Heraclitus believed that art imitates the beauty of nature. According to Plato objects - shadows of ideas, art is imitating things and is a reflection of the reflected (shadow shadow), and therefore the lower the phenomenon. Access to it in an ideal state should be limited (hymns to the gods).
For Aristotle, art - an imitation of reality (mimesis). Two reasons have made art: 1) imitation found in people with childhood and 2) products follow all fun. "What we are really looking with disgust, subtle portrayal of we view with pleasure" (Aristotel. Poetics. IV, in 1448.). Aristotle justifies the principles of artistic truth: imitation plays are not random events, and probable (not facts, but what could happen, not what has happened, but rather probable cases). Poetry depicts the likely chain of events (even if they never happened.) History also plays the individual facts and events, often only incidentally related. According to Aristotle art contains more philosophical and serious element than history, poetry, stories above. These provisions - the first attempt to reveal the specifics of art versus science. Nothing in the universe does not arise spontaneously all is the root cause, subject to the laws.
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