理论心理学家尼古拉斯·汉弗莱（Nicholas Humphrey）出版新书《世界为何如此美丽？我们的心灵在寻找自然的韵律》（Why Is the World So Beautiful? Our Minds in Search of Nature’s Rhymes），试图为人类对美的感知提供一种进化心理学解释 1。书中借鉴诗人杰拉德·曼利·霍普金斯的名言“All beauty may by a metaphor be called rhyme”，主张“韵律”不仅是修辞手法，更是审美感知的核心机制 1。汉弗莱将“韵律”定义为两个事物在本质上属于同一类但在偶然特征上有所不同，例如猫与狗虽外形迥异，却同为哺乳动物 1。他认为，人类对美的欣赏源于进化过程中形成的、对这种事物间本质相似性的敏感与喜爱 1。这一观点呼应了1994年艺术家维塔利·科马尔（Vitaly Komar）和亚历克斯·梅拉米德（Alex Melamid）通过市场调研创作“美国最想要的画作”时所反映的公众审美偏好现象 1。
然而，评论者尼克·哈斯兰姆（Nick Haslam）指出该理论面临多重挑战 1。首先，“韵律”概念因涵盖范围过于宽泛而可能陷入语义空洞的风险 1。其次，美感体验并非仅由形式上的对称或韵律构成，内容本身如颜色、大小等元素同样起着关键作用，且非对称的美也普遍存在，这削弱了单一机制解释的说服力 1。此外，神经美学研究表明大脑中并不存在单一的“美感中心”，不同感官体验下的美感会激活不同的脑区，这使得用“韵律”统一解释所有美的体验变得困难 1。
Theoretical psychologist Nicholas Humphrey has published a new book titled Why Is the World So Beautiful? Our Minds in Search of Nature’s Rhymes, arguing that human appreciation for beauty is fundamentally rooted in an evolutionary recognition of "rhyme." 1 Humphrey defines this concept not merely as a literary device, but as a mechanism where two entities belong to the same essential category while differing in incidental features, such as cats and dogs both being mammals. 1 Drawing on poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ assertion that "All beauty may by a metaphor be called rhyme," Humphrey posits that our minds are tuned to detect these underlying similarities across various sensory experiences. 1
However, Nick Haslam, who reviewed the work, highlights significant challenges to this unified theory of aesthetics. 1 Haslam contends that the definition of "rhyme" is overly broad, potentially rendering the concept semantically hollow, and notes that aesthetic appeal often stems from content-specific attributes like color and size rather than just formal symmetry or correspondence. 1 Furthermore, research in neuroaesthetics indicates that there is no single "beauty center" in the brain, with different types of aesthetic experiences activating distinct neural regions, thereby questioning the feasibility of defining "beauty" through one universal mechanism. 1
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