St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences The St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPIIRAS) () is a federal state budgetary institution of science located in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was founded on by a Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The official foundation date is , according to a Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The main research fields of the institute are computer science, intelligent automation systems and information technologies. The Institute is located in the building of
History of aesthetics before the 20th century refers to Greek philosophers as the earliest source of formal aesthetic considerations. Plato believed in beauty as a "form" in which beautiful objects partake and which causes them to be beautiful. He felt that beautiful objects incorporated proportion, harmony, and unity among their parts. Similarly, in the "Metaphysics", Aristotle found that the universal elements of beauty were order, symmetry, and definiteness. From the late 17th to the early 20th century Western aesthetics underwent a slow revolution into what is often called modernism. German and British thinkers emphasized beauty as the key component of art and of the aesthetic experience, and