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Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk untuk mengetahui jenis-jenis kedwimaknaan slogan produk kecantikan pada iklan di televisi. Penulis menggunakan teori kedwimaknaan menurut Murphy dan teori makna oleh Leech dalam mendukung analisa ini. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Dalam proses pengumpulan data, penulis mengidentifikasi semua slogan iklan kecantikan pada channel televisi Indonesia yang telah di tentukan, Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa ada dua jenis kedwimaknaan yang ditemukan dalam slogan produk kecantikan pada iklan tersebut. Dua tipe itu adalah polisemi dan homonim. Sedangkan maknanya yaitu konseptual dan konotatif yang sering ditemukan dalam proses analisa data.

La noción de traducción literaria que les proponemos en estas páginas se cimenta en tres conceptos: la belleza, definida por su relación con el vacío y lo ambiguo, la atracción que ejerce el texto origen sobre el lector-traductor y el efecto provocado tanto por el texto origen como por el traducido. La atracción, estrechamente relacionada con lo que nos gusta, con lo que podríamos denominar el efecto de lo bello, es considerada en estas páginas como el motor de la traducción, en cuanto que el lector-traductor debe ser seducido por el texto que va a traducir, al tiempo que intentar colmar la ausencia que lo interpela. En cuanto al efecto, que hay que saber aprehender si queremos reproducirlo en la traducción, está unido a la coherencia interna del texto, a las huellas del autor, a la ambigüedad inherente a la estética del texto. Resumiendo, el traductor debe consagrase al efecto que produce el texto, una vez haya encontrado su vía y su voz.

This research seeks to identify building exterior characteristics that are best liked, most pleasing, rated beautiful and exciting by architects. A methodology based on mixed research methods was developed. The study sought architect’s preferences for twelve different public buildings. Analysis of 68 responses to the survey questionnaire identified several building’s exteriors characteristics that were consistently most preferred aesthetically. Four formal attributes. Complexity, Order, Ambiguity, and Potency, each of which was measured by three variables, and one variable added to the ambiguity, so a total of 13 formal (cognitive / perceptual) variables were included in the study. The effects of these attributes on affective responses, i.e., Arousal and Evaluation, each of which was measured by three variables, were examined. The analysis of the scatter chart identifies the level of association between two dependent variables, aesthetic response and formal features. A medium to a strong relationship has been recognized between aesthetic response with moderate complexity and moderate to high levels of order and organization also with near high levels of novelty and mystery. Though, a weak correlation between the remaining of the dependent variables indicates a thin relationship. The higher the level of ambiguity in the exterior, the more excited the receiver. The higher the classification of mystery and novelty, the higher the degrees of excitement by the respondent. There is also a strong correlation between higher levels of polysemy and ratings of arousal, exciting and stimulation. The aesthetic evaluation (beauty) of the building depends and is influenced mainly by the preference of pleasure and admiration, and these three variables are affected by other variables such as ambiguity, complexity, and order. The aesthetic response is a complex process where each variable is affected by another variable, which ultimately leads to a comprehensive aesthetic evaluation.

The purpose of this study is to describe the mistakes of Indonesian language in the field of discourse on the advertising of products in Indonesia. The ads analyzed are food ads, drinks, beauty soaps, and others. This research uses descriptive method through two stages namely the stage of data collection and data analysis. The chosen research subject is advertising Indonesian products using written language. While the object is the analysis of errors in the Indonesian language in the field of discourse. The results obtained from this study were found 1 data referencing error usage, 2 data recovery use errors (substitution), 1 data ineffectiveness discourse because there is no impregnation, 1 data conjunction error, 1 data incoherent discourse, 2 error data that deviate from Indonesian language rules, and 2 data on force / ambiguity.

