From science to arts:Beauty and simplicity in science

Darko Polšek dpolsek@public.srce.hrIUC DubrovnikMay 2004.

Henri Poincare

"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing..." Many physicists (Dirac, Einstein...) seem to hold a similar view, that there is a close connection between truth and beauty in natural science.

Paul Davies

In The Mind of God, Davis says: "It is widely believed among scientists that beauty is a reliable guide to truth, and many advances in theoretical physics have been made by the theorist demanding mathematical elegance...where laboratory tests are difficult, these aesthetic criteria are considered even more important than experiment."

Beauty as a driver of scientific appreciacion

the work of science is both driven and sustained by an appreciation of beauty and a feeling of awe (e.g. Einstein, Dirac, Schrodinger).

Analysis, emotion and sensibility are integral components of both the scientific and the artistic process.

three levels of aesthetic experience - sensual, emotional/imaginative and analytical - are common to the experience and process of science and art.

The same applies for such elements as the play of tension and relief, realization of expectations, and surprise upon the encounter of unexpected connections of meanings.

These aesthetic elements can be found in a scientific discovery, just as they can be found in a good novel or a fine symphony.

The understanding of an essential and deep affinity between (great) science and (great) art is supported by the claims of many scientists, who submit that an aesthetic drive underlies science

Graham Fermelo: It must be beautiful

to get over what Einstein meant by saying that a grand mathematical theory and equations must be beautiful: think of a crossword puzzle when you’re filling it in; bits of it make sense and it just doesn’t quite work. Then you realise you’ve got one of the things wrong and then click, it falls into place and it works. When you do a rubic cube as well, you’re messing about with it and all of a sudden click, it falls into place. That’s very much akin to the feeling that you get mathematically when an equation really works. It’s that click feeling and that’s the feeling Einstein certainly had when he put forward his gravity equation, and indeed his special theory of relativity too. And yes, that is the feeling we get these days when we play with his equation, when we try to find new beautiful equations.

Quantum mechanics and aestethics Paul Dirac, the author of the quantum mechanic theory for the electron (which

predicted the existence of antimatter), said: "It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment."

Bohr and Heisenberg’s quantum theory engaged a comparison between physics and art. Bohr's view was influenced by the "symbolic turn" in that he rejected all mechanical models of the movement of electrons in the atom. He pronounced "the failure of all spatio-temporal models" and the need for recourse to symbolic analogies.

After 1924 Bohr used the notion of symbolic representation regularly, by which he meant all elements of a physical theory with no correlate in intuition. A more sophisticated - i.e. symbolic - language was required.

Heisenberg claimed that physical theories were like styles of art. He noted that the conceptual systems of physics (for instance, Newtonian and quantum) differ not only because their objects differ, but also because they create different groups of relations. As styles of art emerge through a set of formal rules so do symbolic idealizations underlying conceptual systems of physics. Contemporary science is changing the entire view of classical physics and modern philosophy, introducing (like a style of art) new presuppositions about the nature of reality.

J. McAllister: Beauty and revolution in science

In assessing theories, scientists rely upon empirical criteria such as internal consistency, predictive accuracy and explanatory power.

beside empirical matters, aesthetic concerns are also operative, which cannot be defined in terms of a fixed set of properties, since what is considered attractive or beautiful has been different at different times and in different disciplines.

But in general, beauty in science (as in art) is identified via features which convey an impression of aptness - they are appropriate, fitting or seemly.

aesthetic criteria are as central to the scientist's acceptance of a theory as are empirical considerations.

theoretical innovations have aesthetic constraints.

J. McAllister 2

There is a distinction between empirical and aesthetic criteria, but the latter are not merely "extra-scientific", - they are an integral part of scientific development and change. The aesthetic canon is constructed by the aesthetic features of all past theories

- an inductive mechanism which ensures that the aesthetic canon is conservative. What compels scientists to accept a new paradigm is that it is empirically better performing. Allegiance to the aesthetic canon must be suspended to accept a new theory.

for some the rupture is too deep and they hang on to the established aesthetic paradigm - to the conservative aesthetic criteria. Ptolemaic – Copernican system of heavenly motions.

aesthetic factors are on the side of the conservative trend in the choice between theories, while empirical factors compel scientists toward innovation and radical breaks with established views

Joseph Margolis: Against Kuhn

No useful instructions from Kuhn, since aestetic criteria vary with time Margolis argues that there is a common "reason" art and science

share: professional taste/reason in the sciences, as in the arts, is a function of historical practice.

What is a "good" explanatory theory (or a painting) is what accords with practice. Reason is "an artifact of historical life" and the aesthetic is a convenient "catchall term for the informality with which the most formal criteria can be legitimated".

Margolis posits consensual practices broadly grounding scientific praxis and aesthetic taste to some common practical reason governing both.

There can be no meaningful distinction between "objective" and "subjective", but at the same time there is no principled difference between what counts as objectivity in the arts and the sciences.

Margolis discerns that science does not "borrow" from the aesthetic, but rather the aesthetic is "essential to what we mean by objectivity in the sciences".

Aestetic tinkering as a scientific process

The role of models and metaphors Example: Watson and Crick - double

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