crystallizing ice.

One can't help but notice how intricate the crystallization of water to ice is. Specifically the formation of crystalline structures on a piece of glass after vapors from the mouth are exhaled onto it. Within seconds of vapors hitting the surface of an extremely cold surface, we see the beautiful artwork like designs of crystals freezing into place until just as quickly as they were designed, they melt away into nothingness again after a stream of plus zero air wash over them.

We objectively see these crystalline formations as a byproduct of a state change from a liquid to a solid or gas to solid. The same happens in mineralization. We can subjectively see them as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. It's only natural that we evolved to derive a sense of pleasure from perceiving a natural process as beautiful. It exists. We were created from the same design. These chemical processes are a part of us. So after millions of years of evolution and the creation of a central nervous system that could actually perceive a process like this, we attach a sense of curiosity and beauty to it.

An appreciation for art isn't dependent on sentience or a brain. Neither is the creation of it. People tend to mythologize the human mind as some sort of rare matrix that has some type of control or transcendence over the rest of existence -- it doesn't. Beauty exists outside of us, we don't create it, our minds are simply machines that re-order what already exists. For example, all of the words I am using to communicate these ideas could be used to communicate millions of other ideas. They aren't exclusive to any one single process. Things don't come from nowhere -- ingenuity isn't the proverbial anti-social hermit writing equations on a chalkboard. There are many studies done that correlate creativity with madness and this makes sense. Madness is chaos. Chaos is the existence of matter in an un ordered state. Order is just manifested differently through the human perceptual smorgasbord.

Yea, it's a miracle. It is a miracle that chaos and order exist in the first place. It's a miracle we have language, that such beauty can be created from a process as devoid of cognition as the crystallization of ice on a pane of glass. We're conscious for about 15 seconds before we rely on our memory to place us in space and time and to lead us from one fuzzy moment to the next. If I drop more than 7 things on the ground in front of you, that is the most you'll be able to 'estimate' before you conscious mind limits you (with the extreme rare exception of certain savants).

I fight a daily battle with the concepts of dualism and non dualism -- trying to choose which one makes more sense. Dualism has been made to fit most of our thinking patterns and theories over the last centuries, however, the things that don't make sense, the thing's that seems to hide between the spaces of awareness -- those are the things that dualism can't seem to throw credence to. Non duality might fit quite well with the new theories of quantum physics, but until more things make sense, scientists and philosophers will fall back on dialecticism. What created that beautiful crystalline structure? A chemical reaction that was catalyzed by hot AND cold processes in the same instance.

Go throw some hot water onto a cold pane of glass and see for yourself how quickly symmetry forms. So much detail, so quickly. Would you be able to create and draw what nature can do in seconds? Perhaps it should be an activity to indulge in. Nature doesn't see itself as beauty, the second any stimuli reaches our brain it immediately goes from objective to subjective. Red is just a wavelength outside of human perception..but it becomes a colour as soon as we call it one.