Regarding the verse 37 of Surah Ahzab , some traditions and stories have been narrated which come in the following in brief:“One day Prophet wanted Zayd ibn Harithah- his slave- do something for him, he came to his home. When he entered his home, he saw Zaynab bint Jahsh, the wife of Zayd. Her beauty surprised him. The Prophet fell in love with him and wished Zayd divorced her so he could marry her.” In the present study authenticity of this story has been studied. The method of this research is library and descriptive-analytic.After reviewing text and sources, it becomes clear that these traditions are not authentic, the source-based shortcoming is presence of weak narrators in the chain of narrators. Likewise, in the chain of narrators, we have seen Tabe’in or those who could not have been eye-witnesses of this story.Concerning the text of this tradition, it should be said that these traditions are not compatible with verses of Quran and the history of Prophet. Presence of ambiguity and discordance of these narrations with the infallibility of Prophet is another reason of rejecting this story.

Previous research has shown that manipulating the pitch of a face (tilting the face upward or downward) affects the perceived femininity, masculinity, attractiveness, and dominance of the given face. However, previous research has not considered the influence of direct eye gaze on dominance perceptions or the ambiguity surrounding the proposed social signals sent from a static face. The current research used 94 participants across two studies (women = 63%, age: M = 31). Stimuli varied in head pitch angle, eye gaze, and motion/static appearance. Participants rated the stimuli for levels of masculinity, femininity, attractiveness, and dominance. Both studies confirmed that pitching the face upward at incrementally increasing angles resulted in a linear increase in ratings of masculinity, physical dominance, and social dominance and a linear decrease in ratings of femininity, physical attractiveness, and behavioral allure. Study 2 showed that these effects can be dependent on either the perceived structural change of the face or the actual movement of the face, and these are different for each rating category. The perceived dimorphism, attractiveness, and dominance of a face will change dependent on the angle of pitch it is presented but also whether it is moving or not, where it is moving in space, and what direction it is moving.

Savage's foundation of expected utility is considered to be the most convincing justification of Bayesian expected utility and the crowning glory of decision theory. It combines exceptionally appealing axioms with deep mathematics. Despite the wide influence and deep respect that Savage received in economics and statistics, virtually no one touched his mathematical tools. We provide an updated analysis that is more general and more accessible. Our derivations are self-contained. This helps to better appreciate the depth and beauty of Savage's work and the foundations of Bayesianism, to teach it more easily, and to develop non-Bayesian generalizations incorporating ambiguity more efficiently.

In this essay I resource the philosophy and theology of Sergius Bulgokov, particularly his understanding of divine and human imaging, as a way of mapping human comportment towards the non-human material world in aesthetic terms. By comparing the development of his account of human action from his early Philosophy of Economy and his later dogmatic theology, I seek to render less disconcerting an ambiguity in Bulgakov’s work regarding human activity toward nature by contextualizing his early political philosophy within his later dogmatics. I argue that his later Trinitarian and Christological context more aptly suggests ways of viewing human action toward nature as aesthetic action animated by the perception of divinely created beauty. I then turn to Bulgakov’s views on iconographic art in order to show some theologically informed constraints and limits to aesthetic judgment and human creativity in the practice of iconographic writing that accord with Bulgakov’s broader theological anthropology.

This article examines Gautier’s novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) as an example of nineteenth-century French society’s interest and reluctance regarding male homosexuality, and the subsequent strategy of allusion that is used to discuss this topic. It analyses the method used by the male protagonist d’Albert to render his feelings for “Theodore” (the cross-dressed woman Madeleine de Maupin) culturally acceptable. D’Albert turns his allegedly monstrous homoerotic desire into an aesthetic quest by comparing “Theodore” to the god Hermaphroditus, who embodies perfect neoclassical beauty and whose harmonious combination of masculine and feminine traits idealizes sexual ambiguity. This article also contrasts d’Albert’s discursive strategy of discretion with Madeleine’s own openness regarding her lesbian feelings, thus highlighting the difference in treatment between male homosexuality and lesbianism in the nineteenth century. (In French)

We explore the crafting of interactive decoration for everyday artefacts. This involves adorning them with decorative patterns that enhance their beauty while triggering digital interactions when scanned with cameras. These are realized using an existing augmented reality technique that embeds computer readable codes into the topological structures of hand-drawn patterns. We describe a research through design process that engaged artisans to craft a portfolio of interactive artefacts, including ceramic bowls, embroidered gift cards, fabric souvenirs, and an acoustic guitar. We annotate this portfolio with reflections on the crafting process, revealing how artisans addressed pattern, materials, form and function, and digital mappings throughout their craft process. Further reflection on our portfolio reveals how they bridged between human and system perceptions of visual patterns and engaged in a deep embedding of digital interactions into physical materials. Our findings demonstrate the potential for interactive decoration, distilling the craft knowledge involved in creating aesthetic and functional decoration, highlight the need for transparent computer vision technologies, and raise wider issues for HCI’s growing engagement with craft.

