186 SCIENTIST 



Statement is particularly true of esthetic values. The feature 

 that is most important about a picture or a piece of music 

 is the way it makes you or me feel as an individual. I know, 

 for example, that there are many people who feel that the 

 choral bit in the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Sym- 

 phony is one of the greatest things ever written. It produces 

 feelings about the joy and sublimity of life which are of the 

 greatest importance to them. I don't happen to share these 

 feehngs, partly because I regard the music itself as over- 

 blown and partly because I can't get it out of my head that 

 the Nazi party regarded it as a splendid expression of what 

 it was trying to accomplish. 



Naturally, I regret that I can't feel the way other people 

 do about this music and about a number of other esthetic 

 experiences, but it doesn't worry me terribly because I know 

 that subjective responses to complex stimuli are extremely 

 variable. It is therefore useless and possibly dangerous to 

 look for a high degree of agreement in matters of esthetic 

 value. It was the recognition of the subjective nature of 

 value judgments in the esthetic sphere which prompted 

 Cicero to make his famous remark that one should not 

 argue about tastes. The fact that I do not respond favorably 

 to the Choral Ninth should not (and of course it does not) 

 affect the way other people feel about it. It has value for 

 them, and my negative response substracts nothing from 

 their positive one. 



But if a substantial number of informed people refused 

 to believe that the earth is round, we would feel pretty upset 

 because we have come to believe that the truth of objective 

 propositions does depend importantiy on the degree of 

 agreement among different observers. 



If the methods of science cannot be used to determine 

 questions of esthetic value, has science any concern with 



