Why are you beautiful?

Standing at the base of the Sterkhorn on my birthday a few days ago, a question hit me that I have been thinking about a lot lately. We were staring at this amazing site. The Sterkhorn and Cathkin peak, shimmering in the early morning sun. It was truly beautiful.

And just with everything else in my life, I had to ask the question: why? Why was this scene so beautiful and pleasing to see? If you think about it, its really, really hard to come up with any answer that makes sense. We obviously tried to think of something, but didnt succeed. Perhaps you can...

First, we thought that perhaps the rarity of the scene makes it beautiful. If we were surrounded by beautiful mountains all the time, perhaps they would lose there aesthetic value. Maybe this mountain scene was beautiful because it was such a rare opportunity to see. But I dont think this postulate holds water. Many things are rare (did I just contradict myself?). For example, six fingers on one hand is exceedlingly rare. I saw it once on a Guatemalan baby. Let me tell you, it was not beautiful. Thus, rarity itself cannot equal beauty. There had to be another reason.

I argued that perhaps it was the fact that we were viewing something so vast in size and area, yet so very detailed. Indeed, you could see every little crack and crevice across an entire mountain. There was a tremendous amount of information zipping into our retinas at the speed of light, much more than when you simply look at your hand or the grass. Perhaps this was the key to beauty, at least in nature. But then I thought of a beautiful sunset or even a single moon lighting up a black sky. Not much detail there, just a sense of aesthetic satisfaction that we cant really explain.

So why do we find some things beautiful and others not? Why does the Grand Canyon awe us so when a ditch in the ground is not even noticed? While beauty is subjective, there is certainly some general gathered opinion as to what is considered beautiful and what is not. I think this question has profound implications in nature, love, and especially art. Would love to hear other's ideas while I struggle with my own.