Keats’s Lamia is known for its ambiguity, but critics fail to trace its cause. In Keats’s Letters , he reveals his split attitudes to women, similar to his ambiguous feelings towards Lamia. From his Letters , his creation of an ambivalent beauty is understood.

La plupart des sonnets malherbiens célébrent la beauté d’un objet du regard grâce à un dispositif de double vue reposant sur des systèmes de comparaison. Expression problématisante et problématique de ce processus, le concetto transforme cette beauté en objet de pensée, mais la dit en jouant avec les faux-semblants, miroitement d’une vérité cachée au cœur de l’apparence. Comme la parole prophétique, il dit quelque chose qui n’a pas été vu tant qu’il n’a pas été dit, et fait advenir l’objet dans l’espace du poème., Most of Malherbe’s sonnets celebrate the beauty of an object of the gaze thanks to a device of double vision which relies on systems of comparison. As a problematizing and problematic expression of this process, the concetto transforms this beauty into an object of thought, but declares this by playing with pretenses that gleam with a hidden truth at the heart of appearances. Like the words of a prophet, it says something which is not seen insofar as it was not said, and introduces the object into the space of the poem.

Tibetan Buddhism uses the method of moving through paradoxes and harnessing bodhicitta. They demonstrate the learning to dwell on the paradox of something being both right and wrong and someone being both angry and loving, and such practice stays within uneasiness without solidifying into a view. This in-between state is where the warrior stays and learns to handle uncertainty, ambiguity, compassion and sadness. Zen aesthetics considers impermanence as an integral part of beauty, culture of things as imperfect, incomplete offering a greater freedom of form, sublime, colour and simplicity.

Using nature poetry as a case study in developing awareness, Walpert argues that the use of image and attention to sensual specifics trains readers and writers to be mindful rather than rely on habit and scripts, in parallel with the ways that mindfulness cultivates a departure from habitual expectations. Walpert goes on to argue that nature poetry offers training in finding beauty and meaning in what might seem at a habitual first glance as unpleasant, a posture in sympathy with the non-judgmental approach of mindfulness and the non-attachment it cultivates. Walpert argues for the importance of the training in ambiguity that poetry offers, an ambiguity also cultivated by mindfulness. The chapter concludes with the practical utility of such training.

Tina, the only Yugoslav girls’ magazine, was published during the first half of the 1970s. Tina’s first issues were designed according to contemporary Western models, but the goal of making profit to its publishing house was reached only after the magazine adapted to the specific Yugoslav context of the time. Its fashion and beauty pages are analysed and compared with Angela McRobbie’s (1978) insight into the British Jackie magazine. The similarities are shown, while the differences are put into a wider context of the Western, women’s and girls’ magazines. An ambiguity of messages published on these pages should be ascribed to social but also economic differences within the group of readers Tina targeted, but the prevailing set of advice shows how the latest fashion trends could be followed by creative interventions into what was at girls’ disposal.

The present study explores the stylistic composition of Amjad Nasser’s short poem. The analysis covers the features of the experience, the poet’s awareness of its forms and his motivations. It is found that the poet is conscious of the composition of the genre, which has its own function and beauty, and a technical necessity representing a stylistic stage of his poetry. Such poetic revolutionizing is a self-attempt experience to diversify the poetic shape, mixed with human and artistic factors which express rebellion and rejection and prefer the stylistic composition of the short poem. He is also affected by the heritage of Arab and Western modernism. It is also found that the poet builds his short poem on a set of foundations and techniques, such as intensity, irony, satire, circular construction, connotation, flash, omission, poetic concentration, squeezed language, ambiguity, intertextuality, opening, etc.

