The Nature of Beauty

What is “beauty”? That captivating concept—the phenomenal and magical secret we are constantly chasing. We long for it so deeply that it fuels our very instinct to survive, sometimes even driving us to terrifying acts just to remain in its presence. It penetrates not only the realm of objects but also the realm of meaning.

Beauty is the eternal fountain from which all love flows. It inspires countless verses at the sight of a lover’s smile. The very meaning of love becomes visible through it. In its absence, hopeless lives and bottomless despairs take root. The mere curiosity of finding it beyond death has led to acts of suicide. Beauty appears in the purest expressions of science and art, with the power to fill the voids of the soul. It is a treasure—unique and beyond value.

Though it has no absolute definition, all absolutes are measured by it and for it. From particles to objects, from micro to macro, beauty is unmistakably present—its clarity depending on the depth of one’s perception. Because we can never be fully satisfied by it, we constantly flee death in pursuit of more. Beauty is both a compass resting firmly in our hands and a goal—unchanging in its position and distance, like the North Star. It is the dazzling fruit of the tree of life.

Beauty is the core of every motivation that drives us from one search to another. Even the necessities required for beings to exist are, in truth, directed toward the goal of beauty. Beauty is simultaneously the cause and the result, the departure and the arrival—and the path itself.

Why, then, must centrifugal force be circular? If this law of physics did not require circular motion—and assuming that life still somehow existed—our perception of beauty, if it were not merely an evolutionary familiarity, would make human existence as we know it impossible.

This example is beyond the reach of imagination, because the human mind cannot create truly new laws of nature. We cannot conceive of a fundamentally different physical law. Yet, even through such a flawed and constrained mental exercise, one truth becomes clear: the perception of beauty cannot be reduced to evolutionary adaptation alone.

To claim that our sense of beauty evolved solely through environmental adaptation is to rely on numerous invalid and impossible assumptions. Even if we deny the circular nature of centrifugal force, while accepting all those impossible premises, the existence of humanity—at least one with thousands of years of history—would still be implausible.

In other words, beauty cannot be scientifically reduced to a single definition. Whether approached inductively or deductively, it is not about equality but identity. Beauty cannot be divided or fragmented; there exists no phenomenon above or below it.

— Râshid bin Ahmed