On Belief and the Making of All Things Beautiful and Sublime: Creation by Ordinance and Destruction by Chaos

摘要

This is a study of beauty as a construct and a property of structural composition. I examine alternate possibilities of structural compositions, linguistics, or material arguments that beauty, impossible in utter chaos, might not be definitely found in order, but the latter is essential thereto. A distinction is also made between complex systems of order found in nature, often qualified as organic-the seemingly free and flowing forms found in formal sophistication beyond simple geometrical reduction-and the absence of order as pure chaos. Beauty is examined through order from historical linguistic, perceptual, and systemic constructivist perspectives, along with the sublime and the harmonious. Linguistically, order is a term of convergence of the seemingly disparate streams of significance of rank-in society, religion, and the belief in collective constants-and ornament is a term of bearing beauty and enhancement of taste that emanates from within the structure and should not be reduced to superficial application. I cite costume, including accessories of weaponry, as moments of proximity between style, purpose, utility, and the collective as semiotic bearer of meaning in culture and social order.