Are challenging stimuli appreciated due to perceptual insights during elaboration? Drawing on the literature regarding aesthetic appreciation, several approaches can be identified. For instance, fluency of processing as well as perceptual challenge are supposed to increase appreciation: One group (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004) claims that fluency of processing increases appreciation. Others link aesthetics to engagement: Creation and manipulation of sense itself should be rewarding (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999). We experimentally tested the influence of insights during elaboration on liking. Pairs of stimuli - hardly detectable two-tone images including a face (Mooney face) and meaningless stimuli matched for complexity - were presented repeatedly. Having an insight as well as the intensity of the insight predicted subsequent gains in liking. This paper qualifies the role of insight (-aha!) on aesthetic appreciation through the effects of elaboration and problem-solving on understanding the processing of modern art.

ambiguity on some field, it can add a vagueness to make the listener in confuse, or it add a touch of beauty to make the listener happy, in the opposite sometimes it has bad effect on others. In the field of intercultural communication. Ambiguity led to Misunderstanding that cause a breaking down of the relationship among communicators. To avoid these mistakes that occur as result of ambiguity the learners should to know how to solve these issues. it has ben recognized that the learners of Arabic language as a foreign language encounter with Arabic sentences which involve lexical and structural ambiguity difficulites. This study explains how to solve these problems by providing some examples from Arabic language. To sum up, the ambiguity in Arabic language is more problematic than others. By providing some example on how disambiguate these sentences the learners of Arabic as foreign language will achieve the goal of communication.

Individuals that combine features of both genders-gender blends-are sometimes appealing and sometimes not. Heretofore, this difference was explained entirely in terms of sexual selection. In contrast, we propose that part of individuals' preference for gender blends is due to the cognitive effort required to classify them, and that such effort depends on the context in which a blend is judged. In two studies, participants judged the attractiveness of male-female morphs. Participants did so after classifying each face in terms of its gender, which was selectively more effortful for gender blends, or classifying faces on a gender-irrelevant dimension, which was equally effortful for gender blends. In both studies, gender blends were disliked when, and only when, the faces were first classified by gender, despite an overall preference for feminine features in all conditions. Critically, the preferences were mediated by the effort of stimulus classification. The results suggest that the variation in attractiveness of gender-ambiguous faces may derive from context-dependent requirements to determine gender membership. More generally, the results show that the difficulty of resolving social category membership-not just attitudes toward a social category-feed into perceivers' overall evaluations toward category members.

As Roland Barthes, among others, already pointed out, the relationship that Flaubert entertained with realism was quite ambiguous: although his main goal was a purely aesthetic one, he still needed reality to be reproduced and the fantasy of the ‘book about nothing’ always remained a fantasy. This study aims to explore further the diverse modes of such an ambiguity, which is attested by numerous quotes from the writer’s correspondence and which is also visible in the manuscripts: although the ‘beauty’ of the text remains the main goal, many corrections stem once again from the ideal of being faithful to reality. The realist ‘springboard’ is therefore an essential one, and, even if Flaubert hated to imagine he could belong to a literary school, his methodology made him a part of the group of realist writers of his time.

This study is to analyze fashion phenomenon according to the concept of the characteristics of freewheeling to explain the de-constructive, eclectic, avant-garde tendencies in Contemporary Fashion. This study is to elicit the aesthetic characteristics through 400 pieces of visual data analysis from 2001S/S to 2011F/W that have the characteristics of freewheeling, nontechnical experiments do away with the classical form. The oriental ideas include the thoughts of different tastes that break the stereotypes according to the Western values and the pursuit of unconventional beauty. These also insist that everything in the world including human-being, nature and creation is not divided into two equal parts, and even beauty and ugliness originated from one. This study is to find the possibility of interpreting oriental aesthetics with open concepts that transcends the boundaries of full availability, unlike the Western values that accommodate the relative concept of the pursuit of diversity. Therefore, integrated and systematic approaches of oriental aesthetics that place much value on the coexistence of antithetic concepts are needed to understand the ambiguity of complexity and diversity in Contemporary fashion design.

