Why is their beauty so appealing to humans? If this beauty has been evolved then for which purpose?
What’s the benefit of so much beauty in nature like ocean waves, sunset, flowers, etc? Is this the objectivity or universality of beauty that everyone can find the stars in the sky and sunset beautiful?
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Flowers didn’t evolve to be beautiful. Flowers evolved to attract bees.
We evolved to find them beautiful.
These reasons flowers are beautiful is obvious. They evolved as such to attract bees and other pollen carriers.
I don’t think flowers are beautiful, and that’s your answer. It’s the same reason as why you like a specific food or don’t.
We have been cultivating them for a long time to our preferences. We have cultivated flowers for ages to look pretty and smell nice.
Look at a flower in a natural forest and compare it to what we grow in our gardens – while some are great in the wild, most of those flowers are not especially beautiful to us.
Just like most of our fruit and vegetables are from human cultivation – like carrots, brocolli, oranges, lettuce, tomatos, bananas, etc. They do not grow in the wild like that.
It’s true, as others have pointed out, that flowers have evolved to be bright and colorful to attract animals that will spread their pollen—mostly insects, but mammals can carry pollen in their hair and clothes too.
But as for nature as a whole, I think you may have some *anthropocentric* bias. The ocean, the sunset, the waves, and the stars have not adapted so that humans find them beautiful. They have not adapted to humans or any other animal at all—they aren’t even alive or subject to evolution by natural selection.
*You*—or rather the human species—have adapted. Our species evolved in an environment with oceans and sunsets and waves and stars. Importantly, we evolved brains that *love* finding and recognizing patterns and actively reward us with positive emotions when we notice them.
All of the phenomena you mentioned are some combination of bright, noticeable, and regular. On top of that, if you have time to notice the sunset or watch the ocean or stars, it probably means you’re *not* actively fighting for your life or running from a threat. So humans might come to associate them with peaceful and positive emotions and—very importantly—build that association over generations through storytelling and art.
An extraterrestrial with a completely alien way of interpreting reality may find no beauty in any of these things we think of as natural. They have no inherent aesthetic qualities because that process happens in human minds.
That doesn’t mean it’s not real—just that it’s a product of human minds
In general humans view things as esthetically pleasing because they display patterns that would have been useful for our ancestors to notice in nature.
Flowers are plant parts that are used to attract pollinators (and fruits are plant parts that are used to attract seed dispersers like early humans) humans arguably share similiar senses as these pollinators.
Let’s dissect what makes a flower pretty:
1. Colors.
Humans have evolved to distinguish colors to know things like “when a fruit is ripe”, pollinators have similarly evolved to distinguish colors in order to find flower. Plants grow fruits in different colors to attract herbivores in a specific time, flowers have evolved colors to attract pollinators, flowers often also become colorful fruits. arguably we like the colors of flowers because they remind us of fruits.
2. Symmetry.
Flowers are symmetrical and have neat patterns. symmetry of a plant is also often correlated with a healthy plamt (where lack of symmetry implies a plant is sick or wilting). Also symmetrical faces are a sign that a human mate has a healthy immune system.
It does not seem so far to assume pollinators also check for symmetry in flowers, seeing as many flowers are clearly symmetrical.
3. Fractals.
Arguably some plants grow flowers in fractal patterns. Fractal patterns are often esthetically pleasing to humans. This is arguably because looking at natural phenomena like clouds and waves was useful for early humans.
Ultimately this question seems to strike at a much deeper and older question, namely “What is Beauty?” It’s a question philosophers have been puzzling over since Ancient Greece and probably well before. There are an abundance of theories and explanations, ranging from psychological to spiritual to philosophical, and in my opinion most of them are not wrong, but none of them tell the complete story.
A concrete explanation might tell you we find flowers beautiful because of their bright contrasting colors and a high degree of symmetry and patterns. Another explanation might tell you that even though flowers evolved specifically to attract pollinators like birds and bees and bats, it ends up spilling over to humans because all living creatures share some features in common. Yet another might tell you that flowers evoke memories of nature and youth. Yet *another* might tell you that flowers have great significance in many cultures and societies. There’s no end to the possible explanations, and like I said I don’t think any of them are totally wrong, but they all make up parts of a larger whole.
Here’s an elegant [explanation](https://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/mirzaagham/math1/SQ5.pdf) from the world of mathematics.
We evolved to find healthy environments beautiful (appealing). Flowers indicate healthy growing plants, which indicates potential food. Clean ocean waves, again food and other resources. The stars indicate fresh open air. The sunset, daylight and bright colors (food), plus a time of day when many animals are active.
A lot of these are likely a mixed bag of reasons and there’s lots of other reasons you could come up with if you keep thinking, for instance, liking glittering things like the stars because sparkling is a thing that moving water does, etc etc.
We don’t generally find dead rotting plants beautiful, nor muddy swampy water, nor grey cloudy skies, etc. (Not saying that these things can never be considered beautiful, but my point should be obvious.)
The benefit of finding so many things beautiful is to be attracted to things that are good for our survival.
Flowers are natural landing pads for polynators.
As landing pads, they evolved geometry, petals and such, as well as bright colors.
To do this, it requires alot of enthalpy (order and energy). It’s very contrary to the natural order of the universe to create order, but living creatures, we do it all the time. It’s kindda the whole point of living thing actually; locally creating order out of chaos.
In which case, can we be surprised that we humans find the landing pads of polynators pretty?
They’re made to attract attention, they announce the spring, bring fruits and other edible plants, and they are the myracle of life in the middle of a universe of chaos and death.
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