"Beauty is Quantifiable"?

Question

I got into a very heated argument tonight regarding this statement. My position was (and still stands) that beauty, truly is in the eye of the beholder.

My architect uncle however has a PhD and awards and disagrees. He says Beauty is Quantifiable.

Art in fact, is only beautiful if the Critics agree it is because they have the eye for it.

I said that well may be true but at the end of the day, The greatest tasting wine in the world is the one that YOU think is the best.

Response was that I am being 'politcal' and an 'anarchist' -

I understand Wine tasting is an art form. I understand its very complex and I respect the art form.

But I do not think beauty is quantifiable.

I cannot defend my argument with witty quotes and clever rhetoric. I am not a university graduate and so my arguments were all dismissed as uneducated.

I felt beauty was killed in front of my eyes and I am upset.

I do not know how to defend my position.

Answer 1

It's hard to defend you position, because it's hard to imagine how someone can possibly disagree with your position. It's all too easy to imagine how someone can be a pretentious !@#$ without even realizing it.

Of course beauty is subjective.

I am an anarchist, but to defer your subjective judgement to someone else's subjective judgement is incredibly political. To condemn you for being political for not being political is as absurd as this whole situation.

Answer 2

Whether one likes it or not, there seems to be two dimensions to the issue of aesthetic merit (or "beauty"). One is subjective, that is, if something aesthetically appeals to you. The other is "critical appraisal", that is, whether it measures up to criteria that is laid down by "experienced" observers of the art in question. So you might find a painting by an artist very beautiful, while those who are well versed in that kind of art might say it is rubbish. Actually, I do not think these different approaches are necessarily incompatible. Under "critical appraisal" I think an art form is assessed as a good or bad example (of its type) - not whether it is "beautiful" etc. It may well be beautiful - but that it is not the business of critical appraisal.