This study addresses the issue of v. 15 in 1 Cor 11:2-16 from the perspective of a veiling custom. If veiling is in view (the position adopted here), then how does one confront the difficulty of reconciling the overall context with the exceptional statement in v. 15 that long hair for a woman is a glory. If, as the text argues, long hair is to be taken as a “glory,” by what logic could a woman understand that she should place a veil upon her head? This article provides a way out of the dilemma by showing how a veil can serve the double function of reflecting the hair’s beauty while at the same time preserving a symbol of female modesty.

This is a scene from a fifth-grade mathematics class: Students are in pairs, chatting eagerly; some are making sketches, others are bending straws and rearranging them on the desk, and still others are scribbling a variety of words. After two minutes, I hit the bell and say, “Okay contestants, time to vote. Hands behind your backs!” The room is silent as arms pull away from the table. “Okay, choose!” I call out, and hands stretch forward. Some students curve their fingers to make an “O”; others point a thumb upward.

The title of Arthur C. Danto's Paul Carus Lectures on art and beauty confronts us with the characteristic ambiguity of the double genitive. On the one hand, The Abuse of Beauty can refer to the vio...

A painting by Australian artist Cherry Hood hangs in the hallway of my home. It depicts a young girl, aged six or seven, her head half turned to gaze back at the viewer. The left side of her face is illuminated by a silvery unseen light source. The other half is washed with a shadow that gathers into darkness below her neck. Her body is obscured. The child is beautiful: full-lipped, with large almond-shaped eyes. It’s not her beauty, however, which makes the portrait so compelling; it’s the ambiguous nature of her gaze. She fixes the viewer with a look that can be read as fear or defiance, depending on what the observer is inclined to see. Hood’s capacity to capture the ambiguity of children’s gazes — to make that ambiguity visible — is the hallmark of her extraordinary talent. The more I’ve studied the painting in my hallway, though, the less I see it as a portrait of a child and the more I’m inclined to see it as a portrait of myself or, indeed, of any other adult viewer.

This chapter reconsiders the claim that Sir Joshua Reynolds held to a form of Platonism. It argues that the challenges to this view are thin, being based on an ambiguity concerning what constitutes Platonism, a false dichotomy of either Platonic idealism or Lockean empiricism, and a historically untenable take on what Platonism entails and excludes. The author's claim is that Reynolds shows clear signs of affirming Platonic idealism, but holds to the later Neo- and Christian Platonist syntheses of Plato with Aristotelian epistemology and substance metaphysics. This metaphysic informs Reynolds' understanding of the education of artists-both its stages and aims. For the task of the artist has been to focus not on shadows but on substance. Unlike the novice who must be pointed toward experience to learn exactitude, the artist now understands Ideal beauty and the properties to which "modes of beauty" owe their origin. Keywords: Aristotelian epistemology; Lockean empiricism; metaphysics; Platonic idealism; Sir Joshua Reynolds

IS GENRE ESSENTIAL? The examination of genre is vital to a responsible reading of the Hamartigenia because its genre is uncertain. We can be certain about this uncertainty because the poem presents the reader with a number of contradictory but apparently reliable generic markers. The Hamartigenia is an epiphany of the ambiguity it proposes. It is a replica of the contrasting features found in the world, the ‘bina boni atque mali’ (8), which Marcion misreads. The generic ambiguity of the poem as a whole attempts to provide a replica of the apparent mix of order and disorder in the world post peccatum . The Hamartigenia is, it could be argued, a ‘text of the world’, and a text of a world which, while damaged by sin, is not utterly ruined: it is a world which projects, with apparent inconsistency, both the beauty of God's creation and the ugliness of sin found in that creation. The theist reader of the world is prompted to explain the presence of mala physica in a world created by a God who is proclaimed to be both good and omnipotent: is the world to be thought of as essentially good, despite floods, earthquakes and disasters? Comparable reactions to both the poem and the world are easily imaginable, as the reader is prompted, sometimes cajoled, into making decisions about what sort of poem the Hamartigenia essentially is.

