ACCRA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF

BEAUTY IN CREATION

STUDENTS NAMES INDEX NUMBER

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 CHAPTER ONE

1.0 Introduction

1.1 inspiration (Beauty in Creation)

God is an amazing Creator. He created the world in seven days, taking the seventh

to rest. He gave us life, food to eat, and air to breathe. He even gave us others to

interact with. What He didn’t need to give us, however, was the beauty of what He

created. God could have created the world in black and white, but He gave us

color! He could have made every tree, flower, and leaf look the same, but He gave

us variety. I think that sometimes we take for granted how amazing God’s creation

really is. As I’m writing this, I can look out my window and all I see are trees and

the gorgeous blue sky. In just a few weeks, though, I’ll look at this same view, but

it will look vastly different. Now that it is September, the leaves will start to

change colors and fall off of the trees. The oranges, yellows, reds, and browns will

light up the forest like a fire. A few months later, the view will be a blanket of

white while the grey sky drops snowflakes. These changes are one of the main

things that amazes me about my Father. He created this beautiful world for us to

live in, and the only reason He made it so pretty to look at was for our enjoyment.

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In these captivating sights, God also has given us promises. Think of the rainbow.

Many believe that it is just a refraction of light off of water to make an arc of

colored light. While this the true way how they are formed, rainbows have a much

deeper meaning. God formed the rainbow as a symbol of his promise to never

flood the earth again after the globe-consuming flood in Genesis 6 & 7. In Genesis

9:12-16, the Lord gives His promise to Noah that He will never cause the earth to

flood again, and the “bow in the clouds” will be a reminder to all. That colored

refraction of light is so much more than an end to a rainstorm; it is a symbol of a

never-ending promise of our Father! Also, God not only paints the sky with

rainbows, but with the sun’s rise and set each day. I have never been one to enjoy

mornings, but when I wake to the sky covered in pinks, reds, purples, yellows, and

hundreds of other colors, I remember how much God loves us. He gives us these

pleasures to remember that we are His and we are so much more important than

the glorious sunrise. The innumerable hues that cross the horizons are just a

glimpse of the glory of God, and I think that God gives us these pictures to provide

us with a glimpse of what heaven will be like.

Looking at these wonderful, beautiful gifts that God has given us to look at, I think

of one thing: no matter how beautiful or unique nature may be, God created us to

be so much more than that. We are created in God’s own image, so we are more

unique and beautiful than anything else that He put on this earth! We are each

unique like the sunsets or the snowflakes, each with different colors, sizes, and

shapes, as cliché as that may sound. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his

own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created

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them.” This is so encouraging to me. I look out my window and see the various

colors that God allows me to see. I see the green grass and the glorious blue sky.

Then, I think back to this verse. God did not say that He created the leaves in His

own image. He did not create the flowers in His image. He did not create the

oceans in His own image. He created us in His image. That’s crazy to think about,

that God would love us enough to make us more beautiful and important than all

the magnificent other creations in the world. When I remember this though, I

remember that He also loved us enough to send His only Son to die for our sins,

and then I am grateful. I am grateful for the trees and the sky. I am thankful for my

Father creating me fearfully and wonderfully, as it says in Psalm 139. However, I

am most thankful for the Lord saving me through His perfect grace and mercy.

Humankind's appreciation for beauty is universal despite national, ethnic and

cultural differences. This is because it is God that has created beauty and the

elements that contribute to beauty. He has given man the ability to appreciate the

beauty in what He has created.

When the creation was finished, God evaluated His work and said that it was very

good. Genesis 1:31 And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was

very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

The universe was designed to support life. Man was given an environment that was

harmonious, stable, self-renewing, and it was beautiful. Even now, when the

creation is less safe, supportive and benign than it was at the beginning, we can all

appreciate the beauty of the earth and the heavens. It is difficult to find a landscape

devoid of beauty if it has not been devastated by a natural disaster or ruined by the

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hand of man. Most of us need beauty in our surroundings. God anticipated and

provided adequately for this need. When He said that what He made was good, He

undoubtedly meant that a part of its goodness was its beauty. The Fenton

translation of the Bible renders Genesis 1:31, "And God gazed on all that He had

made and it was very beautiful".

