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Aesthetics, also spelled ESTHETICS, theoretical study of beauty and taste constituting a branch of philosophy. The term aesthetics, derived from the Greek word for perception (aisthesis), was introduced by the 18th-century German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten to denote what he conceived as the realm of poetry, a realm of concrete knowledge in which content is communicated in sensory form. The term was subsequently applied to the philosophical study of all the arts and manifestations of natural beauty. A brief treatment of aesthetics follows. For full treatment, seeMACROPAEDIA: Aesthetics.