Juan Ignacio Pérez. / Photo: Iñaki Aldaz, SINCIs beauty an inherent, objective quality, beyond perception, or, on the contrary, as the famous phrase proclaims, is it in the eyes of the beholder? Does physical appearance influence the choice of bees that pollinate flowers? And in the choice of people looking for a partner?
The monograph " Beauty and Nature " of the journal Mètode, coordinated by researchers from the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology Raquel Ortells and Eduardo M. García Roger, addressed these questions related to sexual beauty and its effects on the natural world. The writer and disseminator Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias, one of the signatures of the monograph, will visit Valencia to continue reflecting on the subject with the conference "Is beauty a criterion of truth?" In this, he will delve into how aesthetic criteria participate in natural selection and end up shaping those features that, at least from the human point of view, we perceive as beautiful.
The event will be attended by the coordinator of the issue, Raquel Ortells, and will take place next Thursday, April 27th at 7:00 p.m. in the Estufa Freda room of the Botanical Garden.
Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias (Salamanca, 1960) is Professor of Physiology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), where he has been teaching for more than thirty years. In addition to his teaching, research, and management career, he has a great scientific dissemination task: since 2010 he has directed the Chair of Scientific Culture at the UPV/EHU and chairs the advisory board of the scientific communication media The Conversation, where he also participates regularly as a collaborator. He is also the current president of Jakiunde, the Basque Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He has published, among other works, Animales ejemplares (2020) and, together with Joaquín Sevilla, Los males de la ciencia (2021), both with Next Door Publishers.
The conference is part of the exhibition "L'espill de la natura", which includes a selection of the works submitted to the call for artists to illustrate the monograph "Beauty and nature", organized by the magazine Mètode in collaboration with the Botanical Garden. The exhibition can be visited in the Estufa Freda room of the Garden until May 14th.