God Caused Beauty

Aesthetics is the study of beauty, more often associated today with art. However,

the discipline itself, and the philosophical apologetics from the concept are

extended into every sphere of imagination, sensibility, and taste.

Essentially, the foundational argument would suggest that given the universal

reality that the concept of "beauty" exists (even if it is in "the eye of the beholder")

there is an ultimate "standard" by which beauty is judged. Determining the

aesthetic value of anything requires rational judgment, even though that judgment

is unique to each individual. Each rational judgment must rely on one's ability to

discriminate at a sensory or emotional level.

This examination makes a judgment regarding whether something is beautiful,

sublime, disgusting, fun, cute, silly, entertaining, pretentious, discordant,

harmonious, boring, humorous, or tragic. And, of course, since such an ability

exists only in the mental acuity of imaginative appreciation, then the Source of

such ability must also be both rational and emotional.

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The vast differences between individual tastes and between cultures, both in time

and in location, speak to the enormity of such possibilities and to the unfathomable

wonder of the hunger for "beauty" in every human being.

That such a hunger exists only in the human being is a wonder in itself! The flower

is not impressed with its own majesty; it merely exists with no conscious

awareness. The chimpanzee does not gaze longingly on the enigma of the Mona

Lisa, nor do the stars muse on the heavens they themselves grace.

In fact, all humanity eschews destruction and random chaos as "ugly" and attempts

to mask death with various levels of cosmetic disguises, and this speaks to the

realization that some sights and sounds are not beautiful, and thus there must exist

a standard of perfect beauty.

Beauty

Philosophers try to list elements of beauty. The exact parts of beauty are hard to

define. First, beauty is structured on a pleasing form. Why is the form of some

objects pleasing? The answers differ from one person to another. Second, beauty

contains a kind of harmony. This harmony strikes a chord of pleasure within us.

Third, beauty gives rise to splendor that points beyond itself. There is an element

of beauty that “shines forth.” There you have it. Now you know some elements of

beauty. OK, tell me. What is beauty? Are we any less confused than before? God’s

creation is beautiful. Why, exactly? We have problems settling on a definition. But

we easily agree when beauty happens.

People often agree when something is beautiful. We create national parks to

preserve beautiful scenes in nature. Some people think the Grand Canyon is just a

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hole in the ground. So why do more than a million people drive hundreds (or

thousands) of miles every year to visit it? They stand on the rim of the canyon.

They “ooo” and “ahhh.” They snap pictures and post them to the web. Why? Why

is the Grand Canyon beautiful?

Beauty is a mystery. According to Spitzer (2010) in his book New Proofs for the

Existence of God: Beauty and art can also evoke sublime, glorious, and exalted

emotions, and can, therefore, communicate the glorious itself, sublimity itself, and

ultimate home itself. there is something in beautiful objects themselves . . . that

can give rise not only to feelings of delight, repose, reveling, and enjoyment, but

also to feelings of sublime repose, home, reveling, and joy.

That quote did not help me understand what beauty is. In my heart I agree with that

quote, whatever it means. That’s the way it is with beauty. We don’t understand.

We look together at a starry sky, a beautiful sunset, fireworks exploring in the sky.

We “ooo” and “ahhh” together. How beautiful.

God’s beautiful creation is not an accident. God did it on purpose. Consider this.

Our earth is encased in a kind of magnetic field. Science says that’s a good thing.

This magnetic field is important for life on earth. So it’s no accident. God knows

we need it. The magnetic field flows from areas near the north and south pole.

Our sun produces something called solar winds. They blow across the magnetic

fields. What happens? Beauty erupts! We call it the Aurora Borealis. Magnetic

fields and solar winds? This sounds like the recipe for some kind of boring science

project. Why did God make it so beautiful?

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Another question to consider. Why do we have the ability to appreciate nature’s

beauty? God gave us eyes to see nature. Why did He let us see color? Animals also

see nature. Some animals see color. Buy there is no evidence animals appreciate

beauty. God reserves that pleasure for mankind.

