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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Dear All,
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<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">I have followed this
fascinating thread with great interest. Pedro's comment on getting to
the 'root' of the reason for art and the appreciation of beauty has
motivated me to comment now, rather than previously, since the prior
thrust of the discussion has focused on our human sensibilities, and
my work is about cells. However, any discernment of a 'root' of an
aesthetic impulse must eventually include consideration of how cells
operate, since we are all cellular constructs. I hope you will find
this alternative take on the matter interesting and not off-topic.</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">I have published about the
empirically verified behaviors of all cells. Those observations and
experiments confirm that cells operate within a compact narrative of
consistent behaviors since their origin as their means of dealing
with their obligatory context of the ambiguity of biological
information (previously presented with Mike Levin).</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">All cells are intelligent
and engaged in measuring ambiguous environmental cues as
infocomputation for (value) and valence (subjective experiences at
scale ). I defend that cells have experiences at scale because all
cells have defined homeorhetic preferences that they maintain but
also adjust in context as differential rates of dynamic flux. Kant
had intuited that all learning derives from experiences and cells are
certainly learning systems.</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">Cells consistently display
six behavioral attributes: collaboration, cooperation, co-dependence,
generally mutualizing competition, respect for the self-integrity of
other cells, and they consistently abide by the principle that each
is served best by serving others. The proof is seamless
multicellularity, enabling you to read this now. None of this is
conjectural and is easily observable. Indeed, cancer is destructive
since it does not follow those rules with normative cells, only with
like-kind cancer cells (as a different form of selfhood).</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">Notably, cells act in these
patterns because this is how they form their sense of the world,
i.e., glean at their scale some understanding of the status of their
interior versus the external environment, essential to maintaining
their preferential states and naturally implicit to their survival.
This is how they form their grasp of reality, from which all
problem-solving must issue. After all, cells are not programmed
robots: they are decision-making and problem-solving agents.</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">I would offer that the
deepest root of art is an expression of our cellular selves as a
search to find answers to our yearning questions and doubts about
reality, on the one hand, and as an explicit expression of a state of
preference in context on the other. These two cellular imperatives
merge as our expression of art and govern our need to create it. This
also explains why some art is beautiful to some and execrable to
others, and some art is seen as illuminating to one individual and
ridiculous to another. It is always an individual, subjective
assessment that reflects an exclusive interior state.</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">Our consciousness consists
of doubts and preferences. As I often say, 'being is doubt', and I
now offer that 'life is preferences'. Art is each individual's
idiosyncratic attempt to resolve personal doubts, expressively
illustrate its effect on the artist, and satisfy a preferential
state. Furthermore, since art is shared with others almost without
exception, it is a communal activity, conforming with the innate
cellular root behavior of 'you serve yourself best by serving
others'.</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">We are cellular beings, and
all of evolution is a narrative of the continuous exaptation of
unicellular traits channeled and repurposed at successive scales . In
each instance, it serves to enhance the deployment of information to
problem-solve in our unending struggle to grasp external reality.
These exaptations are tools of continuous cellular natural learning,
which requires an unending exploration the environment through
alternative paths. Art is one means by which this deeply rooted
impulse, so essential to life, is satisfied.</p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">After all, isn't this
exactly what we are currently engaged in within this forum and is it
not its own form of Art?</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Best,
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Bill
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On Friday, January 30, 2026 at 01:18:08 PM MST, Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com> wrote:
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<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix">Dear Laszlo, Paul, Francesco... --and
FIS Colleagues,</div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><br clear="none">
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<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix">For the sake of bringing some coherence
to the 'underground' ideas on art that have been produced lately,
let me try sort of a scheme that may parallel what Laszlo has
presented on the "externalized" art. He has brought order and
clarity on a phenomenon full of complexities and
pseudo-complications. The fact that Krassimir has successfully
connected it with his own approach to Info Theory is revealing.
Could we now draft an accompanying something on the interiors?</div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix">If we follow the metaphor of a tree,
the three proposed vectors of creativity (originality),
communication, and experience seem to capture the main 'branches'
of the observable art experience, of the art phenomenon. What
about the 'roots'? Some of us have argued on the biological
factors, three of them could be:</div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><br clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix">--Sense of play. Plenty of
behavioral/evolutionary studies... "<span class="yiv8263647330YrbPuc"></span><span>Animal
play remains a complex and variable behavioral phenomenon across
a wide range of mammals, and their mechanisms and functions are
not yet ... an enigmatic phenomena" It extends to multiple
species of birds, reptiles, etc. Human neoteny has potentiated
and enlarged this sense in adults and at the whole social level.
