Chaos and Experimental Aesthetics

a preliminary chronology from Bolts from the Blue, RHA, in press

32,000 BC: The canon of Lespugues,

anticipation of Vincenzo (bottom up?) CH-1

3,000 BC: The bethels of Scotland,

anticipation of Pythagoras CH-2

500 BC: Pythagoras,

numerical aesthetics (for music and geometry) CH-2

400 BC: Plato,

beauty, morals, the good (top down), polygons, polyhedra CH-2

1588 AD: Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 1525 - 1591),

musician, student of Zarlino

father of Galileo, experiments on musical intervals

an official chronology from Aesthetics and Psychobiology, Berlyne, 1971

1860: Gustav Fechner publ Elements of Psychophysics,

founds first branch of exp psych (cf Berlyne, p. 11)

1865: Fechner exp on golden rectangles (cf Livio)

1871: Fechner exp on aesthetics of two versions of Holbein's Madonna

1876: Fechner publ Elementary Aesthetics, founds second branch

1933: Birkhoff, M = O/C (aesthetic measure = order/complexity)

1936: Davis, tests Birkhoff's theory

1938: Rashevsky, connects aesthetics with neurophysiology

and after the advent of chaos theory and fractal geometry, 1975

1993: Sprott, correlation of aesthetics and complexity

1996: Aks and Sprott, exp on aesthetics and complexity

continues from sprott, 1993

2001: Fred Abraham, Sprott, others

continues aks and sprott, 1996