We seem to find beauty in unlikely places. Evolution says we should be attracted to those things that benefit us, and so it seems that we should find beauty in those things that support flourishing. However, we also sometimes find beauty in things like austere mountain peaks, desolate lunar wastelands, and sometimes even in dying foliage.

For example, one of the most common pictures of the end of summer, the shortening of daylight, is fall colors, yet these represent life being pulled back from the leaves in order to prepare for the coming season of scarcity. Hardly a cheery thought, and yet it’s considered an iconically beautiful scene.

In a like manner, this scene struck me as beautiful even though it features flowers that are in decline.

This sense is sometimes explained as our evolutionarily-bequeathed aesthetics misfiring, being activated incorrectly. In this line of thought, what we perceive as something wonderful, is really just a mistake.

There’s probably some truth to this, but it still seems to fall short of completely explaining human experience. What remains is still clothed in mystery.

For example, one reason we find beauty even in the austere may be because we recognize a creator in the creation. For those who see purpose rather than nihilism, there is beauty in the purpose.

If the mountains reflect the processes necessary to provide us a habitable planet, then they are beautiful because of the way they reflect that purpose (the imprint of the creator), even though they may be bad for us in some ways.

This is called teleology. It represents the difference between there being a grand purpose, and living as if the only purposes that exist are based on our own desires. So we look at a forbidding mountain, and see grandeur, power, and majesty.

We look at a fading flower, the cycle of life that brings renewal.

Just as we see more than just the dangerous mountain, we see the processes it represents, we also see more than just the dying flower, we see the renewal that it represents.

There seems to be a greater story that’s being told.