Mathematics courses—pure or applied—and education courses, with pedagogical, didactic, and psychological contents are two groups of courses of which programs for training prospective high-school mathematics teachers commonly consist. They often are given in separate departments, with very little, if any, coordination among the instructors. Four independent problem solving centered bridging courses are described. They differ in the context which gives rise to the problems: (1) Mathematics problems that arise in the context of (strategy) games; (2) Mathematics problems that raise cognitive conflicts (paradoxes); (3) Mathematics problems that had a significant impact on the development of mathematics throughout its history; (4) Mathematics problems related to applications of mathematics and mathematical modeling. Ambiguity, contradictions, surprise, and paradoxes are the common thread of all the activities in these courses. This chapter focuses on the details of the first course, illustrating it by two sample tasks: (1) “Who gets first to 100?”, and (2) “Checker Board Jumps”. Emerging problem-solving activities are described and analyzed. The ultimate goal of the four-course series is to provide for a rich context in which prospective teachers can grasp the wide-scope nature of mathematics as a problem-posing/conjecturing and problem-solving/proving discipline, as well as the culture, beauty, and intellectual fulfillment of mathematics, so that they develop an enthusiastic attitude towards communicating these values to high-school students.

Etude de la reaction esthetique aux paysages industriels, incitee par l'oeuvre d'Arnold Benett (1867-1931) et theorie de l'habitat de Jay Appleton.

The past decade has witnessed the development of a significant body of research and theory concerning the areas of figurative language use and comprehension. The purpose of the present paper is to examine the broader implications of this research for contemporary cognitive psychology. The results of this examination reveal that cognitive psychology has dealt with figurative language as less important than literal language largely because of an implicit bias towards rationalistic philosophy and because of an unwillingness to deal with issues of ambiguity, novelty, beauty, and context; precisely those issues made salient by current research on figurative language.

Certain aesthetic principles form the basis for the special miryoku (fascination) and beauty of onnagata gender acts. The major onnagata aesthetic principles are yōshikibi, the beauty of stylization; uso, the fiction or lie; aimai, ambiguity and transformativity; iroke, eroticism and sensuality; zankoku, torture; and kanashimi, deepening sorrow. Yōshiki (stylization), or the controlled design of all performance elements, is the fundamental strategy that governs the aesthetic canons for onnagata gender performance. Onnagata are aware of these principles and use them strategically to build a role’s central motif.

The subject of architectural proportional systems in the history of architecture, the topic of this special collection of essays in Architectural Histories , has long been characterized by a fundamental ambiguity: the word and concept of proportion simultaneously signify two unrelated and in some ways opposite meanings. Proportion can refer to ratios, or it can refer to architectural beauty. In this introduction to the papers that follow, Matthew A. Cohen proposes a simple clarification of this ambiguity as a framework for continued discussion of this subject: that whenever scholars use the word proportion, they specify whether they intend ‘proportion-as-ratio’ or ‘proportion-as-beauty’. The frequent blending of these meanings today, Cohen argues, is a survival of attitudes toward proportional systems in architecture that were prevalent as long ago as the early Renaissance. Cohen proposes an alternative to Rudolf Wittkower's paradigmatic ‘break-away’ theory of the history of proportional systems, according to which virtually everyone accepted proportional systems as sources of universal beauty in architecture until the mid-eighteenth century, and after that time virtually everyone believed that beauty and proportional systems were matters of individual preference. Rather than a long period respectful of tradition followed by a long period skeptical of it, Cohen argues, based in part on a new interpretation of Claude Perrault’s 1683 codification of the notion of positive beauty, that architects and others have always had access to two parallel strands of thought pertaining to proportional systems: a skeptical-pragmatic strand and a respectful-metaphysical strand. This new historical and historiographical interpretation of the problem of architectural proportional systems, and the new vocabulary with which to discuss it critically presented herein, helps to separate aesthetic from historical considerations.

In 1876 Hardy copied two sentences from an address by John Morley into his Literary Notebooks: Life. ‘The stuff of which life is made is Time.’ The unknown Great ‘You never know what child in rags that meets you in the street may have in him the germ of gifts that might add new treasures to the storehouse of beautiful things or noble acts’1 One wonders why Hardy troubled to copy the first sentence, since Time, with or without the initial capital, is the subject of so much of his work. Few writers can have had less need to remind themselves of how much human life is shaped by the sense either of time past, of memories pushing into or pulling against the present, or more often of time as passing, the present undermined even as it is experienced by the anticipation of its loss. The second is more teasing. Was it taken down as the starting point for a story about wasted potential and the careless cruelty of social judgements, or perhaps for a poem about the gradual disclosure of the beauty hidden in the commonplace and everyday? Either of these might be a ‘typical’ Hardy subject. The sense of ambiguity in the sentence, and the idea of the ‘germ’, are among the topics I want to explore further in the course of this paper.

