beautiful theories

August 12, 2010 8:29 AM

What are the most beautiful theories from science, philosophy, history, psychology, anthropology, pop culture, etc?

My SO and I love telling each other about theories and ideas from different fields we've been exposed to. Please tell us about your favorite theory or idea from your field. Here is one of our favorites:

Michelangelo reportedly said about his sculpture David: “I saw an angel in the block of marble and I just chiseled ‘til I set him free.” In a similar way, partners in close relationships sculpt one another’s selves, shaping one another’s skills and traits and promoting versus inhibiting one another’s goal pursuits. As a result of the manner in which partners perceive and behave toward one another, each person enjoys greater or lesser success at attaining his or her ideal-self goals. Affirmation of one another’s ideal-self goals yields diverse benefits, both personal and relational.

posted by AceRock to Grab Bag (12 answers total)

Chatfilter? But I'll bite: Aristophanes' theory of love in Plato's Symposium is both humorous and bittersweet.
posted by Beardman at 8:32 AM on August 12, 2010

I think you're going to have to narrow down 'beautiful' for us a bit.
posted by robself at 8:39 AM on August 12, 2010

String theory, the idea we come from the sea, strange loops, the idea (controversial and unverified) that menstruation and morning sickness are ways to protect the female body and fetus from pollutants, I cannot remember the name but that thing about fish in ponds changing their structure depending on who's top fish and how it's a feedback loop, tons of ideas from behavioral economics (and old econ mixed with epistemology too--I remember reading a paper from the '20s or something that used economic methodology to "prove" economic methodology is useless...ha!), Bakhtin and the notion humor (bodily, bawdy a la Rabelais, but whatever else too) at its heart is art that's inherently politically transgressive, Victor Turner's theories of liminality and the ritual process, these are all just off the top of my head as a rusty dilettante many years out of school.
posted by ifjuly at 8:42 AM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is impossibly broad, though I'm curious to see what "beautiful" theory from pop culture looks like.
posted by proj at 8:44 AM on August 12, 2010

Oh, and theories that ritual is the handle and not the blade of religion, as opposed to dogma--you have functional needs as a group and create rituals to address those functional, secular needs, and the explanation for the ritual--the dogma, the story you tell to justify doing it--comes second. Controversial unproved examples include cannibalistic sacrifice because of iron deficiency, etc.
posted by ifjuly at 8:44 AM on August 12, 2010

Anything that's so simple it's just beautiful. The last time it happened to me I was listening to a researcher on the increase of ovarian cancer. Since pre-modern times women were mostly pregant or nursing they didn't ovaluate as much as now. Each time you ovulate there a bursting of sorts which is a tiny damage to the ovary. Now to see the evidence.
posted by Wilder at 8:47 AM on August 12, 2010

oh, and the relationship between languages & cultures with a high power differential and air crashes, simply beautiful.
posted by Wilder at 8:48 AM on August 12, 2010

Gramsci's finessing of Marxist theory to consider cultural adaptation, Bernard Lewis' idea of "what went wrong" in Islamic culture (FWIW I don't agree with him wholesale, think it's way too pat the way Jared Diamond tends to be, but it's "beautiful to think about" to me), Franz Fanon on postcolonial identity...but um, you can tell by now I'm sure I'm a crit-theory whore so I'll stop now, 'cause man you could go on forever (Zizek for provocation's sake! Debord! Foucault! Lacan! Politics as dancing! Gender performativity!).
posted by ifjuly at 8:50 AM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I have always found Cantor's diagonalization proof for the uncountability of the reals to be very lovely. YMMV.
posted by telegraph at 8:52 AM on August 12, 2010

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem
posted by Joe Beese at 8:56 AM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is so not my field, but I love the (possibly apocryphal?) idea that the hypnic jerk is a way to stop us primates from falling out of trees while going to sleep.

Also not really my field: Grimm's Law.
posted by punchdrunkhistory at 8:57 AM on August 12, 2010

Genesis:1-19
And God said: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.' And it was so. And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
posted by watercarrier at 9:00 AM on August 12, 2010