or extreme
>>> artworks. But of course, the need for the "extra trophic" keeps being
>>> almost universal on the human sociotype, as I was arguing days ago
>>> regarding entertainment industries, mass music, tourism, etc. --and this
>>> generates a continuous stream of demi or pseudo arts. Well, they are needed
>>> for social well being, presumably, certainly. They are arts too.
>>>
>>> And that was all!
>>> With love--Pedro
>>>
>>>  , El 21/01/2026 a las 1:16, Csáji László Koppány escribió:
>>>
>>> Dear John, Marcus, Louis, Eric, Mark, and all FiS colleagues,
>>> We have witnessed excellent argumentations that were both inspiring and
>>> thought provking. I am grateful to participate.
>>> I circulate around an easy question after all these considerations: how
>>> the cellars' cognitive functions, self-cognition, and consciousness relate
>>> to each other, and how "emotion" as a factor links to them. Theoretically,
>>> all living creatures differ from crystals, stones, fluid, or aeriform
>>> materials by having a kind of "decision-making"--an ability of "willing"
>>> that gives them a "plus".
>>> Nevertheless, this ability is not an art form; it is just a differentia
>>> specifica between living ones and those that exist without a
>>> decision-making gift (capability). Art seems to be a step further, which
>>> elevates the material environment to a level that could be called
>>> "super-consciousness", or something like that. Super-consciousness empowers
>>> us not only to shape the world but to imagine it in another way, and create
>>> "new realities"--in a way that would not be possible physically.
>>> This kind of imagination--that exceeds the animals' "rationality"
>>> (causability?), creativity, and communicative acts...
>>> Can we specify--and how can we?--such a "plus" (I called it a "human
>>> spark" in my initial paper), or is this evolutionary thesis just a delusion?
>>> Cheers,
>>>                László
>>>
>>> Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 en gmail.com> ezt írta (időpont: 2026. jan. 19.,
>>> H, 10:05):
>>>
>>>> Yes! Thank you Joe!
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 at 08:33, <joe.brenner en bluewin.ch> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear John,
>>>>>
>>>>> We have not talked to each other recently, but I follow your work with
>>>>> interest and wanted to applaud the last three lines of your 19.1 note: ... "the
>>>>> 'logic' of the Cosmos. Symbiogenesis is the mechanism by which life has
>>>>> acquired the logic of the Cosmos. In other words there is a continuum from
>>>>> the foundations of the Cosmos to life that is expressed in art."
>>>>>
>>>>> The image it evoked was that of my sculptor father, Michael Brenner,
>>>>> making a bust of me at age 10 in his studio in New York. He danced around
>>>>> his easel in a frenzy *(frénésie) *, chopping away at the emerging
>>>>> marble head, sweating and grunting. Art comes more easily to many, but I
>>>>> suggest that its becoming is always partly unconscious, an expression of
>>>>> the energetic foundations of existence.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Joe
>>>>>
>>>>> ------but ---- Message d'origine ----------
>>>>> De : JOHN TORDAY <jtorday en ucla.edu>
>>>>> À : fis <fis en listas.unizar.es>
>>>>> Date : 17.01.2026 22:58 CET
>>>>> Sujet : [Fis] What is Art?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear FIS, I am of the opinion that art is an expression of
>>>>> consciousness, raising the question Art as to what consciousness is? I fell
>>>>> down this 'rabbit hole' twenty years ago, having performed a series of
>>>>> experiments to understand how and why Parathyroid Hormone-related Protein
>>>>> (PTHrP) is necessary for the formation of alveoli in the lung (Rubin
>>>>> LP, Kovacs CS, De Paepe ME, Tsai SW, Torday JS, Kronenberg HM. Arrested
>>>>> pulmonary alveolar cytodifferentiation and defective surfactant synthesis
>>>>> in mice missing the gene for parathyroid hormone-related protein. Dev Dyn.
>>>>> 2004 Jun;230(2):278-89)? The duplication of the PTHrP Receptor gene during
>>>>> the water-land transition amplified all of the vertebrate physiologic
>>>>> adaptations to land- lungs, kidneys, skeleton, skin- and since PTHrP is a
>>>>> stretch-sensitive gene, I tested the hypothesis that PTHrP mediated the
>>>>> vertebrate adaptation to the force of gravity. If cells are exposed to zero
>>>>> gravity they lose their differentiated phenotypes (i.e. they devolve), and
>>>>> when yeast are exposed to zero gravity they cannot conduct a calcium flux,
>>>>> meaning that they are unconscious. Moreover, human consciousness has been
>>>>> driven by bipedalism (Torday JS. A central theory of biology. Med
>>>>> Hypotheses. 2015 Jul;85(1):49-57), freeing our forelimbs for tool
>>>>> making, including language as a tool, and locomotion. Importantly, both
>>>>> language and locomotion are under control by the FoxP2 gene, so that
>>>>> positive selection pressure for FoxP2 would have coordinately stimulated
>>>>> language and locomotion, expressed through our hands and minds as art of
>>>>> all kinds- literature, painting, sculpture, music- in other words, art is a
>>>>> manifestation of our need to communicate with our environment and with
>>>>> other humans.
>>>>>
>>>>> Furthermore, all of the above is due to the evolution of homeostatic
>>>>> control of energy due to Symbiogenesis (Sagan, 1967), or the assimilation
>>>>> of factors in the environment that threaten homeostasis, including the
>>>>> elements in the Cosmos, the latter being an exaptation (Gould and Vrba,
>>>>> 1982) of Stellar Nucleosynthesis (Hoyle, 1946), or the serial chemical
>>>>> reaction of hydrogen and helium to form the stars, the elements being their
>>>>> byproducts in the exact order of their atomic masses as thec
>>>>> Your comments and criticisms are welcomed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best, John
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Fis mailing list
>>>>> Fis en listas.unizar.es
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Mark William Johnson
>>>> Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
>>>> University of Manchester
>>>>
>>>> Department of Science Education
>>>> University of Copenhagen
>>>>
>>>> Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
>>>> University of Liverpool
>>>> Phone: 07786 064505
>>>> Email: johnsonmwj1 en gmail.com
>>>> Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!ULu8P4JDQsfKrpuGKv7ZP1KuhD1r-f6CxOomdQKC01RwHyorSqHgI2q7plQjkcRYQkUyWs9ezpu4hmLuO22tFP_HIrHe$ 
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sy7jan0S4s1YFJpHuN4D-sV3gAfrxhhzBQF7S5MiBU45idZ4yPypxUsX1z9vO1PzMfnDub5JA9QC0iwpcgYHY1M$>
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>>>
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