Errors in Beauty: Attributes Evenly and Unevenly Present across Beautiful

Things

The author of the Greater Hippias, widely believed to have been Plato, points out

that while we know with relative ease what a beautiful horse or a beautiful

man or possibly even a beautiful pot is (this last one is a matter of some dispute in

the dialogue), it is much more difficult to say what “Beauty” unattached to any

object is. At no point will there be any aspiration to speak in these pages of

unattached Beauty, or of the attributes of unattached

Beauty. But there are attributes that are, without exception, present across different

objects (faces, flowers, birdsongs, men, horses, pots, and poems), one of which is

this impulse toward begetting. It is impossible to conceive of a beautiful thing that

does not have this attribute. The homely word “replication” has been used here

because it reminds us that the benign impulse toward creation results not just

in famous paintings but in everyday acts of staring; it also reminds us that the

generative object continues, in some sense, to be present in the newly begotten

object. It may be startling to speak of the Divine Comedy or the Mona Lisa as “a

replication” since they are so unprecedented, but the word recalls the fact that

something, or someone, gave rise to their creation and remains silently present in

the newborn object.

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In the case just looked at, then, the attribute was one common

across all sites, and the error, when it briefly arose, involved seeing an imperfect

version of the attribute (imitation of starlets or, more seriously, material greed)

and correctly spotting the association with beauty, but failing to recognize the

thousands of good out- comes of which this is a deteriorated version. Rejecting the

imperfect version of the phenomenon of begetting makes sense; what does

not make sense is rejecting the general impulse toward be getting, or rejecting the

beautiful things for giving rise to false, as well as true, versions of begetting. To

disparage beauty not for the sake of one of its attributes but simply for a misguided

version of one of its otherwise beneficent attributes is a common error made about

beauty.

But we will also see that many errors made about beauty arise not in relation to

an attribute that is, without exception, com- mon across all sites, but

precisely in relation to attributes that are site-specific that come up, for

example, in relation to a beautiful garden but not in relation, say, to a beautiful

poem; or come up in relation to beautiful persons but not in relation to the

beauty of gods. The discontinuities across sites are the source of many

confusions, one of which will be looked at in detail in part two. But the

most familiar encounter with error occurs within any one site.

The Concept of Beauty in Creation

The argument from beauty (also the aesthetic argument) is an argument for the

existence of a realm of immaterial ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of

God.

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Plato argued there is a transcendent plane of abstract ideas, or universals, which

are more perfect than real-world examples of those ideas. Later philosophers

connected this plane to the idea of goodness, beauty, and then the Christian God.

Various observers have also argued that the experience of beauty is evidence of the

existence of a universal God. Depending on the observer, this might include

artificially beautiful things like music or art, natural beauty like landscapes or

astronomical bodies, or the elegance of abstract ideas like the laws of mathematics

or physics.

The argument from beauty has two aspects. The first is connected with the

independent existence of what philosophers term a "universal" (see Universal

(metaphysics) and also Problem of universals). Plato argued that particular

examples of, say a circle, all fall short of the perfect exemplar of a circle that exists

outside the realm of the senses as an eternal Idea. Beauty for Plato is a particularly

important type of universal. Perfect beauty exists only in the eternal Form of

beauty (see Platonic epistemology). For Plato the argument for a timeless idea of

beauty does not involve so much whether the gods exist (Plato was not a

monotheist) but rather whether there is an immaterial realm independent and

superior to the imperfect world of sense. Later Greek thinkers such as Plotinus (c.

204/5–270 CE) expanded Plato's argument to support the existence of a totally

transcendent "One", containing no parts. Plotinus identified this "One" with the

concept of "Good" and the principle of "Beauty". Christianity adopted this Neo-

Platonic conception and saw it as a strong argument for the existence of a supreme

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God. In the early fifth century, for example, Augustine of Hippo discusses the

many beautiful things in nature and asks "Who made these beautiful changeable

things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable? This second aspect is what

most people today understand as the argument from beauty.

A contemporary British philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne, known for

philosophical arguments about the existence of God, advocates a variation of the

argument from beauty:

God has reason to make a basically beautiful world, although also reason to leave

some of the beauty or ugliness of the world within the power of creatures to

determine; but he would seem to have overriding reason not to make a basically

ugly world beyond the powers of creatures to improve. Hence, if there is a God

there is more reason to expect a basically beautiful world than a basically ugly one.

