At THINKABLE we aim to create beautiful learning experiences for computer science, you may ask why do we think we have to do it?

Beauty is an option for art …But it is not an option for life. It is a necessary condition for life as we would want to live it.

Danto, 2003, p.160

I believe that experiencing beauty is a signal from authentic ourselves to be aware and make a notice. However, we often learned to ignore this deep signal. But we should not, because it is our instinctive personal compass. It is our life guide … It is a signal of a deeply formative experience we are just encountering and we should give our attention to. Experiences of this kind stand out in our memories as something holistic, emotional, complete in themselves, highly significant and intrinsically worthwhile. Such powerful, intimate experiences referred to as moments of ‘epiphany’ are common in the autobiographies of personalities who have found a particular vocational calling or how romantics would say ‚met their destiny‘ or some people would call it „being in the zone“. 

These intense and formative experiences are those when we are able to recognise beauty in something that is relevant for ourselves and nobody else. Our specific response to an object rather than in the object itself is the signal that we should search for, look for its origin and its power. Because, noticing when our disinterested observation changes and opens to such experience of beauty will help us to know ourselves and navigate us to a happiness which is instantly recognisable as our own. In giving ourselves up to it, in letting ourselves be moved by it, we are actually encountering – in the reality of felt experience – what it might be like to live a happy life. It is a signal of what would be a happy life for us, our own life. Each parent’s wish for a child is to be able to live an authentic and happy life, for it we need an ability to recognise what moves us. 

To find our calling, to understand ourselves we need to be able to notice this deep signal, our own understanding of beauty. However, education is understood as pure acquisition of knowledge and skills to be able to fulfill the tasks and activities in the classroom and hopefully even later in life. This vision somehow assumes that skill, technology or method could be applied free from its purpose or intention. This brings disconnection between the learner and the learned … completely opposite to the experience of beauty which is felt in deep connection between the learner and what is learned. Remember the awe you felt the first time you gazed through a microscope or saw the night sky through a telescope? Beautiful experiences in education can spark that same sense of wonder and curiosity. When students encounter beauty—whether it’s in a stunning scientific phenomenon, a well-crafted story, or an elegant mathematical solution—they become naturally curious. This curiosity is the driving force behind meaningful learning and exploration. A good teacher provides opportunities for and recognises moments of real value when they happen, as well as helps students recognise these moments for themselves … recognise the signal when they experience beauty and are truthful to themselves…

Beauty plays a crucial role in a young person’s education. The types of learning experiences that a mind is exposed to and the kinds of things a person is taught to consider lovely and worthy of preservation profoundly form her mind and soul. What the young mind finds attractive and desirable directly affects her ability to know the good and to choose well. And since freedom is the ability to choose the good, the beauty makes as free. A beautiful education will form not only the intellect, but also the will and the heart. 

Indeed, to choose the good, a person must desire it. A beautiful education forms a desire to look for the beautiful authentic truths intuitively, find pleasure in them, and feel an affinity towards them. For this reason, beauty is an essential component of education, most especially in the adolescent age, as these are highly impressionable years in one’s life. Beauty forms the taste for goodness and truth, which in turn attracts the student to recognise it and choose it. 

A beautiful learning experience is one that stimulates–and then satisfies–a desire for new knowledge or skill. Objectives, technologies, teaching strategies and assessment criteria might all have their place, but why not also consider the lesson as an opportunity to experience?

Because of the disconnect between its purpose and the technology, the computer science field experienced a lack of beauty … It seems natural to think beauty and technology are mutually exclusive. Not because technology is intrinsically ugly but because people often see technology, engineering and science as more „rational“ than aesthetic.  But there is beauty in computer science … it lies in its ability to solve problems in its interdisciplinary applications. 

We at THINKABLE think that solving problems is one of the most intellectually satisfying of all human activities, and computer science is full of it…computer science is an artisan art of communication of your own fine ideas in a form of tidy code, in physics you are supposed to figure out how the world is made up, in computer science you create the world, in mathematics you are supposed to model the world in computer science you are discovering hidden numbers, beautiful equations, and proportions in nature that can be unraveled by anyone who is curious enough, computer science provides us with the eyes to recognize and describe the hidden patterns of life or even create artificial life with artificial intelligence…

Beauty in education nurtures creativity. When students are exposed to beautiful experiences, they are inspired to think creatively and approach problems with a fresh perspective. This creativity is essential not only in the arts but across all disciplines. Beautiful experiences encourage students to see connections, think outside the box, and come up with innovative solutions. Incorporating beauty into education is not just about making learning more enjoyable; it’s about transforming the educational experience into something profound and lasting. When education is infused with beauty, students are more likely to develop a passion for learning that extends beyond the classroom. They become lifelong learners who seek out beauty and knowledge in the world around them, continually inspired to grow and discover.

As we strive to create beautiful experiences in education, we are not only enriching students’ lives but also paving the way for a more curious, creative, and compassionate future. While technological advances increasingly shape our society, we also recognize the benefits of engaging with their beautiful nature … and the opportunity to manifest our understanding of beauty to the world. And we should consider beauty in the solutions coming from computer science and forming our world, because otherwise…

In an era where misinformation spreads like wildfire and our attention spans are under constant assault, beauty might just be the unexpected antidote, the compass, we need. 

The annihilation of beauty would leave us with an unbearable world, as the annihilation of good would leave us with a world in which a fully human life would be unliveable.

Danto, 2003, p.60

Written by Lucia, 2025