Sunday, May 22, 2016

WHY WE LIKE SYMMETRY




Many, if not most, humans find symmetry to be aesthetically pleasing. In fact, during the 19th century, it was fashionable to have the left side of a room appear to be a mirror image the right side, even to the point of having the same pictures hung on each side. The dining room in George Washington's home in Mt. Vernon is a classic example of this practice. In a similar vein, cars, planes, boats, and trains are usually designed to be bilaterally symmetrical, at least on the outside, with the left side a reverse image of the right. Those few examples which are not, such as the German Blohm & Voss BV 141 aircraft (pictured below), simply look bizarre to most people (you were warned that the Third Reich produced some weird airplanes).


Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1980-117-01 / Stöcker / CC-BY-SA 3.0 
[CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)],
via Wikimedia Commons 


There is an evolutionary reason why the brain seeks symmetry. The bodies of most animals (over 99% of them, in fact) are bilaterally symmetrical. If you are a prey animal, you want your brain wired to alert to bilateral symmetry in order to spot predators as soon as possible. Conversely, if you are a predator, you are similarly motivated to zoom in on a juicy bilaterally symmetrical meal. 

In short, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder--it is instead in his or her DNA.

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