While not quite like being eaten by a wolf and thrown over a cliff, the prospect of the internal collapse of the Classical formulation of consciousness has a serious impact. It lays bare the ambiguity at the heart of ordinary experience by serving notice on the ungroundedness of its underlying ontic conviction, leaving in sore need of resilvering the tarnished prestige of the power of mimesis and analogy to represent the “real.”1 The contemplative sight of the measure of the higher and the far, beheld at night, has become blurry and increasingly myopic. At worst, mimetic and analogical resemblance will prove to be inadequate to the task of meeting the needs, cares and necessities of ordinary life under the yoke of the criterion of beauty. At best they will be reduced in rank to become the “tools” of the rhetoric and logic of scientific persuasion.2

No doctrine of Benjamin’s has been more influential in contemporary aesthetic discourse than that of the decay of the aura of the traditional work of art, which he developed in his essay on “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit.”1 Yet justifiable concern has recently been expressed that the conventional reading of the essay in the 1970s has “tended to obscure its more incongruous and ambivalent features.”2 Whereas such attention has been directed at elements of the essay tied to the political circumstances of its origin as well as to Benjamin’s lifelong meta-project of a theory of experience, I shall maintain that its philosophically most intriguing ambiguity follows from his introduction and deployment of the term ‘aura.’ Furthermore, I shall maintain that this term’s only decisive incongruities are the legacy of Benjamin’s explorations of a semantically related category some fifteen years earlier, the concept of beauty.

As cosmopoets we create our world - but we do not create our world independently from our surroundings. What we are doing is not a poetry work in the sense of arbitrary inventions, but an attempt to transfer extensively and intensively psychical processes into communicable events. Patients suffering from delusions are also cosmopoets, they also create their world. It is a more or less understandable world, it is a world which is more or less similar to the world of the non-deluded, and it is a world which on the one hand terrorizes the patient but on the other hand attracts the patient by its sublime beauty. In this context W.Janzarik spoke from an ‘enemy/partnership’ of patients with delusions of persecution. The deluded world is a non-contingent terrifying but also in any case at least to some extent a beautiful and attractive world. Thrown in the risky and ugly world of mental disorders characterized by ambiguity and precariousness, patients are looking for islands of safety and sublime beauty; such islands may represent delusional convictions. As meanings of the disorder and the resulting ambivalence between attractiveness and suffering represent important disorder maintaining factors, knowledge about them provide the indispensable basis for effective treatment strategies (in particular psychotherapy) of delusional syndromes.

The leg of truth. On a painting by Tiepolo. This article analyzes Giambattista Tiepolo's rococo allegory Time unveiling Truth , long known as Time ravishing Beauty. Its ambiguity of gestures and positions reveals the eroticisation of a theme which had until then signified the triumph of a spiritual Truth over the terrestrial world. This study tries to show, through an analysis of the incestuous relationship between Time and Truth and of the role of Cupid, situated between Truth's legs, that Tiepolo's painting suggests a specifically 18th-century conception of time as "occasion", or desire's moment of "truth"., Cusset Catherine. La Jambe de la Vérité. Sur un tableau de Tiepolo. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°24, 1992. Le matérialisme des Lumières. pp. 383-396.