The artist plays, listen to Picasso, or to any modest
practitioner.</span></div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><br clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix">--Emotional engagement. As discussed,
my take is that the intense emotions related to human pair
bonding, essentially love, are conflated with the above playing
with forms, sounds, words, narratives, etc. Let us remember
Clynes' sentics (thanks, Jerry). It is a gradation, from the
superficial to the extreme. </div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><br clear="none">
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<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix">-- Aesthetic impulse. I completely
agree that Nature is full of Beauty, that in plenty of species we
can appreciate elegance, <span>majesty, gracefulness... Why so
much beauty in nature?? No response.</span>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span>In science we have to look for
plausible explanations, or accepting we don't have them, and
not parroting the selectionist dogma. Well, the aesthetic
impulse, in our species, looks again conflated with the pair
bonding complex. In our societies, beauty and elegance --or
their surrogates-- are looked for, and played with, so
intensely in all the relational world... </span></div>
</div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span><br clear="none">
</span></div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span>Far more should be worked out,
but these three initial pills at the 'root' may help a little to
cohere with the 'branches'.</span></div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span><br clear="none">
</span></div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span>Best --Pedro</span></div>
<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span><br clear="none">
</span></div>
<div id="yiv8263647330yqt76429" class="yiv8263647330yqt7793508890"><div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span>---Helas! Laszlo and colleagues,
one of the conditions of the New Year Lecture is the January
term... Better if concluding comments appear during next days. </span></div>
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<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span><br clear="none">
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<div class="yiv8263647330moz-cite-prefix"><span>Antonyms of ELEGANCE:
flamboyance,</span> El 29/01/2026 a las 18:00, Paul Suni
escribió:<br clear="none">
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<blockquote type="cite">
</blockquote></div></div><div id="yiv8263647330yqt39455" class="yiv8263647330yqt7793508890"><div><div dir="ltr">Dear Pedro,
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<div>You opened a wonderfully complex topic connecting art, love
and wellbeing and challenged us to think about it in the
context of biological capabilities. Whereas László's
mathematical approach to art no doubt has value, the messy
good stuff of interiors including love and individual
wellbeing, also remains under-explored, in courageous ways. </div>
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<div>The Satin Bower Bird is an amazing artist, whose creations
of bowers exceeds the aesthetic creative capacities of most
individual humans, in my personal opinion. Science says that
the Bower Bird creates its elaborate and aesthetically complex
formations because of evolutionary sexual selection, but I
strongly disagree with Science. </div>
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<div>I assert that the male Bower Bird engages in its sustained
and extremely focused artistic activity, because it provides a
rich and fulfilling interior experience for the individual
bird, which could be partly substantiated through chemical
analyses of its neurotransmitter metabolism. It is a
meticulous labor of love that has absolutely nothing to do
with reproduction. </div>
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<div>After all, the birds do not participate in scientific
discourse concerning reproduction or evolutionary theory, at
all. <span class="yiv8263647330gmail-Apple-converted-space"> Furthermore, </span>I
hypothesize that the bird enjoys the specific degree of
difficulty of his creation, which is a biochemically testable
hypothesis, I claim. This raises the question of the bird's "
human potential." The bird spends 9 months of the year toiling
with its creation, and it sticks to his aesthetic project for
as long as 30 years, like a true artist - a veritable
Leonardo. There are easier ways to get laid, but toiling away
is far more deeply meaningful for the bird.</div>
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<div>The artistic activity of the Bower Bird nourishes
its little bird soul with expansive, love-like feelings
ostensibly not entirely unlike Zohran Mamdani experiences when
he engages with his idea of the " warmth of collectivism." In
its creative love state, the bird is surely as oblivious to
the genetic implications of its artistic activity as Mamdani
is to the demonstrably potential genocidal implications of his
love for collectivism. This state of ignorance is extremely
relevant to our discourse on art. I do not mean to offer the
analogy as a joke.</div>
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<div>Young male Bower Birds have the biopsychological capacity
to develop their personal aesthetic sensibilities through
sustained independent study of the works of senior Bower
Birds. This can be seen from the countless sketchy assemblages
that must be produced during their artistic development,
before the first satisfactory bower is produced, and female
birds care to take a discerning look, which requires an
aesthetic sensitivity, no doubt!</div>
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<div>That brings me to the delight that the male Satin Bower
Birds bring to the female Satin Bower Birds, who spend
considerable time enjoying and carefully assessing the
aesthetic merits of beautiful bowers as well as admiring the
cognitive and practical prowess of their sensitive male
suitors. I emphasize to scientists that most of what I say
could be scientifically substantiated, if science adopted a
mature attitude towards sentience, and regarded the rich and
fulfilling experiences of Bower Birds as important.</div>
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<div>Thank you Pedro and FIS colleagues for tolerating some of
my surely annoying repetitions. I have received encouragement
for them in private communications, and hope that the academic
trance in which we are supposed to be held may begin to lift
slightly, in my lifetime. Unfortunately, it is the way of
academia to protect its psychopathic hold on its intellectual
hegemony by shifting content in and out of the same old frames
only to change the race, gender, politics and sex organs of
its victims, while disseminating its toxicities into society
at large.</div>
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<div>Cheers,</div>
<div>Paul</div>
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