ZYGO Zygon® 0591-2385 1467-9744 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2007.00535.x THE SENSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND APOPHATIC THOUGHT: EMPIRICAL BEING AS IKON Rhodes Michael Craig 02 06 2007 42 2 10.1111/zygo.2007.42.issue-2 535 552

This essay is an interdisciplinary study of beauty that attempts to bridge the gap between religion/theology and science in some measure by drawing from Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500) a notion of being that I argue is consonant with the notion of the sense of the beautiful, which I develop using Steven Weinberg's and Werner Heisenberg's discussions of empirical beauty. I use the term ikon to refer concisely to Dionysius' theophanic notion of being, namely, that the beyond‐being is nonsubstantially present in being.

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