Aesthetics has been dominated by intellectual speculation rather than empirical investigation. Aristotle’s aesthetics judgments, which have dominated the Western world’s aesthetics studies, were based on subjective judgments of beauty [1]. It was generally believed that beauty could not be measured. Berlyne rejected this idea. He conducted psychological experiments with people in order to reach an objective understanding of art [2,3] from subjects’ responses to paintings, visual patterns and sound sequences. Berlyne claimed that there was an appreciable degree of consistency among aesthetic responses of differing individuals [4]. Berlyne formed an aesthetic theory suggesting that the preference for any stimulus is related to its arousal potential. He proposed the most important factors of arousal potential as being structural properties of stimuli. These properties include complexity, novelty and ambiguity [5] and Berlyne called these properties collative variables. His theory argues that there is an inverted-U relationship between preference and arousal potential. This means that increases in arousal potential increase aesthetic pleasure. As arousal potential increases, however, it reaches an uncomfortable level and peaks, and pleasure starts to decline. Conversely, the theory suggests that stimuli with moderate arousal potential are the most pleasurable. We conducted a pilot study to investigate aesthetic preference of web sites by applying Berlyne’s aesthetic theory. The experiment focused on judgments of the appearance of the web sites. Twelve subjects ranked 12 web sites in Moreover, in the verbal reports, a relationship between interestingness and curiosity was observed. Subjects mentioned that in the simple (the least complex) web sites, a lack of information made them curious and inspired them to explore the site in depth. Berlyne [10] observed a link between curiosity and uncertainty and suggested that curiosity was a form of motivation to learn more about a source of uncertainty. However, people may not be curious about everything of which they do not have sufficient knowledge. There needs to be another factor for curiosity, other than uncertainty. The findings suggest that interest may play such a role. In contrast to Berlyne and his collative variables, this study suggests the importance of individual differences in determining the aesthetic responses. Individual differences include physiological differences as well as cultural and social factors such as fashion. Different tastes and personal inclinations reveal preferences for different web sites, and this leads to a lack of agreement on what is pleasing. The study suggests the efficacy of experimental aesthetic methods as a pragmatic design tool, but also their limitations in understanding subjectivity.

1. InJune 1989, French voters received the list of candidates nominated for the European Parliament by each national Party. Those patient enough to read to the thirtieth entry of the list of the Front National, the extreme-right party headed by Le Pen, would have found the name Jules Monnerot. It was followed by the qualifying mention: "Founder of the Collkge de Sociologie." Sic. A cunning of reason or of unreason? Did this reference gain a single extra vote for the neofascist party? Did it lose any? How many voters-and in particular how many of those on the extreme right-had the slightest idea of what the cited institution meant, or had meant? Whatever the case, it was thus that the College of Sociology, a Sleeping Beauty awakened ten years ago by some erudite sorcerer's apprentices from its slumber of four decades, finally made its entrance into the world of real politics. And, abandoning all ambiguity for the occasion, it confirmed the worst suspicions. 2. The accusation of ambiguity already figured in the first printed response elicited by the activities of the College in 1938. Signed by Rene Bertelk, in Europe, a review on the left, it characterized Caillois's positions as "equivocal." Bertele didn't question Caillois's own intentions. But if Caillois's book, Le mythe et l'homme, should happen to fall under Hitler's eyes, what ideas might it not give the Nazi leader! "Caillois should be politely informed that he runs this risk," Bertele warned.'

A field study was conducted in a chain of beauty salons to determine how the leadership behavior of salon managers is related to managerial effectiveness. Leadership behavior was measured with a new questionnaire that was filled out anonymously by subordinates. Strong correlations were found between some of the leadership scales and salon profits, sales increase, performance ratings, subordinate satisfaction, and role ambiguity. The results were consistent with managerial role requirements derived from an analysis of the leadership situation.

A few years ago, I was invited to participate in the Symposium on Biological Clocks, organized by the Argonne National Laboratory. Often before, my presentations had been arranged (logically) to follow papers on biochemistry and molecular biology, and that symposium was no exception. By way of an introduction, I commented that, with the presentations on biochemistry and molecular biology behind us, we were leaving the precise studies and entering the realm of ambiguity. I also commented that whereas molecular biology is beautiful—because of the imaginative ideas behind the research, the neat experimental protocol, the precise measurements of the results, and the meaningful interpretations—the beauty is primarily abstract, similar to that of many abstract paintings. No one gets much visual pleasure from a scintillation plot or a density gradient tracing. On the other hand, microscopic objects, particularly chromosomes, are themselves objects of beauty, analogous to the beauty of a Rembrandt.