The death of the sports car and the tyranny of function

When I was younger—a time I fondly refer to as “the good old days”—I loved sports cars. That was normal for newly licensed drivers. Back then, you couldn’t even ask someone out on a date without one. Things have changed dramatically: In Japan, most young people no longer seem interested in cars, let alone sports cars. Furthermore, ordinary combustion engine cars are being replaced by electric vehicles, threatening sports cars with extinction.

Speaking of sports cars, I once strongly believed they were the ultimate symbol of functional beauty, because every detail is supposedly designed only for speed. They were collections of correct answers—perfectly engineered means of fast transportation. The younger, simpler me thought that their functional correctness was the precise reason why they looked beautiful.

This easy logic was initially comforting, but it eventually provoked smoldering questions. For instance: What about art that is of no utility at all? Most people still deem it beautiful. Thus, the simple question remained: What is beauty?

The failed ascent: From Kant to the chronometer

Since I was young, I’ve tried to read philosophical texts, mainly to make myself look smart. One day, I found that Immanuel Kant had written about aesthetic judgment in his critical work. As usual, the concepts were far too difficult, and my attempt (to make myself look smart) ended quickly and miserably. My philosophical ambition ended in predictable failure.

While I was still in the depths of despair over my poor understanding, a simple sentence from a scientific paper caught my eye. The article stated plainly: “Beauty is judged within 1 second in the brain.” To be precise, the verdict is rendered in just 0.8 seconds.

I had always thought beauty was purely a subject of philosophy, shrouded in complex German prose. Now it turns out that neuroscientists are studying it using chronometers and MRI machines. The contrast—Kant vs. the Stopwatch—is wonderfully absurd.

Plato’s pleasure and the neural network

Scientists have identified specific brain regions contributing to processing aesthetic appeal. Some research shows a close relationship between beauty and pleasure responses in our neural networks. In essence, the immediate appreciation of beauty is a neurological rush of pleasure.

This brings us back to antiquity. It suggests that Plato’s definition—”beauty is pleasure through eye or ear”—is somehow profoundly correct, albeit proven $2,400$ years later by modern science. The core mystery is now clear: Beauty is pleasure in the brain.

The keys to aesthetic appeal: Curvature and symmetry

I know that solving “What is beauty?” only leads us to another mystery: What is pleasure? As in all my articles, I cannot draw a clear, absolute conclusion here. (I am too self-aware and logistically constrained for that kind of definitive statement.)

However, the scientific paper does give us a fantastic clue. It highlights several key properties that consistently increase the aesthetic appeal of an object. Two of these properties are commonly cited: “Symmetry” and “Curvature.”

In that specific context—the cold, hard logic of neuroscience—our products, such as the chair shown above which consists only of curved lines, can be objectively deemed beautiful. I suppose that means we are scientifically correct, unlike the younger me who only vaguely referenced functional beauty. What do you think?

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