Axiology, then, is the home for ethics, aesthetics, ² and political philosophy — all enterprises driven by the pursuit of value judgment.

Axiology and Topology

Of course, aesthetics is a difficult category to place — intrinsic to the concept of beauty are metaphysical and epistemological aspects, such that it could be called an overarching category in its own right. One author notes that “aesthetics in particular could analyze the genesis of different modes of experiencing space and time; the relations of inner and outer.” ³

For instance, here is a form of art (a skill requiring aesthetic judgment) called chiaroscuro. ⁴

In Italian, it literally means “light-dark.” It began in the Renaissance (around the 1500s and 1600s), when artists were trying to figure out ways to draw three-dimensional objects. They wanted a way to visually represent a sphere sitting on a table, but the key to drawing a realistic sphere sitting on the table is not in the ability to draw a perfect sphere but to create perspective with the right kind of shading. The shadows on an object say just as much about its shape as the outline, possibly even more. The shading of an object is, in a sense, what makes a painted object believable — the shadows make a piece of art real, and alive.

Up to that point in Renaissance painting, the moon had always been drawn as perfectly spherical and smooth, similar to the concept of beauty at the time. The moon represented purity and a lack of defect. But the scientist Galileo was (also) an armature chiaroscuro artist. ⁵

One night, while looking at the moon through his telescope, he realized: the sky is a perfect chiaroscuro painting. There is a dark canvas, and the sun illuminates the moon. For the first time in history, this scientist realizes because of his artistic training: astronomy is a kind of light-on-dark artistry. And then, while looking at the moon through his telescope, he notices things that only a chiaroscuro artist would be able to notice: the shadows inversely betray that the moon has mountains. ⁶

In this way, aesthetic intuition is an aspect of modern cosmology (metaphysics) and science (epistemology).