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When we created a picture of aesthetics using WoS, we had to narrow down our approach, as will be explained soon. The data we consult does not tell us anything as such, and we cannot even start searching for relevant information without making active selections. In the present situation, where such databases have a huge impact on our academic communities, we cannot just omit them.

If the picture seems to be distorted, we have to understand why, and try to find better tools and databases. At least, we have to understand how it functions. In any case, as WoS is arguably one of the most important academic databases, aestheticians cannot afford to ignore it. 7 We will return to some of the problems related to WoS and other similar databases, such as Elsevier's Scopus, soon. It is a known issue that arts and humanities (A&H) research is not as well covered in WoS as natural sciences-the indexing of A&H started much later, in 1975-although the situation has been improving lately. To summarize, as WoS is one of the best known, largest, and most influential academic databases, it is interesting to see first what kind of image it offers of aesthetics. 6 WoS is also used as standard by researchers for bibliometric studies, as the publications it indexes are stringently pre-inspected for quality, and the data it provides is consistently organized in the database. 5 It was also the first database that started indexing the cited references of publications, as early as the 1960s, thus allowing various (co-)citation analyses to be conducted, based on Eugene Garfield's original idea from 1955. Thomson Reuters’ WoS database is the “gold standard” by which many governments in countries such as the USA, the UK, and Australia evaluate their national R&D performance. For this essay, we have used the publication data provided by WoS. In the data set we analyzed from the Web of Science (WoS) for this article, the rate of growth has been steady and surging since the turn of the millennium.Ĭomputational analyses always need data to be analyzed with the help of algorithms that define what the computational processes will do and present to us. 2 The same trend can also be seen in the research of aesthetics, as presented in Figure 1. 1 The latest studies show that the growth of global scientific publication output has been exponential between 19.

In fact, he or she cannot even access a tiny fraction of it, since in general the growth rate of traditional scientific publishing has been increasing for the last 50 years, and the number of publications using new channels such as open-access journals is growing rapidly. One simply cannot master all the different languages and traditions in which aesthetic issues are addressed, and a single scholar can never get a hold of everything published in his or her field. What kinds of studies of the arts actually belong to the field of aesthetics, and what kinds are outside it? Where are the differences between art history and aesthetics? Is aesthetics always a philosophical discipline, and what does that mean? Should we include non-academic publications such as memoirs or exhibition reviews in the field if they deal with the same themes as academic aesthetics papers? What are the latest trends and which themes are fading away? Such questions are acutely relevant when one designs, for example, an introductory book or course for undergraduate students.įorming a comprehensive interpretation of any academic field is becoming more and more demanding all the time, because the number of publications, scholars, and institutions becomes higher each year. As soon as one goes any further, philosophical ponderings and disagreements arise. We can probably agree that aesthetics has something to do with the arts, beauty, and other aesthetic values, as well as with art criticism in the broadest possible sense. However, there is no universally accepted definition of aesthetics.

The more one studies, the broader and more detailed a picture one has. This is still quite a normal and reasonable approach, and knowledge attained through it cannot be achieved in any other way. Traditionally, well-informed conceptions about the field of aesthetics have been formed by studying it for a long time and carefully-by reading and writing books and articles, teaching and following lectures, and taking part in academic discussions in conferences and learned societies.