Frank Lloyd Wright had the ability to see his buildings whole before putting a pencil to paper. Blues guitarist Cory Harris is constantly tapping out a rhythm or singing lines to a song. And NPR’s Will Shortz attracts puzzle masters who make short work out of word games. Each of these people excels in a different mode of thinking.
Harvard psychologist, Howard Gardner, has developed a theory of multiple modes of intelligence to help understand and appreciate the different ways that people think. One of his key ideas is that all of the intelligences are innate in each person, and all are trainable to some degree. There is hope!
I suggest that the ability to perceive beauty is active across several modes of intelligence, and is itself a kind of intelligence. I call this the Beauty Mind.
When an artist contemplates adding a line or wash of color, she is engaging her Beauty Mind. A dancer moves in ways that feel good and look pleasing. A writer considers the structure of a sentence and the impact of a word. A finish carpenter decides to match the grain of wood on the trim on both sides of the doorway. In all of these ways the Beauty Mind is engaged. The Beauty Mind asks, “what looks/sounds/feels better: this or that?”
About Me
- Ross Chapin
- Langley, WA
- I’m an architect from Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. For more information on my background and thoughts about this blog, check out my first post below. I'll be building an 'arc of thought', so it may be helpful to read from the beginning.