Abstract

In this chapter, ordinary beauty, ordinary ugliness, and the problem of rationality in social sciences are explored and discussed in relation to the tacit dimension of knowledge, sensible knowledge, empathy, logica poetica, and the epistemological background of the aesthetic understanding of organization. As an empirical case, the discussion of the organizational culture of an Italian university department of mathematics brings to light the inner problems of the relation between mathematical logic and the aesthetics of mathematicians’ everyday work and organizational life. The aesthetic dimension of organizational action in everyday work in organizations, in management and entrepreneurship, and in the society at large, together with its problematic feature of also being responsible for an aestheticizing human action precisely through its aestheticization, highlights in fact an overt critique against the dominance of rationality in understanding human action, organizational settings, and the social world. This critique shows, on the one hand, the variety of different aspects of human action that rationality neglects, as stressed by Alfred SchützSchütz, Alfred during the ParsonsParsons, Talcott-SchumpeterSchumpeter, Joseph A. seminar, and, on the other hand, the status of rationality as just one feature among several others with which to comprehend meaningful social action.