A priori, however, there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful

rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that

fact would be evidence for God's existence. For, in this case, if we let k be 'there is

an orderly physical universe', e be 'there is a beautiful universe', and h be 'there is a

God', P(e/h.k) will be greater than P(e/k)... Few, however, would deny that our

universe (apart from its animal and human inhabitants, and aspects subject to their

immediate control) has that beauty. Poets and painters and ordinary men down the

centuries have long admired the beauty of the orderly procession of the heavenly

bodies, the scattering of the galaxies through the heavens (in some ways random,

in some ways orderly), and the rocks, sea, and wind interacting on earth, The

spacious firmament on high, and all the blue ethereal sky, the water lapping against

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'the old eternal rocks', and the plants of the jungle and of temperate climates,

contrasting with the desert and the Arctic wastes. Who in his senses would deny

that here is beauty in abundance? If we confine ourselves to the argument from the

beauty of the inanimate and plant worlds, the argument surely works." (Swinburne,

1989).

The most frequent invocation of the argument from beauty today involves the

aesthetic experience one obtains from great literature, music or art. In the concert

hall or museum one can easily feel carried away from the mundane. For many

people this feeling of transcendence approaches the religious in intensity. It is a

commonplace to regard concert halls and museums as the cathedrals of the modern

age because they seem to translate beauty into meaning and transcendence.[citation

needed]

Dostoevsky was a proponent of the transcendent nature of beauty. His enigmatic

statement: "Beauty will save the world" is frequently cited. Aleksandr

Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel Prize lecture reflected upon this phrase: And so perhaps

that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn

formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of

these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm,

and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or

amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable,

unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that

very place and in this way perform the work of all three. And in that case it was

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not a slip of the tongue for Dostoyevsky to say that "Beauty will save the world"

but a prophecy. After all, he was given the gift of seeing much, he was

extraordinarily illumined. And consequently perhaps art, literature, can in actual

fact help the world of today (Solzhenitsyn, 19560.

Limitations

It was not easy accessing some of the respondents, who were busy most of the

period, either at meetings or attending to their business and therefore had little time

to spare for the interaction and interviews.

The researcher did not get access to the design archive in the textile industries to

compare and study the trend of textile designs in Ghana.

Delimitation

The will be limited to the concepts of beauty in creation. Due To Limited

Companies Producing Real African Prints In Ghana, The Study Will Be Limited

To Akosombo Textile Limited (ATL) And Ghana Textile Printing Company

(GTP).

Statement of the problem

In Ghana, traditional symbols are found all around the country. They are found in

each region and district, and are mostly connected to chieftaincy, religion and the

cultural life of the people within the area. These symbolic forms carry messages

which have historic or proverbial meanings. They can be seen on durbar grounds,

funeral grounds, palaces, churches and places of worship.

Concepts of beauty in creation have been used to represent spoken word or

proverbs. Such symbols are found on spokesman staff, umbrella finials, flags,

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ceramic murals and sculpture works. These symbols have also been used

repeatedly by textile designers over the years. Concepts of beauty in creation are

said in almost all spoken languages in Ghanaian communities.

The Concepts of beauty in creation possess cultural and philosophical values that

have not been fully explored in terms of design. It is therefore expedient for the

researcher to explore the use of Concepts of beauty in creation to generate unique

and varied motifs for textile design.

Objectives of the study

i. To identify and generate motifs from selected concepts of beauty in

creation for textile design.

ii. To design and produce batik and textile print designs using the selected

motifs.

Importance of the Study

The research project aims at:

i. Exploring and generating symbols or motifs for textile designs through

the use of selected concepts of beauty in creation to broaden the

knowledge of art students and textile designers to have a large scope of

areas for their design works.

ii. Providing an illustrative report to serve as a reference document for

people to know about concepts of beauty in creation and its symbolic

significance. This will serve as research material for designers in

textiles and related fields in art and increase their knowledge and

creativity.

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 iii. Promoting Ghanaian art and culture at the international level to earn

foreign exchange for the country. The symbols or imagery will be

incorporated into works of sculpture, ceramics and textiles to portray

Ghanaian oral tradition especially from the concepts of beauty in

creation

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This chapter is about literature review, where it presents ideas that have been

discussed by various researchers about the problem. Thus, it is considered as

secondary sources. Literature review can be defined as a process of gathering

information from different sources such as journals, articles, newspapers, internet

and books that have ideas about the problem under study.

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