Rum wrote:The thread about the new Bentley car reminded me of a debate I had with friends and actually my dad come to think of it a long time ago. The discussion was about the aesthetics of the Spitfire, possibly/arguably one of the most attractive and aesthetically pleasing aircraft of all time. There's a pic at the bottom for anyone who does not know it.
I argued that its purpose alone invalidated its pleasing appeal and that the fact that it was a machine designed for one thing alone - to kill people in other planes invalidated any claim it might have as to the quality of its appearance and any appeal to our sense of beauty.
Similarly I found the Bentley 'obscene' for what it represents to me, personally.
So I guess what I am getting at is can one separate aesthetics and pleasing looks and function from the context in which it exists - with the Spitfire the context being war, and with the Bentley the new poverty which is rolling out across the developed world?
In defining both the form and the function of a thing, you're making choices. There are many valid definitions of the purpose of a Spitfire. You could define it as the short-term practical function of a Spitfire when it was first designed, which pretty much is destroying enemy aircraft and almost certainly killing its crew. In that case pretty much any weapon is an evil thing. But don't forget that killing enemy fighter crews wasn't done for sport, it was done to win a war to end the reign of a regime that killed millions and impinged on the freedom of billions. Then maybe a Spitfire isn't quite as evil.
Or you could define the function of a Spitfire still more narrowly as a machine to move certain objects to a certain location at a certain speed, those objects being "little bits of metal", that location being "an enemy aircraft", and that speed being "fast enough to do some serious damage", but choose not to include the question of
why this task needed doing. If we judge its merit based on how well this machine accomplished this task, you have to admit that for its time, the Spitfire was pretty good at what it did.
But compare how well a Spitfire performs its function to the machines we have today that perform the same function, and the Spitfire seems like a pretty bad machine.
Or consider the function that Spitfires have today: thrilling and entertaining people at air shows, and, for instance, getting kids interested in WWII history. That's a pretty decent function.
The same actually goes for the form of a Spitfire, though it's a little more counterintuitive. No two Spitfires are absolutely identical. Is "the form of a Spitfire" every one of those Spitfires? What about the ones that were destroyed? Do they count? What about spare parts? Does a picture of a Spitfire count? Does the form include the noise it makes when it flies? The way it moves through the air? "Form" isn't something that exists in nature: we choose it.
"A Spitfire" can be many things. It can be a collection of atoms, or a part of a historic narrative, or a visceral thrill, or ablueprint, a mental archetype. The world is just stuff. How we conceptualize it is up to us. That doesn't change anything about the stuff, but it does change what exactly it is we're talking about.
I get the distinct impression that people are generally pretty damned good at choosing conceptualizations that are useful. I get that impression because while people don't all conceptualize exactly the same, they can usually get by talking to each other pretty well. You don't get people saying "before WWII, Spitfires we scattered around the world, mostly in iron ore deposits. During WWII they briefly enabled some people to move metal pieces more efficiently then their competitors, but since then they've been quite heavily effected by the second law of thermodynamics." Neither do people claim that fitting the blueprint of a Spitfire makes a thing a Spitfire. I'd like to see them trying to fly a stirofoam replica.
Depending on how you define the form and the function of a Spitfire, your concept of "a Spitfire", you may or may not appreciate that concept, by assessing it according to what you value. Human beings all pretty much value the same things, though they differ quite a bit on the relative importance of all those things, and all of these things conflict in one way or another.
You and your friend might well have slightly different concepts of "a Spitfire". If you both can come to understand the concept the other person uses, maybe you'll both be able to appreciate the form of one concept while abhoring the function of the other.
